Unsearchable Things — George Verwer

The Unsearchable Wisdom and Mercy of God

I want to read two passages of Scripture this evening, perhaps two passages that you've never had combined before in a Bible reading. Romans 11 and Hebrews 11. I remember at Bible college having Old Testament books linked with New Testament books, but I think my linking together of these two passages may at least seem a little bit far-fetched.

But let us read them, including the first two verses of Romans 12, starting at verse 33. Speaks about the mercy of God in verse 32, and then says, O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!

How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways are past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again.

For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And then Hebrews chapter 11. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

For by it the elders received witness. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh.

By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him. For before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

And then it talks about the faith of Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses. And we get to verse 32. We've spoken of people who have experienced great deliverance, great exploits of faith.

We read about a few more and then there's a sudden change. Try to catch it. What shall I more say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Barak, Samson of Japhthah, David also, and Samuel and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in fight and turned to flight the armies of the aliens or the enemies.

Women received their dead, raised to life again, but others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment.

They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tested and slain with a sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy.

They wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and in caves of the earth. In these all having received witness through faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

Let us pray and let us include prayer once again for the brother I told you about, O Emmer, who's on loan to our relief work among Afghan refugees, John Tarswell. I spoke to Pakistan just a few hours ago.

It's over a week now, there's still no sign whatsoever of this brother or his whereabouts. Keeping in mind both of those passages, let us pray. Our Father, we do thank you for these great passages of your word.

In a sense, we could sit down and go home because they are already such a strong message to our hearts. We do reach out in prayer to those who are suffering, to those who are being martyred for the cause of world evangelism or for their own fate, to people in prison in China, in Nepal, in other nations of the world, to people being harassed, persecuted.

We pray for our friend John Tarswell. We know not whether he is alive or dead. It is a mystery for us, but on the basis of these scriptures, we lift our hearts and give this whole situation to you, his dear wife and family back in Canada.

And we ask that through this, whether it's life or death, that glory may come and that it may be used as the forward step for the planning of your church among the Afghan people, who are one of the most unreached people's groups in the entire world.

Speak to us now in this final meeting of this anniversary weekend, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. It was so encouraged to see some of you taking notes last night and at least writing down those six words.

For those of you who weren't there, we emphasize as part of our anniversary celebration, thanksgiving, vision, action, discipline, love, and forgiveness. And we believe that this ministry over these hundred years has incorporated those great biblical mega-principles into what has taken place here.

We know it has not been all victory. I was really wrestling with what to share tonight. I always have too many messages and too many burdens. I'm sure I can drive people around the bend by talking too much and sharing too many visions, especially about Operation Mobilization.

The Urgency of World Evangelism

I hope some of you will become serious about world missions. In ministering up and down Britain now for almost 28 years, I would say there's certainly not more than 5 of British Christians who in any way could consider themselves serious.

About world missions, I've not even met many pastors. A lot of my ministry is to Christian leaders, seminars. We've had the privilege of ministering to tens of thousands of Christian leaders. Many of them have recommitted their lives in those meetings.

I guess I've ministered in at least 200 Bible colleges and theological colleges this week again in the south of England, an hour or two with the students and then an hour with the staff. But even only a small percentage of Christian leaders have a vision for world missions, as we would see it, for example, burning in the heart of the Apostle Paul.

It's an uphill battle for anybody that commits himself to world evangelism, even though we have so clearly those words from the Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then the Acts before he ascended, ye shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth.

How can it be that perhaps 30 to 40 of all the people on planet earth have still not had the gospel even for the first time? They know about Coca-Cola. They know about some of these famous television programs.

I was sitting in a cafe in Adana, Turkey, where I'd visit the graveside of one of our men who was martyred there, and they were watching Dallas on the cafe television. I remember in India when America first sent someone in outer space, put a man on the moon.

I think I was in India, may have been somewhere else, but I thought of the fact the whole world almost immediately knows that America put a man on the moon, but they don't know that God, the living God, the creator of the universe, put his son on the earth.

