Vision, Grace, Mission — George Verwer

Vision, Grace, Mission — George Verwer

Good morning. My name is Bartley Phillips. I counted the great honor and privilege as an ex-OMer and friend to introduce George Verver to you today. George, Operation Mobilization and my time with them in Turkey have been one of the biggest influences in my life to make me the kind of Christian I am today.

And I say kind of Christian deliberately because if any of you know an OMer or ex-OMer, we're a pretty unique lot. And we have George Verver to thank. And I really mean that. Thank you, George. And thank you for coming today to share with us what God has been speaking to you from his word.

Had the privilege of seeing, I always carry my globe with me. My helper blows up the world before each meeting. I hope you can meet him at the book table. He's the first person with this job of my personal travel assistant.

It's a one-year, very intensive program. Sixty men have been in it, every one of them going on for Jesus. A number of Canadians like Nigel Barham. And this is the first one that was reared on OM. He was reared on the ship.

His father was the chief engineer. So be sure to see Paul Alva. We live together. He lives across the lane from my wife and I in London, England. And we have a fantastic book table. We especially have free books.

Giving Away Christian Books

And especially for mothers, we'd like every mother to take at least five books as a gift. Fathers can only have three books. So that's the reason that's eight between you. But seriously, we've moved from just selling books, which is so slow, making change and all that.

So just giving away books gave away 200 ,000 last year, a lot of them in India. Even though we on our ship Logos Hope and many Canadians have been involved in the ship ministry. Of course, we sell books.

In fact, that helps finance the whole ministry. So it's a very special Sunday, not just for mothers, but for books. And two books especially that are tied into my message this morning are just republished and updated.

True Grit, the most significant book in my life in this decade has completely changed the way I think, the way I spend at least part of the money that I'm involved in raising and so many other aspects of my life.

Because it's so big, a little expensive to give away. We took sort of the meat out of it this summer, an abridged edition called S .O .S. Save Our Sisters. And this is all about mothers, but it's also about single women.

And I just feel it's the book of the morning. So I think one of them's free, the other may be. There are books we don't have a lot of, and they're available for a donation, but we don't want donations for the free books.

My own books there, they're all free. You know, they were sold well anyway. So we hope you'll take advantage of them. We have just an amazing range of books that we just love you to take. Even if you don't read them, give them away to others.

We even give you a plastic bag so you have no excuse for not taking quite a few books. And if there's none left for the next service, you know, we're happy to live with that. But Calvary Road, Christian classic, 80 languages.

How many of you have already read Calvary Road? Few of you. I was going to say, if you don't get blessed from it, I'll give you your money back. But if it's free, that gets a little complicated. Grace Awakening, the top 10 books in my life by Charles Swindoll.

How many of you have read that? It's got some similarities. I'm actually only here because of books at university. The students all around me biblical Christianity and they had their reasons. My Bible teacher was gifted at destroying your faith that the Bible was the word of God.

But it was books written by Christian scholars gave me the other side of the picture that saved me from agnosticism and maybe even worse. Maybe my problem was greater than others as my grandfather was an atheist.

I wasn't from a believing family. And so maybe I had that in my DNA. I don't know. But I thank God for books. I had a lot of intellectual struggles all of my Christian life. And again and again, books.

I see us Lewis by so many great writers. Even recently, one of the number one atheists in Britain, Anthony Flew, almost equal to Dawkins in attacking those who believe in God. And some years before he died, he completely changed his mind through research and wrote that brilliant book.

I was wrong and acknowledged the existence of God. You know, if a hardball atheist and imagine the complexity with all of it, atheist friends, Dawkins wrote him off as going senile when he came out with this and that book really upset the atheist world in Britain.

If a hardball atheist through research comes to the conclusion there is a God, how much more of course characters like me. So please do pick up some of these great books, including some of the books by Randy Alcorn, like the Treasure Principle, which has revolutionized the giving of a lot of people across North America and to some degree as it's going in many languages around the world.

Ten Mothers and the Speaker's Message

I know you expected me to talk about missions, right? George Verwer, missions. But I'm here to talk about mothers. Ten mothers, ten mothers in my life. And I hope you will, even if you're a single or you're a man, not a mother, that you will receive this message because it's very much burning on my heart.

I shared a similar message in Singapore many years ago in a big Methodist Church. I suddenly discovered last minute in Singapore it was Mother's Day. That was not in my message and I just sensed an anointing from the Lord to talk about mothers in my life who have been such an influence.

