Get Your Heart Right

These are my notes for a sermon I preached at a festival with Gordon Stoves on July 2nd 2005. He requested it to be about twenty minutes long. I decided to have four sections, approxiamately five minutes each. These notes were changed slightly after the event to make them more like what I actually said.

Sections

1. Love of Money.

2. Keeping Your Heart Right in Ministry.

3. Being Nice to Eachother.

4. Obedience.

1. Love of Money. Matthew 6: 24. No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Scott in the Jesus Army said, 'The Bible does not say you cannot love God and have a gay marriage, it says you cannot love God and serve money.' As if loving money was such a terrible thing. The Bible doesn't say, you cannot love God and get drunk. It doesn't say, you cannot love God and hit your wife. It says, you cannot love God and love money. Do you know what the big sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was? It was not the sexual thing. This is what it says in one of the Old Testament prophets. They were self centred. 'They did not help the poor and needy.' Much like our society today. (Ezekiel 16:49 -50.)

Is it wrong to have money? No. Is it wrong for a Christian to aspire to a position where he will earn lots of money? Not necessarily. When I was young, I was ambitious. I wanted to be a professor. I was doing a degree in Electronics. I would have made £27,000 a year if I had become a professor, a reasonable amount of money now, and a lot more then. But why did I want to do it? I would love to have invented things. Not a lot of people know this but James Clerk Maxwell wrote all the equations about radio waves that you would learn at university now. What's strange about that? He wrote them in the 1850s. Radio wasn't invented until 1878. Imagine writing all those equations about radio waves when radio hadn't even been invented. An amazing guy. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to do it to serve God, not to make money.

Colossians 3: 23, 24. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Jesus Christ you are serving.

That's one of my messages tonight, get promoted at work if you want to but do it to serve God more. I like that man on the television who was a manager in Tesco's and he was talking about the different sausages they sold. He said, "We have very basic sausages, for people who don't have much money, ordinary sausages and then very expensive sausages." I remember thinking, 'This man cares so much about the kind of sausages that people can buy. This is not just about making money, it's about providing people with sausages that they really want.' So position isn't wrong and promotion isn't wrong, it just depends why you're doing it.

Some people think you should ask God to give you an abundance in order to be able to give generously to the Lord's work. People in the Bible gave out of their poverty.

2 Corinthians 8: 2, 3. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, even beyond their ability.

They gave out of their overwhelming poverty and out of the nothing that they had to live on. That's the kind of giving that God blesses. In the early days of God TV they produced a video asking you to be an angel and give £1,000 to their ministry. I don't think it makes you an angel to give £1,000 to God TV. If my late grandmother had given £10 to God TV, had it been around then, it would have seemed like more money to her than £1,000 would seem like to many of you. She couldn't afford to put proper margarine on the bread. I don't think they make Ecko margarine now, they probably make something rather similar. She would give you porridge and there would be little bits of porridge floating around in the milk. She had a large family in the 1950s and they were poor. Etta, my late grandmother, didn't have to catch an aeroplane to India to see terrible poverty. In her youth, she could see it all around her. As she said in her personal diary, there were barefoot boys on the streets of Newcastle who went to the soup kitchen once a day and that was the only time they had anything to eat. If somebody from that sort of background gave you £10, that would be more money to them.

2 Corinthians 9: 7. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Give an amount of money that seems like a lot to you. Give it to something that means a lot to you, something that you feel passionately about, something that excites you. I loved the idea of the aeroplane called the Millennium Messenger in Mongolia. I enjoyed reading that article because, when I became a Christian, there were no Christians in Mongolia and now there were Christians in the cities. The aeroplane would carry the gospel out into the countryside. I was excited about this, so I gave. That's what it means to be a cheerful giver.

2. Keeping Your Heart Right in Ministry. Being in ministry is difficult. It's very difficult to be in ministry without thinking of yourself more highly than you ought.

Romans 12: 3 - 5. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

I have provided tapes and books to a church in Africa for several years. I recorded some of the tapes myself. When you're in ministry, the devil loves to tell you how wonderful you are. You wouldn't expect him to do that, but he does. I sometimes needed someone to knock me off my pedastel and say that I hadn't done something particularly well. I needed to be reminded that I wasn't perfect, that I didn't know everything. Why did Benny Hinn say, "When you're looking at me, you're looking at Jesus?" Because he'd been healing people all day, of things that doctors couldn't cure. There is an operation that will nearly always restore normal hearing. It involves a device implanted in the inner ear and a radio transmitter worn on the skin. Some doctors refuse to give this operation to an adult, because they wouldn't understand what they were hearing. Imagine listening to my voice if it's the first thing you've heard in forty years since you were born. People like Benny Hinn can heal people like that. They can heal adults deaf from birth and they teach them to talk. Benny Hinn had been healing people all day, and the little voice told him, 'You're brilliant, you're a wonderful healer. You could raise people from the dead. You could stand on a ship in a storm and tell the waters to be still. If somebody gave you a tin of pilchards and a loaf of bread you could feed everybody in this stadium, right now. When they look at you, they're looking at Jesus.' Why does Kenneth Copeland believe that Christians are going to take over the world? Satellite television had only just been invented. We had it in the 1980s but it was clumsy, and the dishes were huge. We put a huge dish on the top of the city hall and watched Billy Graham. The one in Cardiff filled up with rain and stopped working. Then the new DBS system came out and you could have a small satellite dish on your roof. Kenneth Copeland was there in the days when DBS had only just been invented. That's when he made his prophecy that the new satellite channels would lead whole nations to Christ. It's very exciting to be in mission in the early days of something like that, when it's only just been invented. You get carried away. The devil loves to tell you how wonderful you are.

