Crisis — George Verwer

Let us pray. Our God, we just praise your name for the privilege of giving. We thank you that it is more blessed to give than receive, and we thank you that that's not a cliché, but a divine burning reality in our hearts and our lives.

As we long to give more and more and more, to accomplish your purposes, to send your gospel across the world, and we look to you to direct and guide us, even during this Christmas season, that we may know what it is to walk with you in the power of the Holy Spirit through this unique time of the year.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I praise the Lord for the privilege of being back with you again. This has sort of been a regular occurrence now the last 15 or 20 years. I also want to thank you for all of your help and prayers in connection with the visit of Lagos II.

It's hard to believe that ship right now has just arrived in West Africa, and will be ministering in West Africa for a couple of months. It was a very good response in Spain and in the Canary Islands, and also in the Azores, very, very unreached Portuguese-speaking islands with very, very little witness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There were also some disappointments, as Dulas has not been able to right now go to Vietnam, has had an extra port in Thailand, is now going on to another port in Malaysia. Do keep praying that in God's timing, we may be able to get one of the ships back into Vietnam.

Many other things that are on my heart to share. We've also brought just a few extra books, since you have such a great book exhibition. We literally, in about eight minutes, grabbed a few extra books and put them in a suitcase.

The Grace Awakening and Ministry by Grace

And especially a relatively new book, that in my life has been the most significant book in the last ten years or so, and I read a lot of books. It's a book called The Grace Awakening. It's been my conviction for a long time that one of the greatest problems in my own ministry of Operation Mobilization has been the lack of grace, God's grace working through people, whether they're under pressure, whether they're in their own country, or whether they're witnessing off in India or China.

And I just got so excited as I read this book. In fact, I called the president of the company and asked him if he could give me a good deal if I bought a thousand copies, which he agreed to. And so we have a lot of copies of this book.

And if you get this book, and it's just been published, in America you can't even get it in paperback. You've got to pay seven pounds sterling to get this book, and it's selling so fast they won't put it in paperback.

But in Britain, since Charles Swindoll, the author, isn't so well known, they bypassed the hardback and put it in paperback. Grace Awakening is about God's grace toward us, salvation by grace and all that that means.

And then what does that mean as we become ministers of grace? Instead of ministers of the law, Galatians, trapped back under the law, what does it mean to have a ministry of grace? And I'm excited about this book, sending it to Christian leaders all over the world.

So this is your opportunity. If you get this book, if it doesn't bless you, I will be very embarrassed. You can write to me. I will apologize and send you 20 free books with my apology. So that's a little bit of a risk.

Of course, you have to read it, and we trust you to be honest. So Grace Awakening is the book of the evening. And whatever book you get, on any one of the book displays, we'd like you to pick up free of charge.

These little prayer cards are actually worth over a pound fifty these days, but we want to give you a set of these free. These cards present 50 or 60 of the most needy, forgotten countries in the world, unreached areas of the world.

Many of them are Muslim countries. They're taken from this book, Operation World, and I would ask prayer for Patrick Johnson's wife, Jill, who is extremely ill and in hospital right now. She's actually pressing on with a children's edition of Operation World.

He's pressing on with a new edition of Operation World. We have a few copies of this, this great missionary church. I'm sure most of you already have five copies. But if you don't have one, you can get one, or at least these little prayer cards you can pick up free with any other book that you purchase.

Forgiveness and Healing from Personal Wounds

Another great burden that has been on my heart lately is the subject of forgiveness. I've been counseling people, writing to people, who are having trouble forgiving people. And this seems to be much more common than I ever envisaged.

Now, I have so many problems in my life, I can't have them all. Praise God. And I've never had too much problem forgiving people. But I still am reading this book because I want to learn more, even on areas where I may think I'm strong, because I don't trust myself.

This is a book about forgiveness. Again, it sold a huge number of copies in its original hardback edition, 200 ,000 actually. Now you can pay a fraction of that and get the same book. Luis Smitty's book, Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve.

Have you ever been hurt and you felt you didn't deserve it? Ever? There's a book just for you. So that's available in this new paperback edition. I actually had to bring those over from the States in my suitcase, because you can't get this book in this country.

Brokenness, Grief, and Christian Ministry

Another great book that we're pushing in our ministry is Gordon McDonald's Rebuilding Your Broken World. So many people in our society have had broken world experiences. Do you know that for Christmas, many people will have mainly pain?