And God just somehow used that message in a powerful way. I had a similar experience in a huge church in Memphis, Tennessee, when last minute I discovered it was Father's Day. And I shared this message, the confessions of a weak, struggling, needy father that by internet has gone all over the world.

So I sense this is the message for this morning and it will include something about missions. But I hope more than anything else it'll be an encouragement to all of us of what God is doing. I was reading especially in Luke about the first mother that I want to mention to you, the mother of the Lord Jesus himself.

Mary, the Mother of Jesus

It's interesting how among people who sometimes think of themselves as Protestants, prefer not to use that word myself, how they so seldom speak about Mary, the mother of Jesus. We've had a number of scriptures, so I'm not going to take time to read that scripture, but Jesus, but the angel came to Mary and promised that she would have a son.

And she was favored, used the word favored. What an amazing woman, Mary, Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, who though he was God, was now a human being to live like all of us. And the very fact that the scriptures put an emphasis on her and share about her is just a reminder of the beauty and the importance of motherhood.

The Speaker's Mother and Family Faith

The second mother I want to talk to you about is my own mom. I don't talk about her very much. She went, it was, I was on the way to Vancouver when I got a phone call traveling in the motor home of a friend of mine that my mother at 79 years of age went to be with Jesus.

She had a rough life. Her father was an alcoholic. He was Scottish, Irish, and English blood combined. That's basically toxic. He was an alcoholic. My my grandmother, who I got to know quite well, my grandmother divorced him.

I only saw my grandfather a couple times in my life, and the final time he was dying of alcoholism at a young age. My mother, I think, in many ways was a seeker. She had some of that Methodist religion in her, but because of the dysfunction, somehow it didn't came, it didn't seem to be bringing her to personal faith in Jesus.

And I had the joy of being involved later on after my own conversion, which I'll touch about in a moment, of seeing my mother come through to strong faith in Jesus. This movement that now is quite widely known, it originally Send the Light, then Operation Mobilization, then OM Ships, and Dollar Freedom Network, and more than I can take time to talk about.

This amazing woman, my mother, ran the entire office for six years. Our work was mainly European-based. I wasn't planning to really do much in the United States or Canada. I was living in Spain, and I was living in Britain, soon ended up in India.

But people in the United States were interested. They were joining. They were giving their money. And so my mother, who was a trained professional secretary, ran that first office. And one of the greatest joys of my life was to get to know my mother better, to for the first time ever really pray together with her, and then to have her and my dad join Operation Mobilization and the ship ministry.

He was a gifted electrician. As a younger guy, I don't think he ever dreamed of anything like this. He was from the Netherlands. His grandfather, his father, was an atheist. And I'll share about my dad maybe later.

But they came and they worked on Lagos, our first ship, 44 years ago there in the Netherlands. And they sailed with a ship, I think, as far as Las Palmas. All of us, even if we've had difficult times in our families, which are quite normal, we owe a lot to our mothers.

And seldom do I have the opportunity publicly to acknowledge thanks for my mother. Her name was Eleanor. The third mother I want to talk about, perhaps, is the most important. It's the praying mother.

The Praying Mother and Personal Conversion

The praying mother. Now, just talking about this, I know it's gonna convict some of you because you know you are a mother, but you're not a praying mother. I wonder if you'd be willing to change that.

I wonder if you'd be willing to change that. Let me tell you why that's so important to me. I was living my own selfish life at 16. I had never, no unhappy days in my childhood. So why do I need Jesus?

I had my own business by then, Bergen County Sales Company was selling a red-hot fire extinguisher, about to move into the first seat belts ever made, and fire alarms, and had 200 people signed up working for me part-time across the country.

I was now being elected president of the Student Council. I got the God and Country Award from the Boy Scout movement. I was now being elected Mr. Ramsey High School. Everybody was talking about me, writing about me.

I was on my 32nd girlfriend. Why did I need Jesus? But a praying mother came into my life. That can make a big difference. It can be a praying father, and I'm sure this lady's husband was also praying for me.

Mrs. Dorothea Clamp, now in glory, heard about me. I'd broken into a house and got caught by the police. I wasn't really stealing, I was just looking around. But the police, you know, they had their guns out, they had other ideas.

And so people were talking about me even more, and this lady put my name on her Holy Ghost hit list. She's a serious woman. And I know, just looking at some of you women here, you look pretty serious, some of you.

Either that or maybe you didn't get enough sleep. But she put my name on her Holy Ghost hit list, and she not only prayed that I would become a Christian, a believer in Jesus, she prayed that I would become a missionary.

