Gods World Congress — George Verwer

I've been living in Britain for 22, 23 years. The only thing I can say about this conference, I can say a lot of things, but one of them is it's 20, 30 years late. I don't know what it is, but sometimes we're so slow.

And I include myself to respond to the challenge that Jesus Christ gave in his word. So praise God, this is a very special time. Nobody is here by accident. And let's pray God will really help in this final time.

Examining Whether Christ Is Truly Lord

This time will include an open invitation. One will be reality, the other will be geography. One will be concerning your walk with God. That's the first thing we're concerned about. Is he really the Lord of your life?

Are you really a spirit-filled, on-fire follower of Jesus Christ? And the second will be geography. Are you really moving in the right direction? Let's pray. Our Father, you've ministered to us so much.

Some of us are bordering on spiritual gluttony. And we're scared, Lord. Some of us are scared because we know we can't live it. We know that we've had spiritual mountaintop experiences before. Within weeks we're down, not only in the valley, but in the ditch.

But we dare to believe that somehow, this day, this week, this year will be different by the power of your Holy Spirit in our lives. Grant us that extra grace to go one more mile tonight to absorb what you want to give us from your Word.

To take steps of faith that you want us to take. Whether we're new recruits or Christian leaders. Whether we feel we're missionaries or whether we feel we're a mission field. We pray, Lord, that we'll not be hearers of your Word only, but doers.

According to your Word, grant obedience and faith tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Some of you, of course, know me. I've been ministering up and down the country for the last 22 years. And if I didn't give some book reviews, you would think I was ill.

And so I wouldn't want to disappoint you. I not only have books, but just before I came up, someone from what I believe is one of the greatest missionary movements of all times, OMF, gave me this fantastic planner.

You know, I don't think we should separate proper organization from true spirituality. And if some of us don't get more organized, we're not only going to drive ourselves crazy, but our wives crazy, and everybody else that has to work with us.

We need an amalgamation of the practical and the spiritual and the work of God. And that little planner that you can get at a reduced rate because the beginning of the year started is available over here from the bookstall.

And I hope that you'll pick one up. I think it's about 50 pence. I went over to the bookstall today, was there talking with different individuals. That was a great challenge, especially to meet a sister from Poland.

People are here from all over the world. Just before I was in Poland last year, or now it's the year before last, I was in the Soviet Union. What they would do to have a conference like this. I was in some private little house group.

It was all very secretive, sort of one of these connections you make in the streets. And they were just so desperate for information about what God is doing. And we in our so free, such free countries, we seem to also often be over-informationized.

We're not really that interested. I know you are, who come to a conference like this. But it is an enormous privilege to be able to get a hold of some of these books. And if you can't get any more books, you can get them from your Christian bookshop.

You can get them from your church library. You can make sure some of these books are in your church library. For 25 or 30 years, I have been reading books regularly. Many, many hundreds in my spiritual food, whether I've been in jail in the Soviet Union or whether I've been stuck at the border, having left my passport 1 ,000 miles behind in a restaurant, I've usually had some books with me.

Spiritual Formation Through Christian Books

And there's three books that are competing for what I feel are the three most significant books of the last 100 years. Now, the one that I have been saying for many, many years is the top book, is Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones' Spiritual Depression, Its Cause and Cure.

That is equivalent to any one year at any Bible college you can choose in the world. I really mean that. I graduated from one of the great Bible colleges. But that is spiritual food that will take a good 10 years to digest.

The cover is terrible. Spiritual depression, it's not really about depression. Some of you, because of your lifestyle, when you read it, you will get depressed. But it's a challenge of what real commitment is.

And though this man is in heaven, his voice speaks on. And I fear that without that kind of spiritual steel in our fiber in this last part of the century, we're not going to go very far, despite all nice intentions.

But there's a book now competing with it, and I haven't made the final vote. I think it's going to move ahead of it. But I haven't finished it yet. I don't know how he ever got to writing this book, such a large book, when he was doing so much else, so many other things, and writing so many other books.

And I speak of this great book, Discipleship, by David Watson. If I had to choose between pushing these two books and preaching, I think I would choose to just push the two books and forget about my feeble utterances.

Thank God these are just sermons in print. I listened to the memorial service of David Watson recently on tape, and I had the joy of knowing him just a little, and certainly he was an example of God working through, in many ways, a gifted but ordinary being.