Do you know that? Because Christmas is a time of terrible memories. A woman I just had lunch with this week on Boxing Day a few years ago, just married, a wonderful marriage, so in love with this man it would be hard to put it into terms, on Boxing Day they slid on the ice in Sweden and he was crushed to death in front of her.

How is she going to handle Boxing Day? Think it's going to be all mince pies and a big smile? It's going to be painful. A lot of people have had broken world experiences. Here's a book that you could give someone that might help them battle through a painful Christmas.

Rebuilding Your Broken World. A new book about world missions. Priority One. The Lagos story. The amazing story. I just wrote my first letter to John Major this week. I was always writing Maggie. The last book I ever sent her was called Faith in the Dark, and I'm sure she's got time to read it now.

So I sent her this book as well, Lagos story, and I sent it to John Major this week. Probably he won't have time to read it, but maybe he'll pass it on to someone who's interested in ships. It's amazing how any jerk can send anybody a great book.

How many of you send out books to people? Give books away. Good, good. It's great. So pick up a few extra copies of this, because we don't want to carry them back to London and give them away, and you will find you have a ministry through giving away books.

Now, there's a lot of other literature that there's not time to mention. There's the Lagos for children. A new report about Love Europe just off the press. What did God do this summer? Some of you are praying about getting involved in Love Europe.

Bristol was part of Love Europe. And you may want to pick up the new Love Europe leaflet 91 and get involved in this important event. And there's a reprint of a Christian news article about the visit that was referred to tonight of Lagos to Eastern Europe.

Quite an amazing story. Thank you for praying. Operation Mobilization. There's now 2 ,000 of us full time. That is your ministry. It's not easy to find churches like this that go into sort of an in-depth, ongoing partnership with a missionary fellowship.

And I know that it's not easy to find the balance between ministry at home, ministry in the church, ministry around the world. It will always be a struggle. But I praise God for your great efforts in that area.

Responding to Global Crisis Through Prayer

I was really crying out to the Lord as to what I should share with you this evening. And the Lord put it on my heart to speak to you on the subject of crisis. How do we as God's people respond to what's happening in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq right now?

Now, we have been responding. I hope so, because the worst thing as God's people is to be indifferent. And we realize that many of those hostages, the remaining hostages, hopefully, some of them are on their way back right now, landing out in the airports.

Others will be back in the coming days for Christmas. Now, brothers and sisters, maybe you don't see it this way, but I believe we have again seen a clear-cut answer to prayer and bringing these people back.

A lot of prayer has been going on. One of the very first hostages ever to be released was a young man, the son of a missionary to Bangladesh. I knew him. He was the first one to be released. And there were more people praying for that young man than probably any of the other hostages.

You say, ah, just coincidence. That's okay. If you say it's coincidence, I can relate to you. Because I'm also skeptic, I'm a cynic, I'm a Doubting Thomas. I don't know how I ever got saved in the first place.

And God is very merciful with me. That's why I appreciate this book about grace. Because that's what it is in my life. It's just God's grace. There may be someone here tonight, you have a big crisis. Your crisis you may not be aware of.

You may not be aware of. Your crisis is that you're going to hell. It's a pretty big one, isn't it? That's the last thing you want to admit because you feel that's old-fashioned religion that went out with the last century.

But Jesus Christ spoke of hell. The Bible speaks of hell. And if you're here tonight and you've not experienced God's forgiveness and God's grace through what was done on the cross, then you're on the broad road.

You're on the road to hell. And the only answer to your crisis is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Now I come here about once every year and a half.

I have a great privilege only a few churches in the whole of Britain extend me this privilege. One is Worthing Tabernacle in Worthing, which makes sense. And the other is Pippin Jay. This special privilege is that I have an open invitation provided there's not some other guest speaker that everybody's waiting to hear.

I have an open invitation to phone up and come here to preach. Isn't that humbling? And I only discovered I had this night free about 10 days ago and we phoned up and here I am. And Malcolm went off to preach somewhere in the jungle or in Wales.

He's probably stuck in a snow drift. We need to pray for those who are in that crisis. But I know every time I come here there are some people who are new. So maybe I could just share my own testimony.

Conversion, Missionary Calling, and the Gospel of John

I didn't fly in Concord from New York just to take this meeting. I've been in England for the last 28 years. I haven't learned the language because if I did my children would all accuse me of being a phony and I've got enough problems without that one.

