Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10. Can you not do more for God? As we were going last week through Ephesians 2, Ephesians 2 verse 10 really jumped out at me. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We are His workmanship. created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Now, we know we're not saved by works. We believe in sola gratia, salvation is by the grace of God alone. However, as Professor Martin Luther said, while we're not saved by works, the saved will do good works, not in order to be saved, but because we are saved, not for salvation, but out of gratitude to God. And so when you look at that, Ephesians 2 verse 10, we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in Him. Now turn over to Ephesians 3. In Ephesians 3, we have a prayer, a wonderful prayer. Ephesians 3 verse 14 to 21. Special emphasis on verse 20, but let's read from verse 14. Ephesians 3 verse 14. For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man. that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Now we know verse 20 because it's a wonderful chorus. We've all sung that. Now unto him who is able to do, in fact it's a lovely benediction and a wonderful prayer. But see the emphasis here. It's exceeding, abundantly, above all we could ask or even think. God is able to do far, far more in us and with us and through us than we could ever imagine. And so we need to think bigger and better. In fact, A. W. Tozer said that the most important thing about us is what comes into our mind when we think the word God. He said, God forgive us for thinking so little of God and for having views of God that are sub-biblical. We need to free our minds from the constraints of this world to think of God the infinite, the eternal, the immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present, holy, righteous, creator, redeemer, eternal judge, saviour. There is so much more we need to understand about God. And as was so well described by William Carey in the great sermon that launched the modern missionary movement, expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God. Now that sermon, summarized in those words, launched the modern missionary movement. The 19th century was the greatest century of missions because they had a great God and realized they needed to honor God with great faith and great acts of obedience and taking great risks. It is to our shame when we think too little of God, and we expect too little of God, and we attempt too little of God. We should all be aiming to do more, and to think more, and to worship more. But before we get into that, let's just look at a few other passages in the Bible that speak about honoring God with our works, with good works. Now remember, good works are not done in order to be saved, but good works are done because we are saved out of gratitude. to seek first the kingdom of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord Jesus said in Matthew 5, 16, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. So if people would glorify God more, we need to live more Christ-centered, God-honoring lives. expecting great things from God, attempting great things for God. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and praise your Father in heaven. That's a verse that we tend to have given at the introduction to every one of our Sultanate radio programs for 27 years. Colossians 1 verse 10, that you may work worthy of the Lord. fully pleasing Him, being thankful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. See how increasing in knowledge of God goes along with being fruitful in every good work. The more we get to know about God, the more we should want to know God personally, the more we should want to follow Him, to follow in His footsteps, to glorify Him, to honour Him. Missions exist because God deserves all praise, honour and glory. and he is not being worshipped by everyone on the planet. Far from it. And so missions exist in order to reach everybody, to give all praise and honour and glory to God with all of our heart, with all of our mind, with all of our soul, with all of our strength. So the great hymn in Revelation 5, all glory, honour, praise, majesty. And so Colossians says we need to walk worthy of the Lord. Now honestly, And truly, there's very few Christians who can say that they're walking worthy of the Lord. Can anyone really say we are truly walking with the Lord? I mean, many aren't even walking close to 1% worthy of the glory of the Lord. 1 Timothy 6 verse 18, let them do good that they may be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share. That's 1 Timothy 6.18. We are expected as children of God, as servants of God, to be rich in good works, to give and to be willing to share. We are saved to serve. We are blessed and ought to be a blessing. We're not to be buckets, we're to be hosepipes, we're not to be reservoirs like the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is dead because All the rivers flow into it, and none flow out of it. The Red Sea, the Dead Sea, receives, but it doesn't give out. No water flows out of the Dead Sea. Why? That's the lowest point on Earth. And everything flows into it, and the Dead Sea is so dead, no fish can live there. You can't use it for irrigation. You'll kill the crops if you use the Dead Sea for irrigation. Dead Sea is dead. And there's a lot of Christians who are like that. They're so low. They take the blessings but they don't pass any on. We are not to be buckets, we are to be hose pipes, we are to be channels, we are to be irrigation methods in order to pass on the blessings to others. In Titus 2 verse 7 we read, in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works. In doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility. This is a refrain throughout the Bible, to be rich in good works, to be a patent of good works. And in our doctrine to show integrity, reverence, and incorruptibility, our doctrine should determine our deeds. Our creed should determine our conduct. Our belief should affect our behavior. And the problem is that we've got a lot of schizophrenics out there. A lot of Christians who might be Christians in their hearts, but they're pagans in their minds. Or they might be Christians in their heads, but their heart is far from them. Or they might be Christians in their hearts, but not in their hands. It's not what they do. We're meant to be body, mind, and spirit. Love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we go to Titus chapter 2 verse 14, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people zealous for good works. God expects us to be zealous, to be enthusiastic for good works. Titus 3 verse 8. This is a faithful saying and these things I want you to affirm constantly. That those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men. Are we profitable? Are we fruitful? Are we zealous? Are we continually being a pattern of good works and being careful to maintain good works? I remember as a new Christian having this sense of worthlessness. I'm saved, but what good am I? I can't do anything. I mean, there's all these people around here so gifted, and all these people with so many abilities and so on, and here I am, I know nothing about anything, and I'm a brand-new convert, and I don't even know about Daniel of the Lion's Den. I mean, I'm just learning everything for the first time, brand-new Christian, age 17, and, well, I got the chance to put up the hymn numbers, and to help with the printing, and with the old Gestetner, what was it? Yes, the rodeo machines, we used to literally hand grind it out and smell the meths and you'd sort of get high doing the printing. running the tracks down and handing out leaflets and putting up posters, and I just kept feeling, but it's not enough, I'm not doing enough, I need to do more. What the Lord has done to me is just such a need to get involved, EE, door to door. Not enough, get out there in the train stations, distributing literature, ordering boxes of literature, and just the need to express the love of God and the joy of discovering or having revealed to me. This is the thing. At first I thought I chose God, and later I found he chose me. At first I thought that I'd found God, but he wasn't lost. He was the one who found me. And this is it, to just be able to communicate what I'd learnt, which at that time wasn't much, but it was a start. But I'm deeply concerned to see a lot of people today are very happy to just sit and receive, you know, like the Dead Sea. Just give me, give me, give me. Hand open. Someone must bless me, feed me, teach me, give me. But they don't want to get involved in helping. Maybe we can't do much, but we can all do something. We can all do more. And the average Pastor and church leader is struggling and needs a lot more people to volunteer the services and make themselves available. And we need a redistribution of work and responsibilities because the harvest really is large and the workers are unbelievably few. So we've got to be careful to maintain good works, good works that are profitable to men. Hebrews 10 verse 24 says, let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. When we're told in Hebrews 10 not to forsake the assembling together of one another. but to be careful to consider one another, how we can stir up and provoke good works and good deeds. Well, that's important. That's one reason why we should be regularly gathering together in congregations and Bible study fellowships and home cells and accountability groups, that we can stir one another, that we can provoke one another to good deeds, that we can inspire and encourage one another. People need a lot of encouragement now more than ever. Never has the church been shut down, silenced, blinded and silenced as much as it has under this COVID cult over the last 19 months. It's just bizarre. And to get people out of lockdown lethargy and get them back out into the streets and back out door to door and get them back into the community, evangelising, witnessing, doing something. James 2 verse 17, we should all know it. That's also faith. If it does not have works, it is dead. What do you do in first aid? Come across someone lying on the street. First thing you do is you feel for a pulse. If there's no pulse, check, is the person breathing? If they're not breathing, if there's no pulse, the person's probably dead. I mean, these are just some of the indications. The heart's not beating, there's no pulse, and there's no breathing. Now, if there's not evidence of life, you've got to assume that there's death. And so this is how we look at the fruit. Is there the fruit of the flesh? Is there the fruit of the spirit? Is this indication of spiritual life or not? Now, when you go to a doctor and the doctor starts to ask you questions. What's your appetite like? Things like this and exercise. If a person says, you know, I haven't eaten anything in two weeks, don't feel hungry. You know, the person's getting sick, or the person's got endless headaches. He looks for symptoms and tries to work out, OK, if I take all these things together, what are the possibilities of what causes? Now, when you get a Christian who, no, haven't been to church in a year, I haven't read my Bible in months, haven't prayed in many months, and so on and so forth, what are you to assume? This is the evidence of spiritual death. This person isn't just sick. There's real problems, because how can you be alive if you're not