The memorial service, the speaker shared about some of the struggles and weaknesses that David faced in his life. Just like you, just like me, God used him. So I commend his book on Discipleship. The second or third in the competition is a book that every time I start to read, I can't believe it.

I really mean that. It's called The Best of A .W. Tozer. This man has been the greatest influence in my whole Christian life of any other writer. I had him much, much earlier than I even knew Dr. Lloyd-Jones existed.

Lloyd-Jones introduced Tozer to Britain, and we had the joy of importing his books and introducing him to most evangelical clergymen through his books, and this is a treasury of extracts from his 20 other writings.

If you can't get a mountain of spiritual food out of that book, please write to me. My address is anyomoffice .com. I've got my 1985 calendars with me with my address. I can give you one. You write to me and say, look, I couldn't get much spiritual food out of that Tozer book, and I will send you, as a gift and an apology, 25 free books.

So I commend to you The Best. I'm not joking. The Best. They're my choice of what books. The Best. It'll even include some of my own. There are some other great books. I think number fourth on my list is Michael Griffith's Take My Life.

Of all the books he's written, I don't think any of them even get near that book. So you know I have my bias. Take My Life. That's about commitment. It's about what we sing in our churches. Take my life and let it be.

Holy consecrated God to thee. A brilliant book. How many of you have read this book? It's really a classic. It's been out a long time. That's very encouraging. Very encouraging. There's another bombshell book that I just love to distribute.

People get challenged even when they just look at the cover. Because there's two things that challenge people. One, the name of Martin Goldsmith. And the other one is the title Don't Just Stand There.

Evangelical passivity is a spiritual gangrene in our churches today. People sitting, waiting for God to do what he's already done. Praying Lord touch me when the Lord already more than touched his son Jesus Christ, but allowed him to be crucified that you and I might be on the move in obedience.

Don't Just Stand There is a brilliant book. And then I always like to introduce at least two new books. One is for people that have difficulty relating to their parents. About 80 of you probably. That's right.

Chua Wee Hin, one of the great leaders of UCCF, the Christian Union Movement, International Movement. Dear Mom and Dad, just published. Because you know, a lot of you, you're going to go anywhere for God.

You're going to have to give some attention to your mothers and fathers. And to what it is to try to move in unity with them. A new one by the leader of WECC. I call it the WECC Book of Lists. That's actually how are you doing?

Went through me like a spiritual laser beam. 24 checklists on spiritual growth. Some of them very depressing. But remember, whenever these books depress you because you feel such a, such an oog, you can believe God to lift you up.

And then finally, two books from overseas. Living With Your Passions, a book on sexual purity, probably the most needed book in many of our lives. And Healing for Damaged Emotions. If I had to choose some of our good seminaries, or choose to study those books, you'd give me a very, very difficult choice.

Fortunately, some of you at least can do both. When I think of the price of paperback books, it's one of the greatest investments you can make in your Christian life. I put my life on any of those books.

You can send any of them back to me. I get not any single penny from this book table, I can assure you. But I am here because Christian books rescued me from unbelief, from doubt, from fear, from almost completely overthrowing the Christian faith.

Two years after I was converted. And there are sermons in print and I commend them to you. And I know the Lord will use them. None of them come near this book. But they help us understand this book. Just as I hope in my feeble message, I can also help to understand some of the things in this book.

Commitment Requires Discipline and Perseverance

Let's look at a number of scriptures together. This is a time when we go directly into the Word of God. We've got challenges, testimonies, songs, engagement, dedications, various things. And now we're going to go into the Word of God.

I'm known as one of the longest preachers in Europe. And I know some of you are tired. I'm also a little bit jet lagged having just come back from the West Indies. Get confused about the time. But we won't have the opportunity to gather like this again for a long time.

So let's just bear with me. I remember in Germany, some of you have heard this story. It's my favorite. It's true. I can't resist it. Half of you have heard it. But I was in Germany where they're neurotic on punctuality.

I go there again next weekend, please pray. And I was going on about an hour and a half. Of course, the interpreter was taking half the time. And a man tried to get me to stop speaking. He borrowed a wristwatch from somebody in the back.

He was sitting in the back row, an older man. Most of the young people were listening very intently, taking notes. And I'm amazed at the way you're taking notes. I sit usually way in the back and watch people take notes.