So I continue with my original language. But it was 30 years ago that God sent my wife and I to Spain after a time in Mexico. The Lord then sent me to the Soviet Union where I was arrested by the secret police and it was through that fiasco and a lot of other interesting things that God sent me to Britain.

Still trying to figure out how it all happened. But to understand really what's happened you need to go back to Madison Square Garden New York City, March 4th, 1955 the year they emphasize in that film Back to the Future.

I went there partly out of curiosity to hear Billy Graham. I wasn't a Christian. I was a skeptic. My parents were not Christians. My grandfather was an atheist from the Netherlands. My father was a materialist from the Netherlands though he was beginning to seek God.

And a lady had put my name on her hit list. There's a little bit about this story in the book Lagas Story. She put my name on her prayer list and she began to pray for me not only that I would be converted but that I would become a missionary.

Imagine that. No discussion. No dialogue. Just name it. Claim it. And then she sent me a Gospel of John through the post. And as I read this Gospel God really spoke to my heart. I was only 16 years of age.

Just about to be 17. Just about to go up to university. And then Billy Graham came to New York City just one night. We know a lot of people that go forward in a Billy Graham meeting are not dynamically converted.

Billy Graham explains this. The New Testament explains this. The wheat and the tares. Actually my friend Matthew Elliott who you can meet at the book table was at a church this morning where they baptized someone who made a commitment to Christ in the Billy Graham meeting in London.

So people are converted in these meetings. But we know for others it's just a mental ascent. We know the wheat is with the tares. We know also that some seed after it falls into the ground brings fruit.

Other seed is snatched or destroyed or there's the deceitfulness of riches. It's quite amazing. Quite a good parable. I recommend it. It's in the New Testament. But that night when I heard Billy Graham preaching the Gospel I believed with all my heart.

I believed and I surrendered to Christ and the grace of God expressed on Calvary exploded in my heart and I can share without exaggeration that that saving grace which saved me from my sin that night and began to save me from myself has been a reality every single day ever since.

Not in the absence of problems and struggles and tears and doubts and precipice walks with agnosticism but in the midst of those things. Any of you struggle with doubts? I heard from some Christians that in their church you weren't allowed to talk about doubt.

Good way to get a nervous breakdown. Praise God we don't have to pretend. And great faith is not in the absence of doubt or questions or heartaches or tears. It's often in the midst of those things. So I'm here tonight by the grace of God.

I think since the last time I was here I became a grandfather. That's always an amazing event. Yes, it's great to be a little bit older because for years in my life I couldn't even get in churches because I was written off as just a big pile of Yankee youthful zeal.

Some of the greatest churches in this country I still can't get in the door. They're waiting until I get a little older a little more mature. I think some of them are waiting until I'm less loud. People get bothered by my loudness.

I was speaking in a church in, where was it, Cambridge. Yeah, it was a funny church, round church. And I got a little note. Dear sir, you don't need to shout. We Anglicans are not deaf. Well, they may not be deaf but most of them behave like they're deaf.

So perhaps sometimes I should shout. I long for revival and I pray for more freedom of the Holy Spirit. And I thank God for this church and the freedom that you have in Jesus Christ. Maybe occasionally you go over the top.

How can you be free in Christ and not occasionally go over the top? Glory to God. You can always crawl back again and repent and start over. And I just praise God for this witness among all these sailors.

And usually when I come here I meet people from different countries who are on these ships. I just think that ministry is so important. Now as I wanted to speak to you on the subject of crisis. A number of other crises came to my mind that are recorded in the Word of God.

Prayer in the Crisis of Peter’s Imprisonment

We read about one. We could point out a hundred crises. We read about Peter. He was in prison. How did the church respond to the crisis? Prayer. So that's lesson one. Prayer. Prayer meeting. And Peter was released.

Israel at the Red Sea: Fear, Blame, and Standing Firm

But I want to go back into the Old Testament and look at something a little more intense. You heard that story about President Bush. President Bush got to heaven and he wanted to talk to Moses. Because he heard that and knew that Moses was very heavy on Middle East affairs and Sinai fighting.

And so he sent this angel over to Moses and tried to book an appointment. And Moses sent a note back to President Bush and said he wouldn't speak to him. Bush was really quite shocked. He sent a note back, don't you know who I am?