It's really quite awesome. There's a lot I would like to say about world evangelism, about the ministry of OM, but I don't feel that's God's direction for this anniversary of your own ministry. I may be able to sneak a few things in, but I want to share with you six other mega words.

Words are so important to me. The word, for example, the word integrity. Just saying that word means so much to me. I could speak for probably 24 hours non-stop if God would grant me the voice on the subject of integrity.

The word is so powerful. It covers everything we can think of in ethics, in theology, in church life, in home life, integrity. It's a great word. Study it. Look it up in the dictionary. I want to share six words that I believe we should keep in mind as we go into the next 10 years, the next 30 years, the next 100 years.

We don't know what lies ahead. There's a lot of talk about the year 2000. It's great. A lot of it is just hep or hype. God can use it. Americans, we're especially into that. We say all kinds of things we don't really believe will actually ever happen.

It's just to make you feel good and get people excited and revved up. The amazing thing, some of the things they say actually come to pass. That's always embarrassing to the English who are known throughout the world for being basically very small-minded people.

Did you know that? Yes, Americans are always criticized over here because they're big mouths and they're bad television and they're in trouble and they're now 45 years in prison. The main thing we talk about now is Jimmy Baker.

It's true. Americans are big mouths and they're big thinkers and a lot of it never happens and, oh, I hope some of that television never comes here. But what would you prefer to have a reputation? As being big thinkers and trying too much and speaking too much or as being small-minded?

Small-minded Englishmen. I'm debating whether to become a British citizen. I now can become. All I have to do is fill out the forms. I felt I couldn't do this when my mother was alive. I mentioned it once to her and I thought she was going to hit me.

True flag-carrying American. Also, my wife's stepfather was very anti-British and totally against Jesus Christ and the gospel. We prayed for him for over 30 years. I even took up golf in order to get to know him better.

It's the only thing we had in common. I used to get these people on the golf cart with him. Americans like to ride around their golf courses. There's such traffic jams they have to do that. And I used to get people on the golf cart with him that had powerful testimonies.

And this year, that man surrendered his life to Jesus Christ. Don't ever give up praying for the person you love, no matter how hard. He persecuted my wife. He persecuted his wife. He spoke against Christ, against the church, all kinds of things.

About January 1st, in a big Bible-preaching Southern Baptist church in Orlando, Florida, he was baptized and became a follower of Jesus Christ. He's now sending me tapes from his church. My father-in-law, amazing.

Don't give up. Keep on praying. We know, of course, there are many, many English people, British people with a big vision. Last weekend, I was in Northern Ireland. There are certainly some people there with a big vision.

I was with the most unusual man. Monday night prayer meeting, 800 were out to pray. That's a real church. They might almost be able to claim a New Testament church. They're going to throw up a 3 ,000-seat auditorium.

What God was doing there is quite amazing. Six more words. Do you think you can handle six more words? Are you going to take your notebooks out or your church bulletins? You don't have church bulletins here, do you, Ken?

Well, whatever. I gave some notes to Tom on the train the other day. He wrote them on his hand. The first word that I want to give to you for this next hundred years, probably the Lord will return before then.

We might not even get out of the auditorium tonight. The first word is the word mercy. Mercy. Isn't that one of your favorite words? God's mercy. That's why I'm still here. People say, how are you still going so many years?

I often meet people who met me 25 years ago and they say, well, I didn't expect you to keep going. 25 years ago, when I first came to Britain, I looked like a natural burnout case. People wrote to me, slow down, be careful.

So many exhortations. You're going to have a nervous breakdown. I never have had a nervous breakdown. I discovered through study, a little bit of psychology, I'm not the type. I'm more the kind of person that gives other people nervous breakdowns.

You have somebody clapping. God's mercy is the reason I'm still running the race. God's mercy is the reason that OM has gone from strength to strength in the midst of much failure and now has 1 ,800 full-time workers, many of them career missionaries across the world.

In fact, our personnel department recently gave me the statistics that 600 of the present OMers are long-term, many of them lifetime people. Mercy is the key to what God wants to do in the months and years to come.

We can never take credit for what's being done. How sad it is when man gets in the way of what God wants to do. I don't like some of these meetings where we praise people and we give out awards. I've tried to be more balanced, but I find it a struggle.