It's quite challenging. But he held the watch up trying to get me to shut up. And I was preaching about discipleship, world missions, forsaking all for Christ. I saw this watch. I said, praise Jesus, folks.

Look at this man donating his watch for world missions. Come on, you get these things free with a gallon of gas or petrol. When you go to the mission field, they just disintegrate. But there are a number of scriptures as we think of the subject of commitment.

And we have to realize commitment means different things. To different people. And we've chosen a big subject. I've written four books trying to deal with commitment. And when I reread them, which is a very heavy experience.

Apart from getting ill, I find out that I have a long way to go. Hebrews 12 is the first scripture I want to read in thinking about commitment to Christ. I'm one of these runners. I love to run. Not every morning.

Some mornings I hate it. That's why I run. Not an ascetic. Just know that George Burwer needs a little discipline. I remember Billy Graham speaking at one of these great student conferences many years ago.

Twenty five. Thirty years ago. I've listened to the tape 20 times. I wasn't there. But he just very clearly said, you know, if you're not willing for the disciplined life, forget it. And really, whatever commitment you make tonight, whatever promise you made last night without discipline, you're not going anywhere.

Paul said, I buffet my body and bring it into subjection. Less after preaching to others. This is the apostle Paul. I become a reprobate. And here the writer to the Hebrew says, wherefore, seeing we are surrounded about with such a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us.

And let us run with patience. It's a great need in my life. Patience, the race that is set before us. Looking on to Jesus, the key to real commitment, looking on to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

A committed man is many things. The Bible describes him as a pilgrim. The Bible describes him as a soldier, endure hardness as a good soldier, Jesus Christ. Think of those young Iranians rushing into the front lines of the Iran-Iraq war.

Even tonight, many of them 16 and 17. Considering it a joy to give their lives totally for their religion and for their country. That's commitment. We heard a similar reference to that tonight. I think one of the strongest things about A .W. Tozer is that that my heart is linked with, though I'm a failure and I'm still wrestling with it.

He felt that contemporary evangelical Christianity, and he included the charismatic movement, the non-charismatic movement. He included everybody who doesn't like to be included. He felt that the commitment we represented was not a biblical commitment.

Now, he's strong. And he said it was not enough to take the gospel to pagan lands, but that we must be concerned about the quality of the gospel that we are taking. And I believe that God wants us to consider tonight the quality of our own commitment to Jesus Christ and my fellow missionaries.

Sin, Holiness, and the Quality of Christian Commitment

I believe you and I are in on this because I want to be quite honest. I'm appalled at times of the lack of commitment on the mission people. And I speak of O .M. I'll let you speak of your own group. Satan is clever and we build up habits in our life.

Billy Graham said our life is filled with habits. And we don't bring these habits under the crucifying power of the Lord Jesus. We don't deal with those roots of jealousy, those roots of bitterness, those roots of lust.

And those acorns in our lives in the teenage years become trees in the 20s and they become giant trees in the 30s and the 40s. I believe it is impossible to consider the task of world missions without deciding to deal with sin in our lives.

It's an unpopular word in many places today. We're encouraged to be positive in all of our thinking, even though we have a Bible with at least a thousand negative exhortations. And praise God, many positive ones as well.

You cannot read the Old Testament without realizing the cancerous nature of sin. I'm sorry our brother this morning didn't get to that next chapter, but he referred to it, of the mess that Achan made because sin wasn't dealt with.

Is there some sin in your life, some habit, that needs to be brought under the crucifying power of Jesus Christ tonight? As I mentioned, there's going to be two kinds of invitation at the end of my message.

One is going to be reality, that's the first. I'm going to give you the opportunity to simply stand and recommit your life to Jesus Christ, not missions, to Jesus Christ, to his kingdom and affirm him as absolute Lord of your life.

That's my first burden tonight. And I thank the committee for the freedom to share that burden. The second invitation will be geography because I believe that God is dealing with some of you about geography.

The Great Commission and the Call to World Missions

The Holy Ghost brings a holy go. Acts 1 .8 is there in the Bible just before Jesus ascended into heaven and he said, ye shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth.

I don't think I'll ever forget that prayer meeting last night. I'm to a lot of prayer meetings. They're not always alive, I can tell you. And last night we focused in on some of those countries where the church does not exist.

