Audio： Breakthrough - Part 2 — K.P. Yohannan

Seeing others the way Christ does, next, on The Road to Reality with Brother K .P. Johanan. So many people are tottering their way through life with little or no purpose. But the Bible tells us we don't have to live that way.

There is a God-given plan for every life, and John's Gospel, Chapter 4, models this for us. I'm your host, Richard Bews, and it's time once again for The Road to Reality with K .P. Johanan of Gospel for Asia.

K .P. takes us then to John 4 right now. Yes, it's where Jesus meets with a woman by a well-site. K .P. will use this to encourage us to step into the way of Christ and see others the way He does. He begins with this startling reality.

Nearly 200 ,000 people die every day without Christ and going into eternity. How does that affect the heart of Jesus? I want to know. I need to know. But the disciples, they are not getting it. In Matthew Gospel, Chapter 9, the writer Matthew says after three decades of the event, he was moved with compassion when he saw the multitudes, broken, helpless, harassed, sheep without shepherd.

My question, why couldn't he say, we, along with Christ, we were so broken up, moved with compassion? No, they didn't understand that yet. He only could say he. What happened on the face of Jesus that Matthew could not forget?

After 30 years, he couldn't forget it. Did Jesus collapse and just wept and wept when he saw the suffering and the poor and the needy? Question. What is hindering me from understanding Jesus' heart? Or am I really following the Jesus of the New Testament?

Or have I created a Christ of my convenience as Corinthians did, who smiles at me no matter what I do, where I go? What is wrong? And this is where I think Jesus is asking, would you please stop and thinking about yourself and look away and see what I see?

Keith Green was a dear friend who went to be with the Lord, a radical disciple of Jesus. He wrote many wonderful songs. He sang very well. And I will not attempt to sing any of his songs. But here is a couple of lines that will speak to us clearly what it's all about.

Do you see, do you see all the people singing down? Don't you care? Don't you care? Are you going to let them drown? How can you be so numb not to care if they come? You close your eyes and pretend the job is done.

Oh, bless me, Lord. Bless me, Lord. You know, it is all I ever hear. No one ache, no one hurt, no one even sheds one tear. And it goes on. But he cries, he weeps. But all I can think about is me, mine, my wife, my children, my health, my wealth, my future, my education.

It's all about me. But Jesus says, look away. 1974, I came to the United States to Dallas to go to seminary. North America does strange things to aliens like me. Someone who walked on the streets of India, Nepal for eight years, weeping over the lost multitudes, getting beaten up and abused for the ministry.

Now, having come to America, without me even thinking about it, I was becoming normal. When I first came to America, I thought hot dog was dog meat, hot curry, hot rice, hot D .O .G. But I learned my lessons well.

Because of the resources we inherited from Germany, I didn't have to borrow anything or buy no credit. Just pay cash and buy stuff. I began with the Kmart, the cheapest stuff. When I first came, I ended up with Neiman Marcus.

You can buy a suit for $100. You don't need to spend $800. That's dumb. You can buy five five dollars and buy a plastic watch, which tells you more accurate time than an expensive Rolex. But I had to have a Rolex.

70 expensive silk neckties, all from Europe. It took me sometime half hour, try to figure out what color fits me, because I read that book, Color Me Beautiful. If you men don't understand what I'm talking about, please ask your wife or look into her purse.

Different little pieces of clothes she's carrying around, matching, trying to figure out what to buy. And she's smart. Books with thousands of books in my library, books I may never read, but they all look so wonderful.

Ten acres of land, brand new, beautiful house, new cars. Please don't misunderstand. I was not doing anything dumb on the streets. I was an ordained minister, pastoring a church also at the time. Nearly three years went by.

I found I couldn't cry anymore. My eyes were dry. Oh yeah, I talked about heaven, hell, missions, the lost world, suffering world, and everything. I mean, that's a priest's job, and I did it too. But it was all so objective.

Nothing moved my heart anymore. And finally, I was so discouraged, I thought about walking away from the ministry itself. And that's when, by the grace and mercy of God, the Lord began to deal with my heart.

I went to my room, just sat on the carpet, and I said, Lord, I'm lost. I can't cry anymore. It's all a profession anymore. I'm no more the person I used to be. I don't know what to do. I prayed before my congregation and meetings, such praise that people were so moved.