Global missions owe so much to praying mothers, and of course praying single women, and praying fathers. And I thank the Lord for Dorothea Clamp, and I honor her in this meeting this morning. And I pray, thank the Lord that she persevered in her praying.

Every year I sort of got worse, and she sent me a Gospel of John. She was not only a woman of prayer, she was a woman of action. You know, C .S. Lewis said, we have the tendency to think but not to act.

We have the tendency to feel and not to act. And he said something that went through me like an arrow. If we keep thinking and feeling without acting, someday we will be unable to act. I was speaking to a pastor in a church in Georgia years ago, a conversation that I'll never forget.

Because we believe the Gospel and the power of Jesus, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, changes people. It changes people. They become loving. They become different. They start behaving in a godly way.

But you know, if people are just reared in Christianity and Christian jargon, where it's expected to be born again, it's expected to be baptized, not just by the church but by the culture, by your friends, by your neighbors, as it has been in places like Georgia.

Then somehow, it's easy just to get stuck and not really change. I asked this pastor, he'd been pouring out, he seemed like a good man, been pouring out his heart to this congregation for 20 years. I said, pastor, have you seen a lot of your people really change?

He just looked at me dumbfounded. I've never seen anybody in my church change. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. I try to believe the best when these kind of statements are made. But I will tell you, if I hadn't changed when I believed in Jesus through the prayers of this woman, I would have every right to question whether I had really met with Jesus or not.

Yes, God heard her prayers. She sent me this Gospel of John at the same time. Pornography in a small way was trying to captivate me. I found that mind-bending experience when I first found a big pile of it when I was babysitting in somebody's house.

And at that same time, she just kept praying. Other people on my street, a few other believers started praying. And then in God's providence, his servant, Billy Graham, came to New York City, March 3rd, 1955.

Nepal, Relief, and Evangelistic Harvest

I just celebrated my 60th birthday in Kathmandu, Nepal, with a hundred friends. Little did we know what that country was headed for. And I would urge you to pray for Nepal in this time of tremendous suffering, with over 10 ,000 dead, with hundreds of thousands suffering.

We have a lot of people in Nepal. Our new building, fortunately, remained intact. And now all of our people are involved in relief and helping those who have suffered. This can be brought into balance by the simple fact that one of the greatest church growth nations in the world is Nepal.

When Dreena and I, my wife and I, lived there back around 1969, 68, 70. My own son, who's here, lived in Nepal. We only had a couple thousand believers in the nation. Now there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

And we believe somehow in the mystery of all of this that's happening, we believe there's going to be a greater harvest of Nepalis to the Lord Jesus. Though we reach out in our relief and in our rescue and our help work, no matter what, no matter what the response is, I need a lot of wisdom, a lot of wisdom in that.

Billy Graham's Gospel Invitation and Project Hope

So they prayed me into this Billy Graham meeting in New York City. I was a bit skeptical. I heard he might even be a hypnotist. This was not my scene. I sat as far away as I could. Madison Square Garden, 20 ,000 people there.

I've watched him with my binoculars. Of course, I had this gal with me that I was bananas about. And the whole thing was just a very strange experience. But he preached the gospel. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

And when he gave that invitation to repent and believe, somehow I went forward and was born of God's spirit. I was just listening to that on audio. He must be born again from John chapter 3. I thank the Lord for the faithfulness of Billy Graham.

I had the privilege actually with my son, Ben, a year and a half ago, visiting him there in his home. He's very ill, 96 years of age. They've released this new dynamic evangelistic video in which he shares from his home as an elderly person.

Then it's mixed with his ministry when he's younger. And then two dynamic testimonies. You can Google the Billy Graham Organization and watch that powerful video. When it was first released on television in the States, a hundred thousand professed faith.

It's called the cross. And now there are two other videos that are being released by the Billy Graham Organization. The truth is that Billy Graham Organization and their team around the world are seeing more people coming to Jesus using all kinds of videos in their Project Hope program than they ever saw come to Jesus in the stadiums, which was my case.

Isn't that amazing? What can God can do in the second and the third generation as both Franklin and Will Graham are out doing evangelistic ministry? They just had a harvest in Barcelona. I got an email about it this morning.

So just to be able to share about my spiritual mother who prayed me into the kingdom is a great privilege. And I want to encourage every woman here who's a praying woman that this is one of the greatest ministries.