I wish meetings like this did not only attract the missionary minded. I wish they attracted the people who are not missionary minded because it is men in high places in Britain, it is men in key pastorates in Britain who do not have a vision or concern for world missions that are hindering the spreading of the gospel more than any other factor I know.

We have tried to mass produce men of God in our seminaries and in our institutions and as Tozer said, we have produced mascots instead of prophets. And I yearn, I cry out, and I hope you will cry out with me for revival in the pulpits of Britain.

That once again there would be men and women of unction. Once again there would be fearless men and women who would speak what the word of God says. No matter how hard, no matter how difficult, no matter how many people in the congregation are upset when we step on their materialistic corns or some other little favorite spiritual no-no.

It's interesting how books like the Golden Cow, almost prophetic, written by John White, a Lancashire psychiatrist, are shoved to one side because they're too prophetic and too unpleasant. And instead we start like swine going to the slaughter, gather up these little poison-covered, whatever you want to call them, from places like Texas that tell us that all real spiritual people are going to financially prosper and that if we're really dedicated to Jesus, we can get rid of that beat-up 63 Volkswagen and get ourselves a Mercedes.

I mean, after all, why be a Volkswagen Christian when you can be a Mercedes Christian? Doesn't matter that there's a million souls without food in Ethiopia. Doesn't matter that thousands are dying in starvation in 20 other countries.

We write them off with one wipe of the pen, one little theological cliche explains why they are in that predicament and why God is blessing us. And we confuse nationalism with spirituality and we become drunk on what we think is the new wine, but it's poison.

And we need not only men who are committed to a life in Christ, we need men and women who are committed to sound doctrine, who are committed to what the Bible really teaches. And I know that's not always easy to find.

And the Bible says in the last days, there will be an increase of heretics and false teaching and extremism. Tozer said, if you want to survive this generation, you need to develop a little bit of reverent skepticism.

Thank you, Mr. Tozer. Commitment is many things and we can only, in a sense, touch on it tonight, but I hope we can touch the core. A committed Christian is like a man running in a race. Did you see the London Marathon last year?

It was incredible. 24 ,000 running through the streets of London or 20 ,000, I forget the number, 26 miles, some of them in their 60s, in their 70s. One man was carrying a ladder. Yeah. They asked him, what are you carrying the ladder?

He said, in case I hit the wall. For those of you who don't know running terminology, when you're in long distance running and your body gets tired, you feel that you just can't go and a terrific weakness comes upon the body.

But if you somehow pace yourself, you can go right through that. It's terrific exhilaration after you get through the wall or over the wall. Like me, take out a few bricks and, you know, crawl through.

I have a sense as I minister to the Lord's people that I'm often facing many people who have hit the wall. I was in a Christian union recently ministering on the subject of discouragement. How to have victory over discouragement.

I'd love to speak to you on that. I can't do that, but you write to me and I'll send you the tape. I'm not only a bookworm, but I also am a listen to tapes. But I was in this Christian union. I was feeling rather bold and I said, you know, I feel some of you are discouraged in your Christian life.

At the end, I gave an invitation for people who were discouraged and in despair to stand up. Three-fourths of the Christian union stood up and asked God to fill them with the Holy Ghost and to drive discouragement back into the ground where it belongs.

You know, sometimes it's not the big things that destroy us, you know, big lust trips. You know, I don't think most of you are, your main temptation is tonight go shoot, you know, a couple ounces of heroin.

I don't think you're, you know, your big temptation tonight is, you know, go bust into a local bank and get a big million. That's not the way, by the way, you get money for missions. I thought of it already.

Often the temptations we get in God's race are far more subtle. It's just a temptation to slow down. It's just a temptation to let a little cynicism come in. A little pride to come in. Or just to allow ourself to be discouraged.

I've had so many fistfights with discouragement, I lost count. But I read in the Bible one day, don't let the sun go down upon your anger. That was another one of my top major problems. And I thought if the Bible says don't let your sun go down upon your anger, then don't let it come down upon your discouragement.

And I have been able to practice that most of my Christian life. You determine whether you are discouraged or not. The joy of the Lord is our strength. We are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. And we can claim deliverance and victory over discouragement.

We may not always feel it to the same degree. But we are called to walk by faith and not by sight. Some of you are going to have post-conference blues in a few days. Because you're expecting God to do things in your life that he's probably not going to do as quick as you want.