They thought it was the best praise they ever heard. But they were all carefully thought through words. And now I sit before him and say, Lord, I just don't know what to do. I don't know what to tell you.

I'm lost. If you know me, Lord, would you please talk to me? It was no more Jacob saying, my name, Father, it is Esau. He was clever. But finally, all alone, when God said, what's your name? I'm Jacob.

I'm lost. I know it all in my head, but I'm lost. And that's when the Lord broke into my life. He made my heart soft and tender. I could cry once again. People thought I got eye disease. For two weeks, I couldn't stop crying.

I was so in love with Jesus. If he asked me to jump off from a building, I would have done it. Nothing, nothing I wouldn't do for Jesus. It was the most amazing discovery to love him, to fall in love with him.

Nobody told me to sell my land, my house, empty my bank account, sell my clothes, nothing. Nobody, nobody. It was the greatest joy of my life for my wife and I to exchange everything we owned, including my clothes, except a couple of ties and a couple of jackets, for the sake of preaching the gospel.

And I beg of you to understand, I am not promoting to sell your house, sell your clothes, and sell your husband and wife and kids and cars. I'm not saying that. I have friends of multi-millionaires who walk with God, who are used by God, who are more devout to Jesus than some poor people who said they have nothing but they're greedy and so bitter.

I'm not talking about money issue here. It's my personal journey, how finally when I came to the place, I realized that I didn't care about him. My heart had to change. It was not external, it was internal.

And the Lord will do the same thing for you. But you know what? Today, Gospel for Asia, we are in 10 nations in the heart of the 1040 window, 15 ,000 missionaries, 24 ,000 churches planted among people that never had a church before, 54 Bible colleges with 9 ,000 plus students, three years of training.

Every year we send 2 ,000 to the mission field. 92 languages radio broadcasts heard by multiplied millions, over a million people write to us every year. We produce over 100 million pieces of literature every year in 18 languages, just launching a full-time 24 hours, seven days a week television channel.

And I can go on and on and on tell you, you know, all this came out of 28 years ago. I came to the place, I recognized unless the seed falls into the ground and dies, died to my ambition, my plan, my carnality, my self-centeredness, my lust, my dreams, my decisions, unless I am willing to lose it all, I will remain as I am, nothing else will happen.

My brothers and sisters, Jesus is not angry at you or me. No, He loves us. It is out of such love. He says, come away my love, as Keith Green sang, come away from this mess. And that is the invitation, not of condemnation and judgment, rather out of love and pain.

Why? Because He called you and me, not for time, but for eternity, to be with you forever and ever. What we have here is but only for a few moments of time. Let's not forget that.

With that invitation of love, we'll take a little break from our study, but we'll come back to Brother KP in just a moment. This is The Road to Reality from Gospel for Asia. Hey, listen, if you are aged between 18 and 25 and want to grow in your walk with Jesus as well as impact unreached people for Him, our School of Discipleship could be just for you.

You can take a precious year to grow closer to the Lord and help reach the world's most unreached with the gospel. To find out more, click to roadtoreality .org .uk or call 01904 -643 -233. I say that again, roadtoreality .org .uk or 01904 -643 -233.

Now, with the rest of his message.

From John's Gospel chapter 4. Back to you, KP, once again. Now, Jesus said, I send you to a harvest you didn't work for. You know, one of the most amazing thing, Jesus said, I will build my church. That makes me so happy.

I don't have to do anything. Jesus used, yeah, you just be faithful to me and I will do the rest. It's none of your problem. Fine, Jesus. But Lord, I read in the book of Acts, daily you added to the church thousands of people.

In the end, they changed the world. And the Lord says, yeah, daily they obeyed me. Therefore, I could do that daily. My brothers and sisters, how many of you traveled 2, 3, 4, 5 hours, 10 hours from this humongous country to get to this place?

By plane, by car, by, I was going to say bullock cart and donkeys. No, you don't have those things here. How many gas stations, petrol stations you stopped? Now listen, how many people received a gospel tract from you?

You know what? It is time we become little crazy, little extreme and radical, unafraid, unashamed to say, I belong to Jesus. We need to learn to say, there's a hell, there's a heaven, there's a Jesus, time is running out, repent.

Whether they like it or not, we need to start doing that. Just a few days ago, another sad telephone call I received. One of our missionaries in Bangladesh who won nearly 100 people to the Lord, they baptized, a church was born.