Prayer as a Ministry for Mothers

Often women are in their homes doing all kinds of routine things. Other times, of course, women are out in the professional in the business world. It's all fantastic as far as I'm concerned. But sometimes, sometimes they have situations where they can pray and do their work at the same time.

In fact, I do that. I love to do two things at the same time. Well, that's not really the truth. I prefer, you know, three and four things at the same time. I thank God for praying mothers. And if you're not in that category, one Mother's Day, be a good time for you to take a step of faith.

Doesn't have to be a big leap. Maybe just 15 or 20 minutes a day praying for missionaries, praying for global situations, praying for women that are suffering. This lists more than 15 ways that women are suffering across the world.

I never, I always knew women were suffering. I've lived in many of these countries, but until I read this book, I just realized how, how horrendous the whole thing was. And then the next mother I want to share about, of course, is the missionary mother.

The Missionary Mother and Marriage

That includes my own wife. Missionary mother. It's a miracle that the two of us ever got together. And it was only after the marriage, we discovered we were so completely different. I don't know if any of you have that experience.

Ours is called a Bible college marriage. After I became a Christian, I have so much problem with girls. You know, I met a Christian said you couldn't kiss girls anymore. I mean, that's the main, one of the main things I did since I was like 11.

And then another Christian I met said, well, you can't dance anymore. You know, Billy Graham didn't say anything about this when he preached and got me to believe in Jesus. And so I had a lot of struggles.

I would lead a girl to Christ and then kiss her for the next hour. And that's not, it's not really in the follow-up books. And so finally, after a couple of complex situations with different girls, I went on cold turkey, no more kissing, no more dating.

That's when I went to Mexico. That's when I learned Spanish. That's when this work was born. And that's, and because of that, I left university studies, transferred to Moody Bible Institute. What an experience that was.

Suddenly hundreds and hundreds of Christian girls. It was overwhelming. I was infatuated with about seven girls in the, I think in the first 10 days crying out for mercy. How do you determine God's will?

Which one? And so I didn't do anything. Just kept, you know, studying and evangelizing and praying and getting ready to go back to Mexico. But because of my passion for evangelism, I wanted to get an evangelistic film and show it in the YMCA where I was living.

That's the day that changed my life completely. As I went to the seventh or eighth floor at Moody, where the film department was, and saw this, this woman sitting there in charge of the films. I broke my fast and moved in on the target.

Said something completely stupid. For her, for me, it was love at first sight. For her, it was fright at first sight. Then I got her on a date. This is absolute truth. I'm not saying this to be dramatic.

I'm just trying to share the truth. I mean, this is a church, right? And on the first date I said, well, probably nothing going to happen between you and me, but you need to know I'm going to be a missionary.

I'm going to be a missionary. If you marry me, hint, hint, if you marry me, first date, probably you will be eaten alive by cannibals in New Guinea. Really, is that the way to win a woman's heart? She was not in love, but I mobilized my prayer forces and God began to break her heart.

She began to think that I was a man of God. She wanted to marry a man of God. She loved Jesus. Then I think she heard me preach or teach and she thought I, you know, that I knew the Word of God and I could teach.

She sort of spiritually had me up here. I'm sorry to say I took advantage of that. Yeah, I gave her that key verse from Ephesians. This was very important. Submit unto your husband as unto the Lord. It's a key verse, right men?

But this is Mother's Day. Anyway, we ended up getting married and going to Mexico. I didn't believe in spending money, didn't believe in honeymoons. Everything is evangelized, the world. She didn't realize what she got into, of course, and she just kept doing whatever I told her.

And praise God, we had a tremendous marriage for several weeks. Then she began to read other verses. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. That has been a challenge to me all of my life.

So I thank the Lord for this wonderful mother, my wife. Her name is Dreena. We just celebrated 55 years, not just of marriage, but of total faithfulness to one another because of God's mercy, because of God's grace.

Radical Grace and Second Chances in Ministry

Missionary mothers, missionary mothers. I met them by the hundreds all over the world. We always hear of so many marriages breaking. It might interest you to know we were the first mission agency to recruit divorced people.

We believe God gives people second chance, third chance. Plan B can be just as great as Plan A because God is God and he is sovereign. And because of the powerful message brought so beautifully forward in one of my favorite books, Grace Awakening, that I sometimes refer to as radical grace.

It's actually the theme of my own book, Out of the Comfort Zone. I didn't choose that title. I believe this book makes people actually feel comfortable. If they're radically committed to Jesus and they're evangelizing the world and they're women of prayer and they're not playing games, they're going to be comforted as they read my book because it's about grace.