I have a little message I give to our OM teams. Seven things God won't do for you. These OMers really get upset with me at times. They think I'm stressing balance too much. And I'm not emphasizing the old hard line OM message.

You know, knock them out, kick them down, beat them up. Feed them, you know, fried grass and frog's eyeballs. If they can only realize the first OM conference I ever preached at in the Mexican border many years ago when it was being born.

Every night I spoke in the same thing. The fruit of the Holy Spirit. And if it hadn't been God's emphasis in our hearts on love, on Calvary love, on brokenness, on what Roy Heshin talks about in Calvary Road.

You know, I think we would have become a weird extremist movement. Maybe even as that wild cult once called the children of God. So pernicious, so unbelievable. It seems that Satan has almost two strategies.

Firstly, he tries to keep you from real commitment. And then as you begin to know commitment, as I know some of you do know, and it is an ongoing process. There may be a crisis, but it's followed by a process.

But it seems then the second strategy, when you know something of the spiritual life, you know something of commitment, Satan tries to get you into some cul-de-sac, some extreme. Tozer said that the more zealous Christian was more easily led astray.

And Christian leaders, my brothers and sisters and co-leaders here, that puts a heavy responsibility on us to pray for people here. I've got the names of the few people I've met today. I even took their pictures because I have a poor memory and I am committed to pray for those people.

We need to determine tonight that we're going to go from here and pray for one another. Because Satan is going to counter-attack this conference. And he's going to try some subtle method. And we need to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

A .W. Tozer said the greatest gift needed in the church today is discernment. If we have spiritual blessing and spiritual power and spiritual gifts without discernment, patience, wisdom, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we will convert some of our churches into circuses overnight.

And I fear that. And I don't think I've ever been accused of lack of zeal or lack of desire for wholehearted commitment to Jesus Christ. We're running in a race. There's another scripture you can find if you turn one page in most of your Bibles, the end of chapter 12, where it says, for our God is a consuming fire.

That to me is a picture of a committed Christian. He's a person on fire. Sometimes when we talk about reality in evangelism and reality in witness and reality in prayer and reality in relationships, and we talk about the crucified life, immediately somebody says, don't be super spiritual.

Is that the biggest problem where you come from? Too many overly spiritual people. Let me tell you, you won't do anything for God without some clown telling you you're super spiritual. And if you want to go anywhere for God, if you want to ever end up on the mission field, you must learn to deal with intimidation.

Because there are many men more brilliant than us who are out there who don't believe in missions and don't believe that people are lost and don't believe that this is a sensible place to be for four days over new year.

And some of them are very gifted speakers and they are professionals at intimidating you. We all have our weaknesses. None of us are master communicators. We haven't been through three years of Dale Carnegie how to win friends and influence people.

And as we launch out for Christ, we will make mistakes. We will perhaps look like a fool in some cases. And the enemy has a way of sometimes intimidating us and we just go down under intimidation like one big thud.

I've seen it in Christian union after Christian union in my 22 years of ministering in the CUs that I love so much. You know what the Bible says? God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and of power and a sound mind.

I've had the intimidators banging on my door since the moment of my conversion. 30 years is a long time to bang on one door. And I've learned from them because sometimes I had failed and sometimes I had sinned and I needed to shape up and I needed to get my house in order, but I refused to allow it to discourage me in my prayer, in my evangelism, and in the basics of the Christian life that has been emphasized in this beautiful gospel.

Stand firm. 1 Corinthians 15, 58, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Tozer didn't always appear to be balanced.

Some of his statements are almost, well, it's hard to explain, blunt to say the least. And yet some other things he said brought so much balance. You know what he said once that just, it came to me like a fresh, cool shower in New Delhi in May.

He said, you know, God is easy to live with. You know, one of the great dangers in my life was I was becoming religiously jumpy. I was vaccinated with a sort of perfectionism, not just from what I found after I became a Christian, but even before that.

And I thank God that he is easy to live with. I thank God that he deals with me on the basis of love and forgiveness and mercy. And I tell you without that as a bottom line, so to speak, if you know that term, you can become very neurotic after four days here.

That's right. Because the commitment we're talking about here is a way of life. It's a way of life. I remember a great missionary that came to me, the first medical doctor on the ship Lagos, when we sailed around Africa toward India.