breathing? And when Charles Spurgeon was asked, what's more important, to pray or to praise? And he said, what is more important, to breathe in or to breathe out? You need to do both. It's not a question of either or, it's both that. You need to trust and obey. There's prayer and praise. I mean, you've got two legs, bird has two wings, you've only got one, you know, you've got a circle for your bird. It's not very helpful if you've only got one string or one foot or one wing. We need to have both, we need balance, trust and obey, prayer and praise. Breathe in, breathe out. James 2, verse 18. But someone will say, you have faith, an eye of works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. And this is a key message in the book of James. Faith and works go together. Works do not create faith, but faith produces works. Faith produces the fruit of good works, just like what's the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And through the flesh, well we know that, that's all around us all the time. So faith and works are not meant to be enemies, they're meant to be friends. Charles Spurgeon was once asked, how do you reconcile being an evangelist with being a Calvinist? He says, I don't need to reconcile friends. It goes together. You believe in the sovereignty of God, you believe in evangelism. How on earth can you separate the two? Unless you believe that God can save and that God is powerful to save, why would you even be an evangelist if it's all up to me to persuade people and I've got to save people? That kind of God doesn't save. Our God saves. He answers prayer. He's all-powerful. This is the God of the Bible. And so, as I said, I see no contradiction between my Calvinism and my evangelism. You can't have one without the other. 1 Peter 2 and verse 18, having your conduct honorable amongst the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may buy your good works, which they observe. Glorify God in the day of visitation. In other words, you will be criticized. You know you'll be criticized. Jesus suffered for us and he was hated. If he was hated, then we mustn't expect to be loved by the world. And so if he has spoken against, we must expect to be spoken against. But let them acknowledge that you shouldn't be persecuted for self-righteousness sake, you shouldn't be persecuted for wickedness sake, you should be persecuted for righteousness sake. They should, even while they attack you, they should have to acknowledge the good deeds, the good works, the fruit of real faith. We read of Dorcas in Acts 9 verse 36, a woman who is full of good works and charitable deeds. Read in 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 3, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, your labor of love, your patience of hope in our Lord Jesus in the sight of God our Father. So this is one of the observations, the evidence of good faith is good works. Revelation 2 verse 2, the first letter, to the churches in Revelation is a commendation. I know your works, your labor, your patience. You cannot bear those who are evil. You've tested those who say they're apostles and are not, but you found them to be liars. And so the Lord expects us to be discerning. He expects us to be profitable in work, to be patient in our labors. All of these are good signs. These are all things that we should be involved in. James 4, verse 17 says, anyone remember that part, James 4, 17? To know the good that you ought to do and not to do it is sin. To know the good that you ought to do and to fail to do it is sin. So we need to be those who are zealous for good works, those who maintain a pattern of good works. And I remember being up in Northern Ireland back in 2009, the guest of Dr Ian Paisley, and it was the 150th anniversary of the Ulster Revival, the great Ulster Revival, 1859. And he took us to the actual schoolhouse where this revival began. And it started with these words. Can you not do something more for God? A school teacher called a young teenage boy to himself and he said to him, can you not do something more for God? Can you not gather a few of your careless friends together and start a Bible study and prayer fellowship? And this young man, who was zealous for the Lord, got four other friends together and they went to the schoolhouse on a Friday evening, every Friday evening, and they would each have to carry some coal to put in the fireplace, because it's very cold in Northern Ireland in winter, and they'd heat up the room with a fire, and then they would heat up their souls with the Word of God and pray. And this little group of five, they gathered and they read through the Bible, they prayed, and so this was just a teenage boy leading his friends in a Bible study. And this Bible study grew. It grew, and it grew, and it grew, until it was 50, meeting every Friday night for Bible study and prayer. And revival started. There was conviction of sin. There was a real move of God. And the day came at the school classroom where this teacher had spoken to this pupil, that he saw one of the students was under plain conviction of sin. So he asked this young boy, Can't you take him out and pray with him, see if you can bring him some guidance and consolation, because he obviously was under conviction. And as he was outside in the playground area, praying with this young boy, suddenly conviction of sin came on the students inside the classroom. And they fell on their knees and started to weep and confess their sins and pray, including the teacher. The girls, who were in the upstairs section of the school, looked out the window, saw, they heard the sounds, they looked out, and they just saw this one boy and the other on their knees in the playground praying. And conviction