Harvest Celebration 1981 — George Verwer

Send out the rain, Lord. Send out the rain. Send out the latter rain. Send out the rain, Lord. Send out the rain. Send out the latter rain. Send out the rain, Lord. Send out the latter rain.

You've come with a t-shirt carrying a government health warning emblazoned on it. Ish, we're glad to have you on the platform. Can we have a minute? I just wanted to ask you something about the lunchtime, funtime thing.

Oh, I've got a pie. Have you got a pie?

No, we wouldn't do that to you. Just come here a sec. Can we just do a commercial for that? I'm very aware that numbers were up a bit this time. Are you pleased with that? Yes. Yes, very pleased. Is it right.

You've been doing some terrible things there, like putting custard pies in people's faces? Yes, very true.

I'm sure that just as we were enjoying ourselves in fun and fellowship, that God was also enjoying that too. And I think it's great for us to realize that. And I think it's also great for us to realize that there are times when we can laugh because we have confidence with each other in the family of Christ.

We can just relax and just have fun. At the same time, there are times when we can turn immediately just before God and acknowledge who He is and how great He is and how wonderful He is. And we're going to do that right now.

Number 47, Jesus, how lovely you are. You are so gentle, so pure and kind. Last, Sheila, to take the lead on the verses. Then we're going to come to the chorus. Let's just again move into a spirit of praise, lifting Jesus into the center of our worship tonight.

Number 47.

Buzz Magazine, Christian Responsibility, and Global Awareness

Harvest is very much a partnership when it comes to putting it together. It's an interesting partnership between British Youth for Christ and Buzz magazine. And part of the cooperation is that I gladly give Clive Calver an elastic five minutes one week, one night in Spring Harvest to talk about their important work.

That'll be tomorrow night. And he gladly in return gives me an elastic five minutes to talk about the work of Buzz magazine and the allied work on another evening. And that's tonight. But I'd like to break the rules slightly because rather than spend most of my time talking about the magazine, I'd like to spend most of it talking about something which is far more important.

And if you can imagine something more important than Buzz magazine, then you know I'm talking about something very important. But let me just get out of the way for a moment a few practical details which I'd like you to be aware of.

And then get into the meat of what I want to talk to you about which is a very important project about which we need to commit ourselves. Last night we were hearing from David Pawson talking about leadership.

And one thing is clear is that leadership brings responsibility. And when you're producing a magazine which is going to be read by about, well, bought by about 30 ,000 people each month or more, you feel responsible.

Particularly when it's going to be read by something like 100 ,000 people each month as it gets passed from hand to hand and so on. And as we work out our responsibilities, what we're trying to do through Buzz magazine is to give you a clear understanding of what God is doing in His world.

So many of us live in situations where we're forced to have blinkers on because of the fellowships we're in, the denominations we're in and so on. And if only we could get a grasp of what God is doing around the world and realize that in many places in the world God's church is growing faster than the population rate and at the same time getting the balance to see that there are some countries in the world where you could get all the believers sitting in the front row here or gathered into one of our chalets.

That is the kind of balance we're trying to get across. We're also concerned to tackle the major issues of our world and see how our Christian lives relate to the world outside and what the world outside is doing to our Christian lives.

Our responsibilities went a stage further when we became concerned about a year ago that marriages in this country were hurting. About one in five marriages in Britain today ends in divorce and Christian marriages are not exempt.

We wish they were but they're not. And so we felt the need to launch a magazine aimed directly at strengthening and sustaining Christian families. And we launched Family Magazine back in September and the response has been overwhelming.

The circulation of that is now in the region of 20 ,000 copies a month or more which excites us because it shows it's meeting a need. I mean the current issue which is on sale on the Basen family stand includes something on how to talk to your children when death comes, how to explain death to your children.

It tackles the whole issue of why is sex such a problem so often in Christian marriages. It looks at case histories like a family that decided not to have an abortion when they were told that almost certainly the child to be born to them would be handicapped.

There's an answers column dealing with those sort of issues. We'd be delighted if you would stand with us and with your family and your church and take these magazines regularly. That's all I want to say about the two magazines.

The Siberian Seven and Christian Solidarity

But as I talk about responsibilities, a responsibility came into our hands just ten days ago which we as an editorial team felt we couldn't budge. You'll have found on your seats a piece of paper which is headed Free the Siberian Seven.