And it's about the need to extend forgiveness and big heartedness to one another, especially on the mission field. Looking back at 57 years in our own movement, 200 ,000 people have served with Operation Mobilization.

We, who had this radical grace view concerning divorce, have actually had very little divorce at all among our longer term people. Is that not a testimony to the transformational grace of Jesus? I could also easily write a book on how I've seen divorced people used of God.

And I'd love to just honor any mothers here who are no longer with the father because of divorce. God can use you. I have a brilliant book I'd be happy to send you called Growing Through Divorce. I meet people who their lives are so messed up.

They're not on Plan H. They're not on Plan A, B, or C. They're on Plan H, huh? You know what I say to those people? Praise God for a big alphabet. Press on in the grace that's in the Lord Jesus. Praise be to the living God for missionary mothers that have helped bring the greatest harvest of people to Jesus the world has ever known.

The Global Harvest and the Church's Mission

I don't know why increasing numbers of people, especially south of the border here, are so negative these days. Oh, they're focusing on the government. They're focusing on economics. They're focusing on this, focusing on that.

There's a place for all of that. This is the greatest period in history of people coming to Jesus. Is that not important? Even in North America, this is in many ways the greatest period of the church.

Have you studied the history of the church? Do you know what liberalism did? Liberal theology did here in the 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s. We're still living with the aftermath of that. And then in the 60s and 70s and 80s, the biggest wave of evangelical and biblical Christian faith was born and has spread to literally tens of millions of people.

There's a great difference between someone who has a name, Christian, and someone who knows Jesus personally. Ours isn't about religion. It's about relationship. And today, more people in North America, including Canada, have a relationship with Jesus than ever before in history.

And yet, that's small compared to Africa, Latin America, China, and many other places that I've had the privilege of going to. This is harvest time. And one of the reasons is praying mothers, missionary mothers, godly mothers, who have somehow stayed in the race.

This, to me, is a great encouragement in my own faith and also in my own prayer ministry. But then I want to speak about a very special mother. It may be a little new to you. I call her the Dalit mother.

The Dalit Mother and Ministry in India

She lives probably in India. She is part of a movement that's considered untouchable. Some of you probably know Ted Hilton goes to this church. One of the strongest supporters of our work in the world.

We had supper together last night. He is the founder or co-founder of the Dalit Freedom Network. I hope you know about that. It's incredible growth. Over 200 million in India, 200 million, are trapped into this form of slavery called untouchability.

Joseph de Souza has written a book about it. I'm not sure if it's on our table. We can easily get it to you. There's not time to go into detail. Somehow we were able to deal with slavery, and then we dealt with segregation, and then we dealt with apartheid.

But we've not yet dealt with untouchability. There's been some progress. And we would ask you to pray for our work among the Dalits in India. And think especially today of the Dalit mothers. Many of them have been raped because there's no justice for raping a Dalit woman.

It's all, of course, kept very quiet. I might just insert that has changed in India in the last year as women are beginning to move. And it's really even brought change in legislation. And we hope that that will continue.

Pray for India. 1 .3 billion people. I guess next to China, the greatest population of mothers in the world. Next to the Dalits, we have 300 million, maybe more, who are considered OBC, other backward castes or tribal people.

They are all discriminated against. And we believe this is the hour for India. My wife and I have the privilege of living in India and helping start the work there together with people like Greg Livingstone and others who you may have heard of.

And as we look now at the work in India, some 3 ,000 churches, 110 or 11 different schools, all kinds of ministries, especially for Dalit women. We have a lot to thank the Lord for. But we have a long way to go.

And we need more people and more churches. Thousands already are of churches, hundreds of thousands of individuals. But we need more who will stand with us in that ministry. And then the next mother I want to just talk about for a moment is the reluctant mother.

The Reluctant Mother, Abortion, and Compassion

Who's that? The reluctant mother. She's pregnant. She doesn't want a baby. Life has not been good. She's scared. And so she has that decision what to do. There might be someone here or listening to this CD that's in that situation.

And I want to say above all else, God loves you. He knows your struggle. He knows your heart. Biggest change in my life was 11 or 12 years ago. And our whole movement, we're still feeling the earthquake of it, when we took on this marriage of social action and social concern and married it with our existing strategy, church planting, evangelism, training, everything you can think of on that side of things.

That's up to 11 years and 12 years ago. That's that's all the owners would know about. We weren't against those other things. We just felt other people do that. And we realized theologically from studying the word of God, from listening to people like John Stott and Samuel Escobar and the Lausanne Congress, we realized we had to bring this marriage.