of sin came on them. They fell to their knees in the upstairs classroom, started each one praying to the Lord. Some adults were walking by outside, and they heard this strange sound, and they were going towards school to see what's going on. Hearing these high sounds, and people crying out to God. And conviction of sin came on them, and falling on their knees in their dusty, dirty road. Ladies, gentlemen, serving people, people carrying deliveries, fell on their knees in the street, and started to weep, and to pray, and to confess their sins. And it was 11 o'clock at night before the school could lock up and the last person had gone home. The next day the people gathered in the town square and again Ian Paisley took me to this very site where it is. We've got the books on the Ulster Revival of 1859 in the bookshop and the library. And went to this area where the ministers of the town, four different ministers, came to the village square and there was everyone gathered there. of the town. It looked like everyone was there. And there were so many, they knew they couldn't speak to them all. So the four ministers divided the people into four groups so that they could address them. And the people were all on their knees, praying and seeking to get right with God. It got so extensive that Charles Spurgeon came to speak. And they showed me the church. In this Presbyterian church where the people came, you can see that the stone pillars have been moved to the side. You can literally see, this is, you know, it's slightly off because the people wedged in there, harbour workers, dock workers, sailors and others, they crammed into church so much that the stone pillars were shifted. And to this day, you can see it. And the people poured in so much. There were so many people in this one church that they were afraid the upper gallery would give way, because they'd built these upper wooden galleries. You see some of them downtown, quite popular in the old churches. They said they were afraid the upper galleries would break. All the people gathered outside, and it was drizzling. which is quite common in the Emerald Isle. That's why it's always green out there in Ireland. A lot of rain most of the time. They went outside and in the parking area where the people had their horses and horse carts and so on, the people knelt in prayer and they prayed in the rain. the entire congregation. And the conviction of sin was so great upon them. When Charles Spurgeon came, they found the church wasn't big enough, the hall wasn't big enough, the music halls weren't big enough, the town hall wasn't big enough, they had to go into the gardens. And they had big rallies and crusades. This spread over people who'd been to Northern Ireland, were so impressed by this, they went to New York and began a prayer meeting in New York. And it was a premium that just kept growing. And there were many premiums and multiplied premiums. And it spread to Cape Town. It started in Worcester, 1860 revival under Andrew Murray. There was such revival, it spread to Sweden. It spread all over the world. There was a phenomenal amount of missionaries were recruited at that time. And from 1860s, the amounts of missionaries going out just quadrupled. They didn't have enough ministers in the Western Cape when the 1860 revival hit. There was, I think, four theological students in the whole of Stonebush University. The next year there were 50 new theological students. That kind of growth. One poor pastor in Calvinia had for years held a prayer meeting where not one single member of his church had ever attended the prayer meeting. Not one. He had had these prayer meetings. He was the only one there. Not a deacon, not a member. And suddenly the church couldn't contain the prayer meeting. Same thing happened in Paal, Stonebosch, Wellington. You can go all over the Western Cape and you can see Dutch-formed churches where it used to be a rectangle, and then they had to build out the sidewalks, and then had to build the upper galleries to accommodate the explosion in church attendance in all of these towns. And it spread all the way up to Crofinet. Absolutely amazing. But how did it start? Bible study and prayer. And a simple challenge. Can you Not someone else. Can you not do something more for God? That simple challenge, acted on by one young teenager, which led to a prayer meeting and a Bible study, which spread, and one of the most extraordinary outpourings of conviction of sin They calculated the numbers added to churches at the end of 1859 in 300 and something thousand just in Northern Ireland. That kind of church growth is phenomenal when you think of the amount of people they had there. And this isn't numbers who made a stand at a meeting, this is numbers added to church membership on the ground. And the very physical In fact, you can go along and look at the architecture of the churches around Cape Town. You can see in Stonebush, in Franschhoek, all over where they put, when did they build the side wings? 1860 or 1861 or 1862. And when did they build the upper galleries? 