Lukewarm No More - Part 16 — George Verwer

Renewing Discipline in Bible Study

I discovered last year my Bible study was getting a bit sloppy. I wasn't taking notes, I was just reading the Word, praise the Lord, good scripture, boom, into the day. And God dealt with me out in Singapore.

A woman was selling these little diaries, little organizers. Cost about one-third the price in Singapore. And she was an exo-ammer, she had been with us, and she sold me. I wanted to encourage her, so I bought 30 of them.

And there was a section in the one little organizer for your quiet time, to write down what God's saying to you in your quiet time. And a few pages over, there was a section for Bible study. And the Lord just said, in my heart, you need to get one of these, and you need to be disciplined to write something down every day from the Word of God.

Sounds pretty basic, doesn't it? It has so helped me this year. I've been in this book a long time, 40 years, non-stop almost every day. It's brought some fresh discipline and helped me in my Bible study this year.

Setting Personal Goals at a Missions Conference

I believe a missions conference is a time to set goals. First on our personal lives, in the area of prayer, in the area of increasing our vision. Maybe through making a decision to read through this book in one year.

What a terrific blessing that would come to you if you agreed to do that. Or take it in two years. Don't get stuck on every chart and every graph. Some of it is technical. Bypass that and go to the section which says prayer requests for Kuwait.

Prayer requests for Albania. And you will be blessed. I ask of you, not to be hearers of the Word at this missions conference, but doers. Set some personal goals. Write them out. Write them out as a baptism goal we just had here.

Set some personal goals in your prayer line. Set some personal goals in your evangelism. How sad it is now. We have some of the old-fashioned missionary churches. I'm in touch with a lot of churches.

Reaching the Local Community Through Evangelism

Old-fashioned missionary churches that have not stayed on the cutting edge of where American society is. Many of them are dying. It is one of the saddest things I've ever seen. Tremendous challenge you are facing in this church.

And I think from what little I know, you are responding properly and biblically. Stay on the cutting edge of reaching people right here. In this part of northwest Houston. This isn't a ghetto. This isn't a slum.

I haven't come across it yet. This is a very unique part of our nation and of this city. And we need to bloom where we are. With much wisdom. We need to understand this market around us. These people around us.

How can we win them? My great longing, this may sound strange, isn't just that you would be involved in sending great missionaries across the world. But my great longing is that you would win men and women to Jesus Christ right here in Houston.

Flexibility and Reaching a Changing Generation

And yet, unless we're willing to make certain changes, unless we're grace-awakened, unless we're flexible, unless we're willing to somehow do a little bit of experimentation, and somehow, at times, allow for failure.

Some of you are older. Older people can be so wonderful when they're grace-awakened. But when they begin to get spiritual hardening of the arteries, they begin to feel that nothing is really today being done the way they did it years ago.

And they talk of the good old days and they feel everybody today is compromising. They actually, I've seen it actually happen to Christians. They actually begin to go off in the head. Top Christian leaders have died.

And their peers have said something happened. Can you imagine that? Something happened. A leading Christian in Denmark has turned against his own movement, a beautiful movement, many churches. He helped start these churches.

But when they wanted a little different kind of music, because he wrote most of the hymns, he was very gifted. He wrote most of the hymns in Danish. When they wanted to sing new hymns, and young people were getting bored with these old ones, he saw it as the devil getting in, and he declared anathema to his whole movement.

His own secretary, after 25 years, no longer could stand him. He turned against every single Christian, almost in the whole of northern Europe, except a little few that would sign on the dotted line that he was the greatest man of God and that everything he said was the truth, and they rejected everything that came from anyone else.

We're talking about a Bible-believing, famous evangelical leader. I choose a land like Denmark because most of you probably don't know anything about Denmark, and that's sensible when we're sharing this kind of thing.

So I would urge you, as you get older, not to allow spiritual hardening of the arteries. Give the young people space. They don't always like to dress the way you dress. They don't always like the music that you like.

And try to find new, creative ways to win this generation of young people. And if you are here tonight as a young person, let me tell you, you're the best person to do it. You can reach your own peers better than anyone.

And I had the joy in my high school years, and I'm not telling you to do something that I did not do, of leading so many of my school friends to Jesus. They didn't all go on. There were many discouragements, but we saw some of them come to Jesus.

Guarding Church Unity and Exercising Grace

God is blessing your church. You're growing. Let me say, as someone involved with several thousand churches across the world, Satan will counter-attack what you are doing here. I have seen churches as good as this one come completely unglued in one year.

And when that happens, hundreds of people are hurt, some of them never, ever emotionally and mentally recover from that church split. I warn you in the name of Jesus, guard this unity that God has given you.

Exercise discernment. Exercise grace-awakened attitude, especially toward those who may rub you the wrong way, or who don't believe exactly the same as you believe. And allow the Holy Spirit, the freedom, to do, in 1995, that which is going to win raw, full-blooded Texans to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Becoming Grabbers of the Impossible

To do that, and at the same time, have this kind of missionary vision and endeavor is something that is very, very big. You basically are attempting the impossible. Isn't that good? Isn't that good? Who in the world wants to nibble around at the possible?

Ridiculous. C .T. Studd, one of the great mission societies in the world, he said, let us not be nibblers of the possible, but grabbers of the impossible. That's why some of you are going to have to go redo your faith promised card.

Because you know, when you filled that card out today, you were just nibbling at the possible. Now, darling, you were sitting down in front of the TV and thinking about buying your new CD, thinking about buying your new, what's this kind of television that's going to come, you know, just gobble you up television, I forget the name of it, high intensity or high something, interactive, inter-floated television.

And you were thinking of all the different things you've got to get this year, and you made your commitment, you put it down on the card. And you know in your heart, you're just nibbling. You're just nibbling.

Setting Greater Financial Aims for Missions

I believe a church like this could see a million dollars raised for missions so easily that you would be laughing. Now, I know in some churches people go on extreme and laughing, but let's not go to the other extreme, not laugh at all.

I mean, come on. When you meet some of the people I meet, you better know how to laugh, otherwise you end up crying all the time. C .T. Studd, let us not be nibblers of the possible, but grabbers of the impossible.

It's great to have goals and aims. Even as we think globally, what about greater aims for the Muslim world? We've got a young couple, William Brown, isn't that your name? It's my wife's grandfather's name, isn't it, William Brown, and this lovely little redhead?

Taking Ownership of the Muslim World

Going out, going out, you're married, right? Yes. Going out to France. I've been praying for years, Lord, give more workers among the Muslims of France. France has millions of Muslims. Now, there's two ways we can go about this.

We can give them a little money, we can pray to them, God bless you, send them out, have a little service, lay hands on their head, boop, buy them a gun. The other way is we take ownership. We take ownership of the vision.

The Muslims of France, we start to pray, we get Operation World, we get more information. We feel with them. As they go, we go with them. We may write a few letters. This is an amazing church, amazing, it must be one of the most generous churches on the planet.

Encouraging Practical Support for Missionaries

They have air forms out. Was I seeing things, or did I see air forms already addressed to missionaries with stamps on them? Is that true, or was I hallucinating outside that door? You are either visionary or downright lazy, one or the other.

And I hope some of you, I hope tonight we can completely clean out that little compartment. Would that be a goal for tonight? Clean it out. If they clean out all those air letters, will somebody put some more in there tomorrow?

Somebody get, this is a game you're playing here. You clear them out, somebody else will fill it out. We can have a contest. I have met missionaries on the field who hardly ever get a letter. It can mean a lot.