Now it may be that you're very much in touch with the situation concerning these seven Christians but if not, I'll touch on it briefly. The situation is that in the basement of the American embassy in Moscow are seven Pentecostal Soviet Christians whose homes are really in Siberia.

They're comprised of members of two families and they're basically held hostage by the Soviet Union's continuing persecution of Christians. For example, members of these families have already served time in labor camps and in psychiatric hospitals.

They've already had their church services broken up. Members of these families have already seen their children confiscated by the state for re-education. Because of the blessing of God upon their local church, the authorities insisted that they registered as a registered church.

That was quite easy. All you had to do was sign a document saying you would not give any religious instruction to anyone under the age of 18. They said, how can we do that in conscience before God? As a result, they faced this kind of persecution.

Almost three years ago, they went to the American embassy quite legally but found themselves needing to take refuge there for reasons that are explained in this little panel here. You can read it at your leisure.

But that was three years ago. You've now been in your chalets here for three days. If you can imagine seven adults, virtually adults, in there, not for three days or three weeks or three months, but by 27th of June, they will have been there for three years.

They're in a basement so there's little light coming in. There's a Soviet guard on the outside and there's a grill to their window. At regular intervals during the night, he will rub his baton along the railings outside their window to make sure they don't get sleep.

They're under that sort of pressure. An American Christian who's been working in that embassy has made friends with them. He came out recently and said they are in a deadlock situation. The Russians don't care.

The Americans are embarrassed. Neither side trusts each other. They may have been there three years now. They may be there another three years unless an independent country does something. He said if only British Christians would take up the cause, he said, I believe something would happen.

When Georgie Vins was being treated the way he was and the British public rose up, led by Christian leadership, he became free and he said the situation for many others facing that kind of persecution was drastically changed.

And so Buzz is taking a commitment along with others to do something about this situation, to let the Russian authorities know that we're concerned, to pray about change, and also to do something to let the Christians there themselves, the Siberian 7, know that we love them and are doing something.

A number of things that you can do, and they're outlined on this leaflet. In June, we're going to issue a special issue of Buzz with them on the cover, covering the three years they've been in there and highlighting the problem and laying out a plan of action.

There are a number of these things you can do. The first thing is we've made arrangements to get a message from Spring Harvest into the basement of the American Embassy. Don't ask me how it's going to get in there.

I can't tell you, but I do know. I just can't say how public it's going to be there. But anything we say here in written form will be there within two weeks. In the corridor by reception, when you get out tonight, there'll be a big sheet of paper where every one of us can write messages of greeting, love and support.

We shared this last week. We've already got a huge page full of signatures and greetings. We'll put that up there to show you what the last lot did and it'll challenge our creativity and our involvement.

We're going to stick the two together and get it out there to them within the next two weeks. The next thing you can do is to order an action pack, which we're going to be making available. That pack will include a 12-minute audio-visual of the situation, telling the story on slide and tape, including photographs even from the Embassy itself, so you can stir up interest among churches in your area and get something moving.

Obviously, it's going to cost something to produce that. We're going to have a sheet of action ideas telling you who you can write to and what you can say, who you can phone, and you can badger to make sure that people know we care.

There's going to be a copy of the book, The Siberian Seven, which covers the material to clearly indicate what's gone on in the Soviet Union. It's a tremendous book, which I would encourage you to get as part of that.

And there'll be posters and stickers and everything else. We mean business, and it's going to be in the pack. Now, the pack is going to cost, we reckon, in order to produce and post to you, something in the region of six pounds, and that's what we're asking you to part with for it when you order it.

If there's anything over, we'll put it into a fighting fund to do all the other things we want to do. The next thing we need to do is pray. It's going to take a miracle to break the kind of diplomatic deadlock that we're talking about.

Lastly, keep June 27th free. We want to have a worshipful and positive demonstration in London to show the media and the Soviet Union and the authorities that we mean business and we're concerned about these people.

I believe it's possible, through this, to have a tremendous triumph image in the media today to show what can happen when God takes hold of people's lives under persecution. I believe that rather than condemning the Soviet Union, we could do something together which would show the triumph and the glory of God in the lives of Christian believers in the face of persecution in a godless regime.