I'm the President of the United States. Moses sent another note back saying he wouldn't speak to him because the last time he got involved with the Bush he spent 40 years in the wilderness. But I'd like us to go back and I think I've got a little bit of a crisis because I've lost my way.

I'd like us to go back to the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus. The crossing of the Red Sea. And we don't have time to go into all the plagues and Pharaoh's decision to let the people go. But we want to look at verse 17.

Just help me. I've got to find my way here. I took my marker out. I want to read where Pharaoh let the people go and they got to the Red Sea but then Pharaoh pursued them. You find that for me. 14. Did you say 14?

In what verse? Here it is. He took 600 chariots. Let's try verse 7 for size. He took 600 of the best chariots along with all the other chariots of Egypt with the officers over all of them. And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, so he pursued the Israelites who were marching out boldly.

The Egyptians, all Pharaoh's horses and chariots, horsemen and troops, pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near Pi-Har-Hiroth opposite Baal-Siphon. And Pharaoh approached the Israelites, looked up, and there the Egyptians were marching after them.

And they were terrified and cried out to the Lord. Now here's a response to the crisis. Normal response, right? They were terrified. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. And they said, Moses, was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us here in the desert to die?

They were terrified and they panicked and they began to turn against their own leader. What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? That's another thing we do when we get in a crisis. Blame the leader.

Look for a scapegoat. Leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians. It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert. Moses answered the people, Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.

Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. Let's just pray again.

Lord, you know our hearts. You know our needs tonight. We're all different. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for the gift of salvation. And oh Father, if there's someone here tonight that has never experienced this salvation, may they take that step of faith.

Even this very evening. Help us, Lord, to know how to be more Christian, more intelligent, more mature the next time a crisis breaks into our life or as we face the crisis situations across the world.

For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now I'm sure there's some of you that may be facing a crisis at this time in your life. Maybe a health crisis. Maybe the death, the sudden death of a loved one, especially an unconverted loved one, can be an extreme crisis to say the least.

Maybe unemployment has hit you. Maybe there's a broken relationship or a massive misunderstanding. And I want to share just some thoughts from 35 years of what God has been teaching me in the Bible about dealing with crisis.

Personal Crises and the Need for Spiritual Maturity

I faced a few. Like when I received a phone call that this ship that I had given a large part of my effort and time to for 17 years was sinking off the coast of South America. Or the phone call I received a few months ago that this new purpose-built warehouse, one of the largest literature warehouses in the world, suddenly was on fire and burning to the ground.

We had just moved our main literature operation, STL, from Bromley, Kent, where it had been since the mid -60s, up to Carlisle to save money on housing. Somehow, either some vandal set the place alight, we haven't been able to prove that, or something else happened in the part of the warehouse that we were renting out because we didn't need it yet.

We had only paid for 80 of this warehouse. A fire started and probably the biggest fire of Christian books in the history of the church took place. Some publishers like Kingsway lost everything they had, true of STL publishers as well.

Fortunately, unlike in the ship situation, we had very big insurance and everything was more than covered. In our work with 2 ,000 people spread out across the world, we figure a crisis a week. Crisis a week.

And now with a fax machine, together with a telex machine and the telephone, mine's down there on the pew, I turned it off during this hour of preaching, we can figure that every week we have something big to wrestle with.

It was about a year ago, one of our young men working among Afghan refugees suddenly disappeared. Though we have mobilized prayer all over the world for this young man, John Tarswell, he's never been found.

His wife gave birth to his third son shortly after his disappearance and is living in the midst of a perpetual crisis. I remember being at a conference about the same time we were facing a crisis of two young men killed in front of a hospital in Bangladesh when a truck went out of control and ran them down, just a freak weird accident.

At that same time, I was with one of the leaders of OMF who had to pick up from the telephone that someone had been stabbed to death by a burglar in the Philippines. Now actually, as I look out across the world, the disappearance of one person like John Tarswell, the death of two in Bangladesh, the loss of a ship when there was no loss of life, doesn't really seem like that big a crisis.

Now it is because I know those people, so it's closer to me. What I'm going to be appealing for tonight is something that is not possible unless you are a spiritually mature person. It's not possible unless you're willing to become a visionary, become a missionary, become a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There's a brilliant book on the table called True Discipleship. You might want to pick it up. Now in 30 languages, it's almost a classic. Because the crises that I want to speak about tonight are crises that are not so near us.