It seems to me that all the awards should be given to God, but I guess he understands. He has a sense of humor when we pat one another on the back on occasion and we have television programs in the States and we bring our Christian leaders onto the program in Christian television, some of which makes me sick, and we say, this is your life.

This is your life. We're telling all these wonderful things about this character. The fact is that most of us who ever accomplish anything, it's because of a team of people. And the team often, we don't even know who they are.

And often in our culture, our more chauvinistic society, the women are left out. The men get these great awards and the women have done all the work. And it helped this guy stay propped up even when he was falling on his nose.

Half the people there couldn't even tell you what her name is. The mercy of God. And that passage we read, that neglected passage at the end of Romans chapter 11, is what we need more of today. My favorite author is perhaps A .W. Tozer, competes only with Dr. Lloyd-Jones and a few other characters I've mentioned to you over the years when I've come here.

Tozer, J .I. Packer, Dr. Lloyd-Jones, Andrew Murray, F .B. Myers, Alan Redpath, many other men that I can think of, emphasize the need to know God. There's always a danger, especially in a movement like ours, and I'm sure in a church like yours, that we get caught up in church activities.

Church activities. We're running from one activity to the other. And we gauge the church on how full the church calendar is, and how many activities we go to, and how many meetings we go to. And we don't want to swing the pendulum, because God uses meetings.

We don't want people who are sitting around doing nothing. But we need to make sure that we're getting time with God, that we're getting to know God. We're understanding His attributes through a lot of time in His Word.

A week ago when I was with this man of God who started this church in Ulster, in Belfast, I couldn't believe the parallels. The age of that church, which started with ten praying men, was the same age as Operation Mobilization.

Part of the vision that God gave him for that work was in a mountain outside of Belfast. I remember when I first came to Britain, God took me to Belfast. I went, as I often did, into the mountains for a day of prayer, and I was in that mountain outside of Belfast for a day of prayer, trying to figure out what God was trying to do in our small ministry and in my life.

It started to rain, and I went into that cave in that mountain, and God met me there. I looked some time ago at a memo I wrote urging OM to take great steps of faith, but it came from that experience in the mountains outside of Belfast.

There was a strange experience when I went to that church on Monday night. This man and I had never met. I wasn't even sure he wanted me there. Often pastors don't want me in their churches. I get in there through the missionaries committee from some little person who wants George Furwer in the church, and the pastor reluctantly, frightened to death, lets me in.

You ever heard Tony Sargent's testimony about OM? Tony Sargent's five times more convinced about OM than I am. Tony had heard about me and was determined that I would not get in Worthing Tabernacle, one of the biggest churches in the South Coast, but one little prayer partner, one little OM prayer partner kept Adam.

She was a real talker, and in God's sovereignty, in God's mercy, when my wife had major surgery, she had to go to Worthing to one of these convalescent homes to recover, and the head of the convalescent home also went to that church.

Dear Tony Sargent, according to his own story, didn't really have much more ground, and he opened the door for me to share, I guess at a prayer meeting, and we became two close intimate partners in God's work.

I know of no church in Britain that has done more for OM than that one church. Tony himself has ministered over 15 or 20 times in India on the ships, and OM fields. In fact, last time he went to visit the ship in Amsterdam, he took 20 men out of his church to go scrape paint and work on the ship, and as I met that man in Ulster just about a week ago with such totally different ministries, quite different also in theology and background, I wondered what he thought about my being there.

There was immediate warmth, great Irish love and hospitality, and he's given me a carte de blanche to come and minister at any time to his congregation of many thousands of people. Why do I share that?

Mercy Beyond Denominations

Because I believe God's mercy is greater than our particular doctrinal emphasis. I've never had anyone attack my rather conservative doctrinal position. In fact, I just spoke again eight messages at my own Bible college, one of the most conservative in America, but I believe that God's mercy, God's providence, God's sovereignty, God's greatness is bigger than all the things that we are fighting about in our churches here in this world.