So let's work together and pray together and see something happen for the glory of God for the Siberian Seven. In faith, I'm going to ask that we sing No. 87. Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son.

Endless is the victory, thou o 'er death has won. These brethren of ours in the Soviet Union are but part of a whole persecuted church who are standing faithfully for the cause of Christ and I believe we should stand with them.

Let's stand and sing No. 87.

What we've been challenged with is something important.

But it's something we need to hear. And on behalf of Youth for Christ, I want to give every endorsement to what Peter said. We're so thrilled that Buzz has taken this lead. Let's pray, shall we? Graham, would you come and pray for the Siberian Seven in the position that they find themselves tonight?

Prayer for the Persecuted Siberian Christians

Father, we thank you for the amazing power that there is through prayer and through actions of faith which are born out of your Spirit and out of love and concern. And we thank you, Lord, that through this power, through the power in the name of Jesus, through our prayers, that things can be done which are beyond our expectation.

Father, I want to pray that you'll give us a high level of expectation as to what you can do through our prayers and through our action in this situation. So, Father, just right at this moment, we want to focus in on that basement.

We thank you, Lord, that prayer knows no geographical limits at all. We thank you, Lord, that our prayer is as powerful here, thousands of miles away, as if we were actually just down the road from the American Embassy in Moscow.

So, Father, we just want to concentrate our prayers upon that basement and pray in the name of Jesus that you will pour into that basement such a sense of hope and such a sense of refreshment that a kind of miracle happens in their hearts.

Father, I pray that if the atmosphere there is heavy and that they're depressed, Lord, that you'll pour in your love and your light so that it's like heaven for them. Father, I believe you can do that such that they'd rather be there than here because of the sense of heaven that you bring.

Lord, we pray that you will give a sense of your presence there that everybody, the guard outside, the people in the embassy get a sense that something's happening, that this God that they believe in is real.

We ask, Lord, you'll give them hope. We ask, Lord, that you'll give them joy. We ask, Lord, that you'll give them your divine wisdom to know how to act, what causes of action to take if any are open to them.

And we pray, Lord, that you'll sustain them and strengthen them and give them a sense that they are not alone. Lord, we just ask that now in the mighty name of Jesus, believing, Lord, that you are doing it.

And we pray also, Lord, that you will put a burden on many of our hearts to continue praying for them until we see them set free. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our speaker this evening is George Verwer. We are very privileged to have him with us. God has used George under his hand to raise up a mighty missionary army, particularly of young people around the world, primarily as a training school and also in addition to see millions of lost people beginning to be reached for the gospel.

We're privileged because the time George has given us during Spring Harvest, as I understand it, is proportionately more than he actually gives his own organization in terms of ministry. And so we're very grateful that he would be able to clear his diary to be with us.

And I trust now we'll still our hearts and open our wills to hear what God has got to say through him. George Verwer.

Spiritual Unity and the Call to Revival in Britain

Grateful to Buzz and Youth for Christ, but firstly to the Lord for this opportunity to be here. One of my deepest convictions, I mean this with all my heart, is that as different fellowships, different organizations and movements here in Britain, we may be able to move together in God's great purposes.

We're not all the same, we're not all doing the same thing, but we have one Lord. How my heart was touched last night through the ministry, and I hope we'll not forget that which we've heard, especially when I think of what God is doing here in Britain.

I've actually felt this for a number of years. It's one of the reasons, in a very strange way, there's not time to tell that tonight. God very clearly, 18 years ago, made this country my home. I've never been back to my own country except to speak for a few weeks.

And it was with that conviction that God was going to do something very great in this country. He has been down through history. And it's just exciting, it's just exciting to be a part of it. Ever since my conversion, I've been accused of being a fanatic.

It's not a very interesting cloud to live under. In the last five years, I've been preaching about spiritual balance, I guess trying to get away from my image of being a fanatic. I don't think that's the reason, actually.

But I am very, very strong on this subject of spiritual balance, and we've been seeing that in the life of Jesus, in our seminar on Jesus. My daughter came to me the other day and she said she felt I was getting extreme on the area of balance.

And I come with a heart very, very full. I've just arrived back from Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Syria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, a few other places. Traveled by van, thought we'd never make it. We had three punctures before we got out of Germany.