1860, 1861, 1862. That's just, it's there on a plot, that's part of the history. The stone's crying out. When we look at the challenge in Ephesians 2 verse 10 which we looked at last week. How we are being called in Ephesians 2 verse 10 We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before and that we should walk in. God has good works for each one of us. Some things that only we can do, unique. I mean, there's some people each of us are in contact with that no one else is in contact with, where we have relationships that no one else has that relationship. There are some people's skills and giftings more obvious than others. But remember, the last will be first, the first will be last. Sometimes what we look down and think is not so significant can be most significant. Our Lord said that little widow who put in those two little coins, the smallest coins you could put in, put in more than all the rest, because they gave out of their abundance, but she gave all that she had. And often it's the small things that make the big difference in the long end. In fact, a chain's as strong as the weakest link. And we part of the church, you think of Andrew, he's not considered one of the most spectacular of the apostles. And yet Andrew brought Peter to the Lord. Andrew brought this little boy with his lunch to Jesus, which the Lord multiplied into a meal for thousands. Andrew, whenever you read of him in the Bible, he's bringing someone to Jesus. Now we don't know much of what Andrew did, but we do know he brought people to Christ. And that affected the world. And we need to have this understanding of what God's done for us, and who God is, and how great he is, so that we will expect great things from God, and attempt great things for God. That we won't dishonor God by small faith and small obedience, but we'll honor God with great faith and great obedience. And Bill Bethlehem used to love saying, God just loves to be trusted. God loves to be trusted. And so often in missions, I must say, we look at it and the people are saying, no, can't be done, shouldn't be done, there's no money, it's too dangerous, this isn't the right time, you're not the right person. And no end of discouragement. There's all the people, the gifts of discouragement's on. But you know, we can see in our history, looking back over four decades, the naysayers were wrong. And the step of faith was blessed by God. So looking back, we can say, when we stepped up in faith, God blessed it. But if we stayed at home and did nothing, what would we know of God's provision and protection and grace? One has to, what can we do more? Well, we can all read the Bible more, that's for sure. One chapter of the Bible a day. can get through the whole Bible in one year, in four years. It says 1,187 chapters of the Bible. If you read four chapters of the Bible a day, it gets through the whole Bible in one year. That's not a very big undertaking. Four chapters a day, 20, 25 minutes, just to read it? Surely that's doable. Get through every book in the Bible in one year? Can we all pray more? We can. Instead of revving our engines at a traffic light, which doesn't make the traffic light change quicker, we could do what someone I heard says, every time it gets to a red light, they pray for someone. That's a good idea. I know people have got the practice of praying before they start their car and drive. That's a good practice. Praying before meals is always a good practice. We've instituted no mission. having hymn and prayer at the beginning of our day and having a chapter that we share reading before lunch. That's just something added. Can we not do something more? And hopefully it'll stimulate people reading through saying, you know, I want to know more about that, and let me check what the Reformation Study Bible footnotes say about this, and let me open up a commentary, let's discuss this. But hopefully it'll make some people go back and study more. Just the fact of reading the Bible more, having a New Testament in our pocket, having a Bible in our bag, having a Bible in our car, having a Bible where we need it, that is always helpful. All I've found over the years, It's very good not to take your own personal Bible with you when you go out on the streets. Yes, you might end up wanting to give it to someone. So take a clean Bible, or New Testament Gideons or whatever, so that you can, if you meet someone who needs a Bible and you've prayed to someone, you can give them the Bible you've got with you. Instead of taking your own well-worn, precious, no, I can't let you have my Bible. But to be able to use the Bible that you've been using in the streets, or in the field, or door to door, and give that to people. We can all do more Bible reading and Bible study. And we can all pray more. This mission started in all-night prayer meetings, praying through the night. in the army when they kept you busy anyway during the day. It's not like we had a lot of spare time. But we prayed, we thought, we lose sleep for the army. We've got to stand guard duty. You've got two hours on, and you've got four hours off, and you've got two hours on, and you've got four hours off through the night. So you'd lose sleep. Now if we did that for the army, let's do it for the Lord. So we'd have our prayer duties. And we'd pray in uplosses through the night, take an operation world, and we'd pray by twos. Later, it got bigger groups, and we could actually really spread out and even have several prayer meetings going on in the army chapel each night. But it's a wonderful thing. And by the way, early frontline camps, We would have guard duty through the night at every one of our camps, and prayer duty as well. So everyone was on prayer duty and guard duty through the night. frequently. We had a fire bell ring and everyone's got to come out to put a fire on. It sort of basically worked on how to deprive people of sleep on our campsite courses, which isn't difficult. I did notice that people were not retaining much of the lectures at that point, which is why we pulled off a bit of this. But the point is that we started, we were born in prayer. And yet, and it's interesting, I can show the pictures. of the signs they had in the prayer meetings in Ulster and New York and so on at the time. No one to pray longer than five minutes, please, to allow everyone to pray, and no more than one prayer at one prayer meeting for each