And I plea with you as you go forward together, and we have people here tonight from different churches and fellowships, that you will make your goal God himself. Not your particular little emphasis, not your particular little denomination, but God himself.

Surely we know there is only one God. There is only one faith. There is only one Bible. There is only one baptism. I don't believe we should emphasize unity in the sense of compromising our basic doctrines, and it's frightening to see the increase of various kinds of amalgamations and coming together of church leaders.

And soon, they will also want us to unite with Buddhists and Muslims. I can assure you there are church leaders that want us eventually to come into a union of all world religions. The exclusiveness of our messages about Jesus as Savior and Lord is very, very upsetting.

In our evangelism among Muslims, including in the Manchester area, our opposition has not come from Muslims. Our opposition has come from churchmen who do not believe that Muslims are lost, who do not believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.

He is one of the ways, and who certainly do not believe that there really is such a doctrine as hell. Even some leading evangelicals seem at times to have a rather wishy-washy position concerning hell and the lostness of people.

It is a great mystery. None of us wants it. I'm ready to throw it off tonight. I've been itching to throw it off. But the more I go back to the Bible, the more books I read, the more I somehow feel that I am not God's counselor.

His Son Jesus Christ spoke about this place, warned us of this place, and though I as a human being find it difficult to grasp, I want to stand on God's Word. The second word I want to leave is the word faithfulness.

This ministry has continued over the years, your ministry here, because of the faithfulness of God. I believe also because of the faithfulness of God's people. If I had more time, I would perhaps also speak about the need for us to be merciful.

I just feel it's so important for us to be merciful. As we think about people who have hurt us, as we think about people who have failed us, as we think about people who we don't agree with, let us, as the Beatitudes say, be merciful.

I'm thrilled at some of the new books on the subject of forgiveness. I mentioned one here this weekend. Sorry about that. I don't have it on the table. These books by David Seamans do emphasize forgiveness, and I'd be happy to send that other book if you want to write to me.

Faithfulness in the Local Church

Faithfulness. God's faithfulness and our need to be faithful. The fruit of the Spirit, according to Galatians, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness. A lot of times, the work that God gives us in the local church and the key to all that God is doing is the local fellowship.

It's the local church. Sometimes people think OM has been able to do what we've done because we've got this particular principle or that particular principle. It's not one thing or two things that causes a spiritual movement to go forward.

Any more than it's one or two things that's caused this work to keep going on a hundred years. Usually, it's many things. Paul emphasized the need to have the whole counsel of God. Our commitment to the local church and our partnership with over a thousand churches all over the world has been perhaps the main factor that's kept this thing from being the fly-by-night organization some people once felt it was.

God's faithfulness needs to be matched with our faithfulness. If you're responsible for serving the cups of tea, do it hardly as unto the Lord. If you have to park the cars, do it hardly as unto the Lord.

If you're in charge of the music or the sound system or cleaning the pulpit or the pews or whatever, do it as unto the Lord. I was excited about a church I discovered in Colorado some time ago. There's a new book about it called The Church Unleashed.

Rather upsetting book, a little extreme. Like a lot of books, you don't have to accept everything you read in the book. You do have to accept everything you can read in this book. I still don't understand everything I read in this book, so that gives another challenge.

Faithfulness. In that particular church, you're not allowed to belong to the church unless you have a specific ministry. No sleepers, no passengers, no spectators. Christianity in Britain, really, let's be honest.

Let's be honest. It's a spectator sport, isn't it, largely? It's a spectator sport. It's a little like rugby. Two guys out in the field scrumping around, desperately in need of a rest, surrounded by thousands who desperately need some exercise.

Oh, to see God's people get a vision of responding to God's mercy and God's faithfulness with some faithfulness on their part. Remembering people. We pray for our missionaries. We lay hands on them. We send them across the ocean.

Six months later, they're not supposed to come back every six months. They're supposed to stay out there. Amy Carmichael went out. She never came back. May God give us a few more. But if you stay out beyond six months, you can be sure every month past the six months, more people will be forgetting you.

When you do come back, if they know your name, you'll consider revival has probably swept in. Many missionaries told me they never get a letter. They never get a letter. And sometimes when churches go into crisis, the first thing that gets dropped is the support of the missionaries.