My heart is so full. I'm known as a fanatic about literature. I've written a book on literature, an absolutely dead book. It doesn't sell. We have to give them away every time we get stuck with the edition.

Because the fact of the matter is the church does not have a vision for Christian literature to any great degree. A few of these men do. And I've cut my book review by 80 because I know they're talking to you about books all the time.

But I hope you will visit the book tables not just to get something for yourself, praise God, that's good, but to think in terms of perhaps giving books to others. You may not be a great communicator, but as you give books away, loan them, lose them.

I just put a book about a famous converted political leader, Howard Hughes, Senator Harold Hughes, in the library in Bromley where I live. They sent me a letter of appreciation. Imagine if everybody here put a few books of Christian testimony in the library next to a lot of the liberal teaching and other books that are in the libraries.

What a ministry that could be. I want you to turn with me now in your Bible to a number of scriptures. We're going to be asking some serious questions. It really excites me when I see people taking notes.

If you look in the seminar book and you turn to my notes, you will find them very easy to memorize. Don't do it tonight, but there is a page actually that you can write on if you don't have some blank paper with you.

I would like to also engage in operation feedback. I was too afraid to do this last week, but George Whitefield used to do this. When people were preaching, when he was preaching, he would ask people to send up notes to him in the pulpit about what God was doing in their hearts.

He's probably the greatest British preacher of all time. Used as greatly as Wesson. Incredible. Now, I don't want you to hand your notes to me up here for a number of reasons. I once had a note that said, your time is up, please sit down.

I'll probably get one of those from Clive. But you keep your notes and send them to me later on or turn them in at the OM literature table where you can pick up a lot of free literature. But if there's anything you want to ask, anything you want to say, I won't be able to get to it all this week, just feel free to communicate.

I actually can say this honestly, prefer small meetings. In Turkey, I spoke to almost all the believers in the capital city of Ankara. I would have preferred that to be a little bigger. There were only five Turks in the whole meeting.

So I'm a little overwhelmed here. But I would like to have some communication. And so feel free to communicate any question, any burden. Now, if we can get to that scripture in the book of Hebrews. Sorry to leave you there halfway.

Faith, Counsel, and Spiritual Openness

Chapter 11 tells us about faith. If you can read that chapter on your own, you will be greatly stirred. Remember, even as we hear the word of God tonight, if we don't mix it with faith, and it's true all day, it says that earlier in Hebrews, if the word preached is not mixed with faith, it will be of little value.

That's why I so believe in the ministry of counseling. And pray that you will seek help and counsel if you have a spiritual question, or you want to make a commitment, there are people that want to help.

That's not the total answer. But it could be part of the answer. One of the young men who shared with me recently, some very heavy things, said he had never talked to anybody in his life about this. I don't believe that's God's way.

As Christians, to go around with things bothering us, eating away at our conscience, making us feel guilty, we've never talked to anybody ever about it. I would have been wiped out years ago as a very weak, struggling Christian if I hadn't learned something of opening up.

And I'm scared because I know that keeping things in also can create about 50 different psychosomatic illnesses. It's just not healthy, it's just not sensible, and it's not God's way. The Word of God says, Confess your faults one to another, pray for one another that ye may be healed.

And we're the introspective, bottled-up generation. And I pray that many, even among ourselves, will be sharing and praying for one another. And there'll be a flood of spontaneous fellowship right across this great camp.

The word preached must be mixed with faith. Faith will demand action. Faith will demand decision. And I believe we're in a divine moment tonight. Last night, God was speaking, especially to leaders. Tonight, I believe God very strongly wants to speak to just, ordinary, nobodies, especially some who may be very young in the faith, and you may be just struggling along, bound up with doubt, in some bondage, gripped by some problem, or whatever else.

And God wants to bless you. Those whom He loves, He chastens. If you feel the chastening hand of God tonight, it's because He loves you. And if you're never chastened, if there's never any correcting ministry of the Holy Spirit in your life, it's because you may not be yet His child.

Then you better really, really be scared. So in Hebrews 11, we have this great message of faith. And then we get to Hebrews 12, and I want us to read, starting at verse 1. What a wonderful thing to hear those pages of the Bible.

Let me see the Bibles. I learned this from Buck Singh in India. He planted about 400 churches, by the way. Slight anointing. Raise your Bible up. Where are the Bibles? Hallelujah. Shame on any of you who don't have a Bible.