I listened to Billy Graham's last sermon from New York last Sunday night, on an American radio station on the internet. It was a short message, probably because he is such an ill old man. He preached for longer than that when he was my age. One of the reasons Billy Graham has kept our respect is that he kept his integrity and kept his humility. I like what he said on some of those old tapes. He had actually gone out into London himself with teams that were giving out invitations to the meetings. I wouldn't have done that. I would have said, 'You give out the leaflets, I will preach.' Then God would have slapped my face, and said, 'You're just like anybody else.' Then I would have given out the leaflets. But Billy Graham gave out leaflets.

3. The Importance of Being Nice. One way that Christians were meant to witness to the world is by their love for eachother.

John 13: 34, 35. A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

I spoke to a member of our church who had joined the church briefly twenty years ago, when a pop gospel group came to a local school and a hundred people became Christians, and who hadn't been there for many years. I asked her how she felt about it. She said, "The people in the church are hypocrites." I discussed this with one of the elders at the church, who said, "We're not perfect, but we try." I went back to my friend and told her what the elder had told me. She said she hadn't meant that. The people in the church weren't particularly immoral people. They were hypocrites because they were arrogant and rude, exactly the opposite of what the Bible says we should be.

1 Corinthians 13: 4, 5. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

There is nothing wrong with being tea - total. The Jesus Army are tea - total but I was very pleased that I belonged to them for several months before I actually realised. They pointed it out to me when I was having a drink. The old Brethren and the old Pentecostal churches used to talk about it all the time, the evils of drink, the evils of people who drank, and how Christians should not have friends like that. Michael Bates, when he was my youth club leader, said that he was glad that all the questions we had written in a question time were sensible ones. When he was young they would all have been, should a Christian smoke? Should a Christian drink? Should a Christian watch films? When we emphasise things like that we are simply putting other people down to make ourselves look good. One man said he did not believe that one of the young women in the church was a real Christian because he had seen her drink a glass of wine, and that is not something a real Christian would ever do. Not dealing with the situation in love at all. I think that Chowdean Chapel is a little bit better now than it was then.

I am pleased, now, when I hear adults asking children if they're going to leave school at 16 and they say yes, and the adults don't lose their temper. I remember people who lost their temper with me when I wanted to leave school at 16. "Well, there's fat chance of getting a job, isn't there?" Very proud, very rude, very easily angered. I became a Christian during that event when the pop gospel group visited the local school. Three Christian teachers had been witnessing in that school for twenty years and then a hundred children became Christians when a pop gospel group came up for the weekend. We had lots of evangelism in the 1980s and the church could lead hundreds of people to Christ and then lose them all. I often wonder why I stayed.

4. Obedience. When you sin you are cut off. You are still saved, but a big barrier has moved between you and God. Your prayers get no higher than the ceiling. Your Bible becomes like a boring book and it doesn't excite you any more. Only one thing causes this.

1 John 1: 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

My father went on holiday last week, and he unplugged the device that connects my computer to the telephone line. I switched the computer on on Sunday morning and I could not get through to the internet. I was cut off. I felt very distressed. I use my computer to do everything. I look for information on it, I email my friends on it, I listen to Christian radio programmes and even watch video clips on it. I use it a lot. It's like your car breaking down if you live in Pity Me. (The village where the tent mission was.)

How do you feel when you are cut off from God? Heartbroken? Or don't you mind? "I'm not bothered about whether I can get through to God, I never use him much anyway. He's just something I was given by my parents, I'm not that bothered about him. I know I let him into my life. He's there in my room but he doesn't work properly. I don't want him to."

Operation Mobilisation used to publish their figures for UK evangelism. What dismal reading they made. 80,000 leaflets given out in Preston in 1992. 50 people came to Christ. Why do we have to give out 1,600 leaflets to lead one person to Jesus? We have no power in our witness because we have no power in our lives. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses." We need the Holy Spirit to come on our lives first, and then we can witness. I believe that when that happens we will not see 80,000 leaflets given out and 50 people coming to Christ, we'll see 800 leaflets given out and 50 people coming to Christ. Then we will be persecuted. In a society where saying that not all muslims go to Heaven is so shocking - they will go to Heaven if they become Christians, and many muslims in those closed countries secretly believe in Jesus - if we lead hundreds of muslims to Christ in Newcastle they will try to stop us. In a society where saying anything bad about the gay thing is so wrong, we will be persecuted.

Nothing can happen unless we get our hearts right with God. I know that prayer is an important part of revival and there would be much prayer, but unless you get your heart right with God your prayers will just bounce off the ceiling. If we get one thing right this century, let us learn how to get our hearts right with God. Amen.