And if you don't think one of Satan's strategies is to get churches into crisis so that the program of world missions can be slowed down, obviously you haven't read much about the enemy's tactics. My own wife's church is in total chaos right now.

Total chaos. Hundreds of people hurt, from two to three hundred in attendance to thirty five. And they've written us. My wife's a founder member. Cannot really expect we can promise to continue to support you regularly as our missionaries.

Later on, through prayer and faith, they did continue to send a little support. So it's not a total loss yet. And I'd appreciate prayer for my wife and for that church. The faithfulness of God should be matched by great faithfulness on our part.

Think of the few who stayed with the railway mission when there were only a few coming together. That was the time to quit. If they had quit at that moment, I probably would have been in the quit camp.

If they had quit at that moment, this particular church, with its great possibilities for witness and for world missions and reality in Christ, might not be here. The third word I want to leave is linked with that.

Faith and Risk-Taking for the Unreached

It's the word faith. In fact, I wrestled with just speaking about faith. That's why I read that passage in Hebrews 11. Faith. Believing God. Trusting God. Taking steps of faith. This is not a time to slow down because you've been in a crisis or are going through a difficult period in some ways.

This is a time for great faith. This is a time to get alone with God and ask if there's some steps of faith you should be taking. It's exciting to take steps of faith. It's also scary. I used to lead Operation Mobilization.

I thank God I don't have that responsibility anymore. I'm one of the leaders, but I tend to think I'm just a follower following all these visionaries all over the world and generally gasping for breath.

Our co-leaders around the world seem to be launching a new major project every month. We can't even keep up with it. Now that we're in 40 countries in a full-time, long-term way, ministering in another 60 countries through short-term visits of the ships and evangelists and others, humanly speaking, at times it seems almost out of control.

So much is happening in Brazil that it seemingly for a while has gone out of control. Next month, at the end of this month, we're flying in our two Brazilian leaders to see if we can make peace at one of our main leadership meetings.

Yet it's exciting. It's exciting to see young people taking steps of faith. It's exciting to see them take risks. If we're not willing to take risks, let's forget it. We're not going to evangelize the world.

It's not easy for me to think of a close friend, perhaps murdered along that Pakistan-Afghan border. In fact, I had a fight off my imagination a few hours ago when I visualized him being stabbed, probably many times.

Two other friends of mine that went to Afghanistan partly as a result, mainly as a result of OM's ministry, were butchered and cut into pieces in their own home in Kabul some years ago. They're children.

They come into the room and see that terrible scene. I can't even handle such things. I try to block them out of my mind. I was the slowest person, perhaps in OM International, to agree to go ahead with a second ship, which is now a reality but has not yet sailed.

It's not easy to watch television as I did this week and see another major leading passenger vessel of a top country plow into a container ship outside of a German port. Having put one ship on the rocks, do you think we cannot have a worse accident next time?

No one died through this accident we had. It all ended up favorable publicity for Operation Mobilization. The next accident may not come out so grand. In myself, I'm scared. I just thought I'd especially throw that in since we have the chairman of the company who owns the ship sitting in the audience.

I'm sure he will have another nightmare tonight, but we will not accept his resignation. There'll be no gain without pain. We're not going to reach the unreached people listed on that map of the world unless we're willing to take risks.

C .T. Studd, one of the founders of an unusual mission society that has reached millions and millions for God, known today as WECC, said, let's not be nibblers of the possible but grabbers of the impossible.

I have to preach that message to myself because I'm at that age where you begin to get a little cynical, where you begin to have too many answers, where you begin to know too much. Sometimes I feel I've read too much about ships.

I don't want any more ships. Let's get into bicycles. Let's get into hiking for Christ or trekkers for Jesus. But God has led us to take the risky road because those first two ships have given us the privilege of facing over 50 million souls with the Word of God.

I could give you thousands of stories of what God has done through those two ocean-going ships, which, when they go from port to port, are like catalyst explosives and bring many people to Jesus Christ.