My, oh my. You better get to the bookstall quick. Well, let's try something else. You got a bit puffed up on that. How many of you have not read yet, you love the Word of God, you love Jesus, and you believe it's God's Word, but somehow, you know, television, other books, Little Orphan Annie, Bionic Man, how many somehow have not yet read the Bible once?

Let's be honest, there may be a few. Never read the Bible once. Raise your hand. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, you're honest. About 75 of you. You know, it was a blessing last week. People came up to me and they said, God's spoken to them about reading the whole Bible through this year.

We did it as a youth fellowship years ago. As a group, we did it individually as well. It only took us 66 hours. We just read it nonstop in the church. 66 hours, 70, something like that. It's so funny that the local people thought this was so strange, this pagan community, and made front page and got on the Associated Press when all over the world, youth group reads Bible.

You know, big thing. Let's read the Word of God. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed or surrounded about, with so great a cloud of witnesses, you read about those in Hebrews 11, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, hinder us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and his set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.

We read more, and I hope you will read more, from Genesis right through Revelation. I want to ask you a number of questions tonight. I think it's good to take spiritual inventory. It's Wednesday night.

It's the middle of the week. And I feel these are some of the most important questions you can ever ask. I wrote them down this morning in my Bible. I may not get to all of them. You can write them down, and you can, before you go to sleep tonight, and there may be some tonight, that right from this tent, you'll just want to get alone with God, and not just be caught up with more activity.

Others, God will lead you into activity. But all what a need there is, as we're here receiving much, receiving much, to have times alone with God. There may be some that may want to try to get to sleep early, and try to get up early, and get out on that beach, not necessarily to run.

That's not my main burden, but to seek the Lord. I believe these are days when God wants us to seek His face. The key to revival found way back there in 2 Chronicles 7, 14. If my people, which are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked way, then I will hear from heaven and heal their land.

Beloved, in our Christian life, there will be no gain without pain. There will be no revival in Britain without a paying of the price upon our knees, and upon seeking His face. Let's ask some serious questions.

Running the Christian Race with Discipline

First of all, I want to ask you, are you in God's race? I had a rush to get back to England for a leadership conference a week or two weeks ago. Drove almost non-stop from southern Italy to London. The amazing thing is, when I got to London, one of the first things I read about was the London Marathon, which they're expecting to become one of the great sporting events or athletic events in the future.

Somehow, in an unexpected way, 4 ,300 came and finished the race. 26 miles! We had a very interesting group jogging this morning. Most of them, after the first 400 yards, started puffing and stopped. I hope you won't give up.

It was a very low-profile effort. One other brother went jogging up the mountains, so we got quite a variety. 26 miles! There was a picture of one elderly gentleman in his 60s crossing the finish line.

And on that same day that I read that article, the main thing that everybody in Britain was thinking about was the great horse race that was going on that day. And if they weren't thinking about that, then they were probably down at the Thames watching Oxford beat Cambridge again in rowing.

And I was sitting on the tube late at night, and there was obviously a Cambridge fan on the tube. And I asked him, Who won, you know, Oxford? And he said, Well, I said, Well, you know, what happened? He said, Well, I'll tell you how they did it.

I said, Well, how? He said, They import Americans. Hallelujah! There's still some hope in the race. They also had a woman calling as Cox-Wayne, so maybe that was the secret. But it's interesting to watch racing, to watch the Olympics.

And if you think this is irrelevant, you obviously haven't studied your New Testament, because not only here in Hebrews 12 do we have the picture of a Christian as a runner, but also Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 says, I so run.

And he goes on to say, and I believe it's the missing link in many Christian lives, and I believe it's the reason that many of God's people, instead of being His chosen people, are His frozen people, is because they don't know the secret of what Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians chapter 9.

Do you know it? Paul said, I buffet my body. Discipline. I buffet my body and bring it into control, bring it into subjection, lest after preaching to others I become a castaway, disqualified. Beloved, the Bible teaches, not me, you can forget me, the Bible teaches that we are in an intensive race.

I say this with fear, lest it will be misunderstood, but I pray that you'll at least think about it. I'm really convinced that few of us, I don't care whether you're from a house group or a cathedral, whether you're with OM or who you're with, I feel that few of us know the kind of commitment we read about in the book of Acts.