As he was going in a bus, they stopped the bus, pulled him out of the bus and beat him to death right on the street. He left his 23-year-old wife and 5-month-old child behind. You know what the sister said?

I'm so sad, heartbroken, I lost my husband. He actually was one of our graduates from our Bible college in Dhaka. Then the sister, in the midst of her tears and sobbing and pain, she said these words, but I have a child, I will raise my child to take the place of my husband.

Jesus is asking his disciples, see what I see and understand who I am, and then you go and be mine and do exactly what I would do. I'm going after the cross, willing to pay the price, and you'll be willing to do that.

That's exactly what Thomas did when he came to India. Finally, he was killed for preaching the gospel and his tomb is still there. I do not know if you ever read the story of Adoniram Jetson. With this story, I want to conclude and pray for you.

Jetson was the first missionary from America to leave his country, but before he would take off to India and Burma, in 1810, he happened to fall in love with a young girl named Anne Nancy Haseltine. She was a daughter of a very rich, affluent businessman.

So young Jetson, asking permission from John Haseltine to marry his daughter, writes these words. Listen close. I want to ask you, if you're willing to part with your daughter early next spring, you may never see her again in this world.

She will be subjected to terrible hardships and sufferings of a missionary's life. She will be exposed to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influences of the southern climate of India. She will have to face every kind of distress, degradation, insult, persecution, and possibly a violent death.

Can you consent to all this for the sake of him who left his heavenly home and died for her and for you and for the sake of perishing immortal souls and for the glory of God? What a way to ask a father for his daughter.

I got a daughter. He'll ask me. I'll tell him. Can you agree to all this in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory? Wearing the crown of righteousness brightened with the acclamations of praise to the Savior from heathen saved through her sacrifice from eternal hell?

That's a letter. The answer. Her father left the choice to her. This was her reply. I have decided to give up all my comforts and enjoyments here. Sacrifice my affection to relatives and friends to obey the call of the Lord.

As far as I know, no female has ever left the shores of America to spend her life like this. The Judson's labored for seven years before winning the first convert. After nine years, they had baptized only 18.

Several of their fellow missionaries died. Others simply left the mission field. Judson himself was brutally imprisoned 17 months during a crackdown against all foreigners, barely surviving the horribly inhumane treatment.

One night, while his raw and bleeding feet were hanging in elevator stalks, swarms of mosquitoes settled on his bare soles, producing excruciating torture. Then, not long after his release from prison, Judson's beloved wife, Nancy, died.

Her constant life of sacrifice and service had finally taken its toll. Just a few weeks later, little Maria, their third baby, was suddenly taken from this world. Judson was left utterly alone in a hostile Buddhist land, almost shattered with pain and grief.

Before him lay the prospect of a tiger-infested jungle, bat-infested houses, and a fever-infested climate and for life. Behind him lay an almost unimaginable trail of hardship and loss, but he did not leave off from his mission work.

He did not abandon his Bible translating or his preaching and teaching labors. How could he? Eternal souls are at stake. Who else could reach the Burmese as well as he? So he remained for 20 more years, returning to America only once, and that by necessity, not by choice.

Judson's devotion for life was not in vain. On one occasion, during the great annual festival held at the towering golden Buddhist pagoda in Rangoon, I've been there, he recorded that he had distributed nearly 10 ,000 tracts, giving to none but those who asked.

Some came two, three months journey from the borders of Siam and China, saying, Sir, we hear that there is an eternal hell. We are afraid of it. Do give us a writing that will tell us how to escape it.

Others came from interior country where the name of Jesus is little known. Are you Jesus man? Give us a writing that tells about Jesus Christ. For Judson, it was worth it all. Today, there are more than 1 million born-again believers in Burma.

Jesus said, I'm sending you.

It's exciting news. And to think that God could use little me as a part of his plan to reach the world for him. Well, it's an honor. If you are aged between 18 and 25 and want to grow closer to the Lord, be interested in our School of Discipleship, an opportunity to set aside a year to serve the Lord and to impact the unreached world.

Go to roadtoreality .org .uk to learn more or call our office, would you, on 01904 643 233. Again, visit us on roadtoreality .org .uk or call 01904 643 233. You know, we'd love to hear from you. So again, just turn to roadtoreality .org .uk and we'll lead you from there.

This is Richard Buse saying, when we hear from you, leave it to us to give you the necessary tips for the next steps. Bye for now.