I've just come from Canada and I was in Saskatchewan. They have as much space in Saskatchewan as Texas and only a million people. It's very crowded in England. Did you ever notice that? You can throw many Englands in Saskatchewan.

They only have a million people. But they got some great theological colleges and Bible colleges, and Canada has a very amazing per capita missionary thrust. People's Church in Toronto, a million five hundred thousand dollars for world missions.

One church, and the church is still growing. They're knocking the building down, putting up another one. Quite amazing. But a man told me a story, and it reminds me somewhat of our approach to world evangelism.

No, not completely. This man kept going fishing out in a big Saskatchewan lake, and every time he came back he had a giant bag of fish. And the game warden, the man in charge of keeping the rules in these great sporting areas, lakes, he kept watching this man, wondering how he was getting a full bag of huge fish every time he went out.

So he asked if he could go along. The old fisherman said, sure. You want to go fish? Come along with me. They went out in the boat in the middle of the lake. The old fisherman took a bag full of dynamite, took up a big stick of dynamite, lit it, threw it in the water.

All the fish jumped out, put them in the bag. The game warden said, hey, hey, you're not allowed to do that. There are regulations against that. That's extreme. This is not possible. The old fisherman looked at the game warden, took out a piece of dynamite, lit it, handed it to the game warden.

He said, tell me, have you come to fish or have you come to talk? Well, if you were Canadians, you might laugh harder at that story. It always reminds me of how difficult it is for an American to tell a joke in Britain.

They bring the best comedians over. They stand on the stage for 25 minutes in London. They tell every joke they can think of. Nobody laughs. Amazing. He's discouraged as he walks off the stage. He falls, breaks his arm.

Everybody cracks up laughing. The unique British sense of humor. We saw how God could use it when we lost our ship and the support for the ship ministry greatly increased among God's people in the British Isles.

Now people think I'm going to go around and try to sink something else in order to get us out of perpetual financial trouble. Faith. There's no way we can reach the world. There's no way you're going to continue a hundred years or even one year without steps of faith.

Yes, we need to count the cost. God doesn't honor foolishness. And I'm still learning how to find a balance. But I want to take some steps of faith in my life in the next two months and in this final decade.

And I'd appreciate your prayers for that. The fourth word perhaps is even greater than all the other words. It would be a big debate. It's the word grace. You ever read much about the East African revival that took place in the Anglican churches there?

Grace for Wounded and Failing People

You ever had the privilege of meeting people like Festo Cavandry before he died? William Nakanda? Some of those men like Joe Church, Roy Hessian? They've been a great influence in my life. And last time I was here, I think we sold every copy of Calvary Road we had.

I talked to Roy, not to Roy, but his wife on the phone the other day. He's had a terrible stroke. He's not able to speak. But his books speak. And they emphasize the message of grace. I just feel that's such a great need.

As we go into a new decade, as we face a world filled with suffering and pain, as we discover that many of the people who come to Jesus Christ in the 20th century have wounded emotions. They've experienced incest, as I spoke about last night.

Or they've experienced other very traumatic, difficult experiences. Many of the people signing up to be missionaries are people who have gone through serious emotional difficulties. And we have to spend many years, often helping them emotionally and mentally, to become strong in God and balanced psychologically and emotionally.

William MacDonald, who wrote that powerful book, True Discipleship, once said, grace, and he spelled it out on the blackboard, G-R-A-C-E, God's riches at Christ's expense. The grace of God. The grace of God.

That's why it's so wrong to become judgmental. The greatest sin in our movement in years gone by, at certain times, was the sin of judgmentalism. We were so committed to using all of our money for God.

We were so desirous of getting more Bibles and more literature and more accomplished that we easily judged people who had a different lifestyle or spent money in different ways than we did. It was an ugly thing.

Many ugly things happened in our world. So if you've had some ugly things happen in your fellowship, wherever, whenever, join the club. The church is not some kind of fraternity for super saints. It's a clinic for sinners.

We make mistakes. We fail. We get into legalism. We get into bondage. We get into hero worship. And when we do, our hearts get broken because all God's heroes are sinners. We need to understand God's grace to weak people.