Therefore, we are not able to feel them very much. We watch it on television, we hear about it, but in fact we don't feel it very deeply. Now some people do. And I'm going to touch on that in a few moments as I speak about how we as individuals respond to crises.

Because we certainly respond in different ways. And this is where, to me, the message of grace is so important. Because so easily, in our failure to understand God's grace in another person, we become judgmental of them when they are in a time of crisis.

We're shaking, we're weeping over something, they seem very blasé, we get angry, and we lay a guilt trip on them. I think, for example, of the crisis of the Middle East that we are facing right now. I've ministered in Kuwait many times.

Not quite as many times as Pip and Jay, but certainly quite a few times. I actually spent Christmas in Kuwait once living in the back of a bus trying to get a visa through Saudi Arabia, that very place where those soldiers are, to minister down in Dubai and in Oman, and then go over to Pakistan.

So I'm very familiar with that part of the world. I'm very concerned, for some of my friends had to run for their lives out of Kuwait. Some of them spent quite some time there at the border trying to get into Jordan.

We responded to that crisis by mobilizing people in Jordan to minister to those refugees. And we saw hundreds of them profess faith in Jesus Christ. How are you responding to the crisis of the Middle East?

The answer is to prayer. We're not over yet. We're closer to perhaps at least some possible negotiation for a peace settlement than we have been for a couple of months. But we need to increase the prayer.

We respond to a crisis like this with prayer. Not only prayer, and we'll get to that in a moment. What about the crisis in Sri Lanka, which just goes on and on and on, with bloodshed and death and people being destroyed?

How do we respond to that? What about the crisis in Afghanistan? Year after year, civil war, bombings, death, 3 million refugees, starvation, confusion. How do you respond to that? The other evening again, I think they had something on television about the Kurds.

How do we respond to the crisis of the Kurdish people? They have no nation. They're persecuted. They've been killed even with chemical warfare. That's how we found out that Iraq had and would use such chemicals, which are now such an important part of the thinking concerning the Middle East crisis.

What's our crisis to Kampuchea, which just goes on and on and on, with so much death, so much confusion, and even the possibility of Pol Pot and mini Hitler somehow getting back into power? What about the crisis of 15 million refugees?

It's interesting that even on Wogan's program, they introduced some priest about those refugees. We do, in our modern society, in our high-tech society, get exposed to crisis more than ever before in the history of the world.

And I dare to say that because of it, many of us become hardened. We become hardened. Again, we'll get back to that in a moment. What about the crisis of the children of the world? There was recently a World Congress on Children.

And this World Congress on Children took place in New York, and then a magazine report in one of our Sunday magazines came out about those children. How many read that report about the 100 million children of the world who are in a form of slavery?

Did any of you read that? I don't even know what newspaper it was with because someone just sent me the actual clipping through the post. But this report, and we've heard similar things, brought out that there are approximately 100 million children in the world who are in slave labor.

Forced labor. Some of them in Thailand, a few million. Most of them are in India. They have the most incredible jobs. They are in factories. They are shortening their lifespan. Many of them are under 10.

They're under 10. Are you a songwriter? I just love your ministry. Are you a songwriter? Could you write a song about the children of the world? You pray about that. 100 million children. Some of them work from early morning to late night and they get paid 10 pence per day for nine hours' work.

They are bused back to their villages. They get a few hours' sleep. The stories of these children begging and begging their parents not to go back, but the parents, in the social-economic pressure, send them back for another day of slave labor.

Biblical Compassion Instead of Emotional Indifference

How do we respond to these things? The South African crisis. The first thing I want to say in speaking on how to respond to these worldwide crises, and there can be comparisons in how to respond to personal crises, is that we must, first of all, take our place as God's people who believe God's Word.

Therefore, our response is not purely emotional. All of us are different emotionally. My wife and I are very different emotionally. What causes her to respond doesn't always cause me to respond. What causes me to respond doesn't always cause her to respond.

And we've got 30 years with each other figuring out how this works. We're all very different. I was listening just two days ago to a tape by A .W. Tozer, one of my favorite writers. And Tozer shared how a particular situation brought tears to his eyes, but he went on to share that he's a person who didn't easily cry.