person, to allow everyone a chance to participate. Now, honestly, we don't need those signs these days, because you can get to prayer meetings and most people don't pray. I was shocked to go, when I first joined Hospital Christian Fellowship, the first mission I was with, to go to Bitira, a Dutch-formed church at Bitira. Well, at Bitira, a prayer. That sounds good. But I found it wasn't an hour. It was less. And prayer was not most of that hour either. They called it bit here, but there was a lot of other hana-hana and notices and this and that. But the actual prayer was a lot less. What is the matter? Why is it so hard to get people to pray? Why is it so hard to sustain people in prayer and to keep people focused in prayer? Why do we need to twist people's arms to get them to a prayer meeting? And the amount of people who, when we invite them to a life train or March for Life or something like this, I've got to pray about that. And funny, they never seem to be led to come. And it's just, I must pray about that. It's often a spiritual way of saying, no, I'm too lazy. And they don't want to say, no, I'm too lazy, I'm not interested, I'm too backslidden. They come up with a higher sounding, I must pray about that. And when they've done it, I said, great, you can join us for our prayer meeting. We've got a prayer vigil outside Palm Beach. Do you think they turn out for that? No, they don't turn out for that either. I suppose they prayed about that and the Lord must have told them, no, you're not to pray. Do we need guidance from God to do what he commands us to do? He commands us to pray. He commands us to witness. And yet, you've got these creative excuses that people come out to do nothing, or to do less, or it's someone else's fault, or I didn't feel led. But now, it's never been easier to be lazier than now. In the age of lockdown lunacy, because now we have lockdown lethargy and lockdown laziness, because people can say, I felt like I might have had a cold coming on. What on earth is it going to take to get people out of this paranoia and back into being normal people, if there is such a thing? We can all witness more. It's not difficult to witness. Conversations. A person mentions their name. A person tells you their name is Grace, and you can start to understand what Grace means. God's riches at Christ's expense. A person comes up with a name like Timothy, gift of God. If we know the meanings of the words, then we can start to get into conversation, or they want to talk about the weather, you can talk about, you can transition to spiritual matters, like the Lord took the woman at the well, talking about water, talking about spiritual water, living waters and into eternal matters. There's many good ways that we can transition from the physical and the temporal to the spiritual and the eternal in our conversations. Charles Spurgeon said, if I can get a person to think about eternity for five minutes, I can lead him to the Lord. I'm sure he's more eloquent than all of us, but still, it's a good challenge. If we can get people to think about eternity. And you think of this man, Frank Jenner, who for how many years, every day, went onto the streets, witnessed to tens of thousands of people, calculate over 100,000 people, personal witness, giving them a track in the streets. Good day, good morning, good afternoon. May I offer you something to read? Can I ask you, if you were to die today, do you know if you'd go to heaven? And are you saved? If not, you will go to hell." Very short sermons, one sentence, but over those years he didn't know if anyone had come to the Lord through it. And yet later it was revealed there were vast numbers had, through this ripple effect of his faithful witness. Now that's faithfulness. There he was, he's a naval seaman from a debauched heathen background who was converted. The person used to be a drunkard and now he's sober. But he did something for God, and did it consistently. And it's a testaments example. We can all witness a lot more. And it's easy. Taking tracts with us, just offering someone. We've got to stop at toll gates. We've got to stop at petrol stations. We have to go to shops. We have to deal with different things. If we've got tracts for each occasion, we can give people gospel literature. We start conversations. Sometimes they may say, thank you, put away. Might not be open to conversation right now. Other times you can go a bit further. You know, what is this? And you get into conversation. The point is, We can all do more Bible study, we can all do more praying, we can all do more witnessing, and we can give more. It's extraordinary how much can be given. Do you know, you take someone like Mary Slessor, who's got to be one of the poorest missionaries ever, and she was given by support of her mission 60 pounds a year, and she decided if she could do without white bread flower and all this other thing and so on. She could use that money to help care for her sick mother and sisters at home. And so here's this missionary in Calabar, Nigeria, sending her most of her 60 pounds back to help her family who's even poorer in England. Because she just works out, OK, I'm going to live on the land, and I'm not going to have any of these luxury things, which we wouldn't think are luxury at all. You get someone like David Livingston who determined to give all that he did not need. One of his most basic subsistence to the cause of missions. And this is while he was working in the cotton mills. And people who, literally widow's mites type of things. We can all give more. Everyone can pray. Most of us can give. And some of us can even go. And what about remembering the persecuted and those less fortunate than us? There's always people who know