And it burdens me day and night. I feel that many of us are just playing games. And I feel even many of my friends and co-workers as Christian leaders, many of them have been deceived into a commitment, into a commitment that is less than what God would have.

And we have neglected whole basic emphases in the New Testament, like the warfare, discipline, buffeting the body, and such things as when Paul wrote to Timothy and said, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

This is why, though the church is growing, and it is, the number of missionaries from Britain is decreasing. Because somehow, the thought of going to a strange country and eating strange food and maybe not having the things we're accustomed to does not appeal to most people.

It does maybe appeal to a few and they have to experience much of crucifixion lest they do it in the energy of the flesh. Tozer said, and I hope you'll read his books, that we have measured ourselves by ourselves for so long, there are no longer higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit and for 25 years I've gone from nation to nation looking for examples, looking for men I could pattern my life after, looking for men who I could learn to pray from, looking to men who had more love, more zeal, more compassion, more reality, who were living examples of what I see in Paul and in Jesus and in Timothy and what I read about in books like Hudson Taylor and George Mueller and others who I don't believe are fairy tales and I found few.

I found few. I can tell you, praise be to the living God, I have found some and some I'm not worthy to tie their shoelaces. And don't misunderstand what I'm saying because I can assure you no matter how committed a man is, no matter how zealous, no matter how much he knows of total commitment, no matter how much he is in that race, he's still an earthen vessel.

He still will have his weaknesses and his failures and that's where God had to break me and God had to humble me and God had to show me I was looking at times for things that didn't even exist. And I went back to the Word and developed, I hope, a little bit of spiritual balance.

Spiritual Balance and Total Commitment

But you see, if you're not committed, if you're not really in the race, if you've never really presented your body as a living sacrifice unto God, there's nothing to balance. Balance is not a position of compromise, not a matter of sacrificing the basic truth.

No. It's a matter of taking the often extreme, strong statements of the New Testament and letting one statement balance off the other. Love and truth. Zeal and wisdom. Freedom and order. And there's a hundred areas where we can find that one truth will balance out another truth.

The Concorde, the fastest airplane in the world, is a perfect example of balance. And if you're more balanced, you can go faster for God. So it's not a matter of compromise. But if you don't even have that basic commitment, if you're not really filled with God's Spirit and moving forward as a soldier in the battle, well, it's nothing to balance.

It's like having two wings out in Heathrow Airport and no main fuselage of the airplane. Can you imagine? It would be a strange sight for airline spotters to see two wings going down the runway. There's got to be the body.

There's got to be in your life that commitment, that abandonment to God. And then God can bring in the balance. I remember when I was ministering in the Netherlands with Brother Andrew. Some of you know Brother Andrew, God's smuggler.

Tonight you've got Brother George, God's bungler. And that's no joke. I went into the Soviet Union. One of the first things I ever did in Europe, got arrested by the Soviet secret police due to my own stupidity and accused of being a spy.

It wasn't very exciting. So God uses even mistakes. But Brother Andrew gave... Oh, we met together for tea and he asked me if I gave an invitation at the meeting. And I said that I hadn't. I said, well, you can do that.

He said he thought he would because he discovered that it was easier to cool down a fanatic than warm up a corpse. Oh, I don't know your churches. Maybe the greatest problem in your church is too much enthusiasm.

Too many people just getting excited about Jesus, running out witnessing all over the place, disturbing the neighbors. A .W. Tozer said this. He said to think that too much enthusiasm was the greatest problem in the average church was like sending a squadron of policemen to a local cemetery to guard against a demonstration by the residents at midnight.

If you don't like that, you can take it up with Tozer when you get to heaven. How we need that God-given enthusiasm. I was reading just a few moments ago a little bit in this book on the subject of zeal.

William McDonald says that's the one thing we are without excuse for not having. You don't need a theological education to have zeal. All you need is to be born again. And that leads me to another question.

Conversion and the New Birth

I wrote it down and I don't want to forget to ask it. Are you really a child of God? We have to step back a little bit. Because you don't enter God's race by your own efforts. You don't enter God's race by baptism or church going or being good to grandmothers or taking little children to school on whatever day they go these days.