This is the biggest change in our movement and in my personal life, actually, because I was already quite old at that time. And I had already announced that I'm planning to step down from all leadership.

People thought I would never change. And they weren't they weren't unhappy about that. But God changed me. And I just I'm still living with the consequences as I'm now in the busiest period of my whole life.

And things I used to do because I had free time, I no longer do them. I never watch a film on an airplane anymore because my laptop is in front of me and loaded with email. And I fortunately in high school learned how to speed touch type, which really helps me.

And what I'm trying to do, coordinate projects in 100 nations of the world, raise millions of dollars and help other people spend it to help people in their physical suffering. This has changed the course of my life.

And one of the areas that has changed is my attitude toward the reluctant mother. And so I studied about these women and especially those that had abortion. And my heart always went out to them. And so I got involved with Randy Alcorn publishing this book in languages that aren't the major languages about 10 languages that are spoken by 80 percent.

It's just a rough estimate. But I'm involved in those other languages. Those people are important. And through an answer to prayer, this special projects, a small part of OM that I'm director of, has become one of the largest distributors of pro-life material in those languages in the world.

You know why? Very little competition. You cannot imagine the ignorance about even the possible option of adoption. And I just hope you will reach out to the reluctant mothers and you will reach out to anyone who, you know, has gone through abortion.

Thousands of women who have gone through abortion are turning to Jesus, especially in North America. Their stories are now being told. I have a DVD called Silent No More, in which for the first time ever, women are sharing about their abortion experience.

People who are in favor of abortion have said it's going too far. People who are against abortion many times aren't saying anything. I was one of them. The biggest, dumbest mistake in my life. And now I have the privilege of saving unborn.

Because when they read this book, or they get the video, or they have contact with us, they decide to have their baby and give it up for adoption. And of course, there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of parents that are trying to adopt, often getting into illegal, fraud-ridden adoption situations in which they spend for a small fortune to get a baby.

I honor the reluctant mothers. I honor those that somehow went ahead and have the baby in fear and trembling and all that means. Some of you have seen some of the films about that. But I honor those who have aborted.

I believe part of that is the awesome sinfulness of our society and what they put, especially women, through years ago if suddenly they were found pregnant. The way single women were treated who were suddenly found pregnant, even by the church, is also a great sin.

And all of us, as we walk with Jesus, should walk with greater humility and be more careful what we say in terms of things that are judgmental and pharisaical and hurtful against people who have specific situations in which supposedly, even according to our culture, they have done the wrong thing.

Yes, we honor the reluctant mothers this morning, and we know that covers a wide range of challenges. Of course, I felt also I should just say a word about grandmothers. How can we have a Mother's Day and not think about the grandmothers?

Honoring Grandmothers and Older People

How many of you are grandmothers? Raise your hand. Come on, raise your hand. Amen. There's usually a grandfather involved somewhere as well. My wife and I have five grandchildren. My son, who has three of them, is sitting over here, and in September, he's, according to Facebook, he's gonna become also a grandfather.

I tell you, when your own son becomes a grandfather, you know you're over the hill. But hey, I'm not over the hill. I'll let you know. I've not even got to the top yet. Tony Kampala says, grandchildren is God's prize to you for not killing your own kids.

That was an in-depth statement. So we celebrate, especially we celebrate perseverance. Grandmothers have persevered through the single years, through the married years, through being married without children, being married with children, and then being a grandmother.

And I believe it's biblical. We honor older people. And I've learned a lot from my Asian brothers and sisters, as I'm often in Asia, I leave for Asia in a week or two, as they seem to be more gifted at honoring their parents and honoring older people.

And I can tell you, this area of British Columbia, with this great influx of Asians, it's a tremendous part of the world. We can learn from each other. We can grow together as we see society change, and as we deal with our own prejudices and our own biases by the grace of God.

And then the last mother that I want to share about is the abused mother, and urge you to especially read this particular book. We think of domestic violence. Do you know how much domestic violence has gone on in the church in the last, well, like 2 ,000 years?

It happens. And in years gone by, it was always covered up. It was always covered up. Now it gets exposed. And some Christian leaders right now are in prison. Some pastors are in prison because of violence or sexual abuse of one kind or the other.

But in some parts of the world, it's an epidemic. In some areas of the world right now, rape is an epidemic. Brothers and sisters, we need to do something for the women of the world. We need to save our sisters.