He was 70 years old, a godly man, a medical doctor. There wasn't much to do on the Lagos and the way of medicine. And so I was always finding him washing dishes. Brilliant doctor. And he gave his testimony at 70 years of age.

He came back to Britain shortly after that, went to be with the Lord, but he gave his testimony. In a humble way, he stood before these young people. Many of them are very weak in the faith. There was quite a bit of carnality on that ship in those days, I will tell you.

And he stood up in a humble way and he said, I thank God for so much that I've learned from you young people. And I tell you, some people went, I pray that somehow when I'm 70, I'll still be a learner.

I pray that somehow you and I as disciples of Jesus will never take those L plates off. Never get to that place where we think we have arrived or our group has arrived. I find this coming in Britain these days.

It also scares me. Each group somehow feels they're a little better than the other group. And somehow in order to sell people on our group or to get them to go our way or chew on our spiritual breadcrumbs, we have a subtle way of more or less painting our group or our church stream or our denomination as being just a little bit up, sort of spiritual one upmanship.

Well, let me give you a little information about Operation Mobilization. I think we maybe went through that for a while. May God have mercy on us. But we've discovered the hard way. We're a little bit down, just a little bit down.

And we have failed God in our work many times. And we learned that it's easy to talk. It's easy to pray big prayers even at midnight. But it's not so easy to love your wife for 25 years or 30. It's not so easy to love that brother and sister who gets on your nerves and yet you're assigned to the same mission station with him.

It's not so easy to love that man down the road who you're supposed to be working together with when he has some little doctrinal twitch that doesn't warm your theological battery. And the lack of love among us, the lack of reality and Calvary love and brokenness, it must be at times an abomination to God.

Yet he loves us still. How much more we should love one another. Yes, I believe that the normal Christian life is a life of being on fire for Jesus Christ. That doesn't mean you have to be noisy. I know people get nervous when I speak.

I don't even get invited to quite a few places because too many people get nervous when I speak. And the big fear is that people are going to become like George Verwer. Do you really think this is a big problem around Britain?

I mean, really. Do you think that too much enthusiasm... I realize I'm too enthusiastic and too loud. My wife has been trying to train me in this area for 25 years, almost had a nervous breakdown. But I don't think the greatest problem in your church is too much enthusiasm for Christ.

If it is, well, then write to me. I want to pray for more spiritual balance in your church. Really. A .W. Tozer said to think that the biggest problem in the church of Jesus Christ was too much enthusiasm and zeal and love and passion for souls was like sending a squadron of policemen to a nearby cemetery to guard against a demonstration by the residents at midnight.

Please don't write a book of quotations as someone recently did and say that George Verwer said that. That was A .W. Tozer. I'm just a repeater. People sometimes ask me to recommend my own books. It's ridiculous.

How do you recommend your own books? The only way I do it is tell people that they're loaded with quotations I've taken from other people's books. Amazing enough, I've had 14 ,000 letters from the result of my book, Hunger for Reality.

Spiritual Inventory: Fire, Holiness, and Self-Denial

I want to ask you this question. You know, New Year's Day is a great time to ask questions or to take inventory. This little book, I call it the Weck Book of Lists, is sort of a spiritual inventory. Either way, it has a tremendous chapter on whether you should go to Bible college or not.

And if any of you are thinking about that, there's a leaflet available just outside this auditorium that's just about below every circuit in your head if you have Bible college circuits. It's got most of the Bible colleges of Britain with their addresses, even tells the date they're founded.

Here's one founded in 1892. Can you imagine going there? And it really is something. I hope every one of you will get one. I just finished writing the OM International monthly letter and I've offered it to anybody who writes into me next month because I just got so excited by that leaflet.

Praise God for the increased numbers going to our great Bible colleges. It's not the total answer. God doesn't send everyone through Bible college. He leads different people in different ways. But it's one of God's wings to get a greater knowledge of the Word.

And I don't think we can be effective in missionary work without a knowledge of the Word of God, even if you go as a mechanic or something else in that area. And so I want to take a little spiritual inventory.

I want to ask you, are you on fire for Jesus Christ? It's not noise we're talking about. It's not outward enthusiasm I'm talking about. It's inner reality. It's love. It's knowing God. It's experiencing Christ and his presence.