I'm a moderate person when it comes to crying. I cry moderately easily. Not as easy as some, but I'm certainly not in the camp. I usually have one good cry about every other week. That's 25 really good cries a year.

And out of that, only five would be extreme, really. Like when my mother died into the woods, half an hour, weeping, crying, screaming, letting it all out. Now, I know some people teach here in Britain we're not supposed to do this here in England.

Americans are all very emotional. And we have a stiff British upper lip. People die all around us. We go to the funeral, very blasé. Some of us haven't wept so long. If we wept, we thought we'd think we'd have a nervous breakdown.

But Tozer went on to share that he finds it very hard to weep, and so he spoke about just with his heart, responding, and I can't remember how he exactly explained it, but it's something that I have also believed over these years, that if you can't cry outwardly, at least acknowledge your sadness, acknowledge grief, acknowledge anger.

How can it be that some people never get angry? I can't even begin to comprehend someone doesn't get angry. Someone's probably saying right now, you seem angry. I am angry. What's wrong with a little anger?

It says don't let the sun go down upon your anger. Of course, that's a problem in the winter. Maybe I should only come to Pip and Jang in the summer. How can we look at injustice in the world? How can we look at so much killing in the world?

How can we look at situations in our nation, the injustice, the poverty, the racism, and not be angry? I can assure you, I'm not angry at Pip and Jang. I'm not particularly angry at you. But I'm angry at Satan.

I'm angry about injustice. Now, I must confess that I do get angry about the indifference and the lukewarmness among God's people. And in trying to figure out what to do with that anger, I studied the Bible and I found an interesting verse.

Maybe it's one of your favorites. It says, Be ye hot or be ye cold, for if you are lukewarm, I'll spew you out of my mouth. It's a nice little pleasant verse. Who said it? Probably Apostle Paul. It's probably Daniel in the Lion's Den.

It's probably one of these prophets. Jeremiah or Elijah. These characters who shouted at the people and frightened them. No, it was Jesus meek and mild. Jesus. Be ye hot. Be ye cold. If you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth.

So as we respond to a crisis, whether it's the King's Cross crisis or the Lockerbie explosion or the Middle East crisis, and now with television and high tech and soon there'll be satellite and cable television about to blow us right out of our own homes, we have to determine that in the midst of it we are going to be biblical.

And whether we can respond emotionally or not, we are going to be biblical people and therefore, as much as lieth within us by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we will respond. We will not be indifferent.

We will not be prayerless. If tonight we watch television and the news reports the death of more people in the snow and some have died in the snow, we will not harden our hearts. We will not just say, oh, too bad.

We will not just think, oh, I'm glad I don't live up in the north. Never did want to live up there anyway. No. We will respond in love. We will respond in humility. We will take a moment. We are moving too fast.

Most of us are moving too fast. Do you know how some Americans watch television? They have 20, 30 channels. They don't watch one program. It's boring. They watch three, four programs at once. It's channel popping.

Call it channel popping. I've done it. And you just, for an hour, pop channels and just sort of get blown away through different pictures of the latest rock music. Madonna, one minute. Clint Eastwood, the next minute.

The Long Ranger, the next minute. You know, Robert Shuler's Crystal Cathedral and some kind of gospel band, the next minute. Just pop, pop, pop, pop. Pop channels for an hour. It's going to happen here.

Cable television. Satellite television. People are bored. Who wants to just watch Dallas? Let's watch Dallas and what's this new thing just come in from the States? What is it called? It's evil, but anyway, it's come in.

Now you can pop channels and mix it all together. No more straight drinks. This is the age of cocktails. Society is sick. I don't watch much television. Some that I watch, I have to turn off very quickly because it is really sick.

And if this woman, Madonna, the little I've ever seen, if she is to be the heroine of our young women in our society, if she is to be a role model and she actually believes she is, then we are very, very sick.

Jesus’ Compassion and the Call to Respond

But brothers and sisters, we must not harden our hearts. We must be biblical people. It says in Matthew chapter 9, Jesus saw the multitudes. As he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion. The verse before that says that Jesus went from village to village preaching and teaching in the heat of the day there in modern, what is today, Israel.

The Lord Jesus went from place to place, moved with compassion. I remember when I first lived in Spain in one of the very first OM conferences in the history of our work, a man who greatly influenced my life and we've been together in this work 33 years, Dale Roton, who now coordinates the ship ministry, was sharing a message and it was on the sin of David.