less than us who we can teach. There's always people who know more than us that we can learn from. And there's always people worse off than us that we can share something with. To speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. It's not much to make a standard life change once a year. Very few people do. It's only a commitment of two or three hours. And yet, Not many will turn up for that, or March for Life, or Mission No More, or Camps, or Courses, or Outreachers. I don't know how many have actually read Jonathan Edwards' resolutions. I think we've got them in the stands, some chapel library reprints. Jonathan Edwards' resolutions, what phenomenal resolutions he had. And it's not a bad idea to make some kind of resolutions for ourselves. Simple ones. I remember the first one I was challenged to make is Bible before breakfast. Simple resolution. Scripturian slogan. They're those people who make an excuse, and they're those people who make a plan. Of course, in Bor Makan Plan, we should be the kind of people who make a plan. It's easy to make an excuse. Excuses come so easy. To have an excuse why I couldn't do something or why it wasn't the right time, whatever, that's easy. But to do the job, to do it, and to do it thoroughly, and to do it well, and not to make an excuse. I don't know how many of you have heard the story about four people. It's a story about somebody, everybody, anybody and nobody. This is a story about four people. Everybody, somebody, anybody and nobody. There was an important job to do. And everyone was asked to do it. Everybody was sure somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it. But nobody did it. Somebody got angry because it was everybody's job. Everybody thought anybody would do it, but nobody realized that everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that everybody blamed somebody, when nobody did what anybody could have done. That is just so true to human nature. And this is why socialism can never work. You cannot have everybody expected to do everything. Someone's got to take initiative. We're walking towards the kitchen. There's a dirty plate. There's a dirty mug. This belongs there. I'm going that direction anyway. Just pick it up on the way. No problem. Walking down a path and you see a bit of litter there, takes two steps out of your way, pick it up, take it to the bin and so on. See something skew, straighten it. See something's in the wrong place, put it where it belongs. Somebody's obviously been separated from their whatever, just take it and put it in a place where they'll see it. There's so many things on a daily basis, without even thinking, without any inconvenience, we could just Do what needs to be done. Straighten. switch off, switch on, whatever the case may be. But unfortunately, most people miss the opportunities. I don't know why. Maybe we need to be more alert. Maybe we need to take more initiative. Maybe we need to care more. But we need to be looking out for those good works that God has prepared beforehand for us to do. Whether it's the person to speak to, the person to counsel, the person to witness to, the gift that we can give, the time that we can give, or how to use our time. I must say, I praise God for the gift of reading. My mother taught me to love reading. And I always had a book. And in the army, it was so good because it had these side panels on your trousers, and I'd always have a book in there. And I can still remember, to this day, those books and chapters and paragraphs and so on that I read sitting in the shooting range, four off-losses. So I had three-quarters of the time to just read. I went through, run, baby, run, crossing the switchblade, God Smuggler, and Tortured for Christ. Those four books I went through on the shooting range. Literally reading most of it there, while everyone else was just sitting there looking around. I didn't have to pay attention if I wasn't shooting. So a quarter of the time I'd be on the shooting line, and the rest of the time there's, I mean, four lines, three quarters of the time you're wasting your time. But if you've got a book to read, those cues, those times of home affairs, those times waiting at hospital, wherever it is, we can redeem the time by reading. There's so much we can do. In fact, it was well pointed out by George Verver. He said, it dates him a bit, but he said, the tape deck is one of the best inventions ever made. And he said, you can get, in your commuting time, whether you're talking about New York, London, whatever, the amount of time, people spend hours every day in commuting time. If you will use a tape deck and have sermons or lectures, you can get the equivalent of a college degree amount of lectures in eight years of utilizing your commuting time, either in the car or with a Walkman or whatever, CD player, as the case may be, traveling by the tube, the underground, the railway, the bus, whatever it is, or in your car if you happen to have car transport. And how many people, I mean, I wish I had time to study. But of course, if we utilize the commuting time, we actually do have, if we're wisely selecting good lectures and so on, which is what so much of what's put on sermon audio which is all free. And so much of what's on the William Carey site, there's a lot of ways we can redeem the time. It's just so important. We just sang, where duty calls or danger, you're never wanting to. That's part of the stand up, stand up for Jesus. It's a wonderful prayer here. Just to conclude with Ephesians 3 verse 20, Now unto him is able to do exceedingly abundantly above what we ask or think according to the power that works in us. To him be the glory in the church by Christ Jesus for all generations forever and ever. Amen.