What is the standard by which Christian missions and evangelism should be measured? To what should the church turn for guidance on taking the gospel to the nations? Paul Washer argues that it is the Scriptures alone that are able to equip us to accomplish the Great Commission.

Just to begin, let me say this. That the work of missions, the methodology of missions, is not that complicated. I break it down into two specific areas. You are either called to go down into the well, or you're called to hold the rope for those who go down. Either way, there's going to be scars on your hands.

Where are your scars? Have you sacrificed much of your life to go down into the well, to go to the nations, to go to the people groups that have yet to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ? Or have you sacrificed much of your life to send men to those places? We are all called to the Great Commission, all of us. Where are your scars?

Where are your scars? When I talk about missions, I want you to understand something. I believe in the absolute sovereignty of God. I do not believe that God is sitting on some makeshift throne in heaven, wringing His hands and weeping, thinking, I want to do so many things, but I just can't get people to do what I want them to do. I do not believe that.

I believe that God is sovereign. God is in control of absolutely everything. I believe that every decree that God has made will come to fruition. And I believe that on that great day, a mighty multitude of people that no one can count from every tribe, every nation, every people, every tongue. I believe that they will be gathered there before God in worshipping.

I serve a powerful God who does not fail in any of His ways. And yet, knowing that God will conquer, knowing that God will complete everything He has decreed, there is a question, what will be my part in this great work? Will I live for the world? Will I live for comfort? Will I live for all the things that glitter but are not gold?

Or will I live for the glory of God being demonstrated in all the nations? Let's pray. Father, I come before you in the name of your Son, and I worship you, I praise you. Your name is a strong tower, and the righteous run into it and are safe. You do not sleep, you do not slumber.

You keep us in our going out and our coming in. Your power cannot be measured. Your faithfulness extends to the heavens. Father, I pray that today you would get glory for yourself by moving in the hearts of your people. To give them first of all a view of Christ and His worthiness.

But also give them a view of the field that is wide unto harvest. And give them Father a tenacious holding onto the Word of God, to go forth into all nations, teaching everything Your Son has commanded. Help us in Jesus' name, Amen. Regarding the Word of God, let me say this, and it is extremely important that you understand it. If you believe in the inspiration of Scripture, the infallibility of Scripture, you have only fought half the battle, only half.

There is another battle that must be fought. You must not only believe that the Scriptures are the infallible Word of God, but you must believe that the Scriptures are sufficient for absolutely everything. There are some evangelicals, some denominations, and I applaud them that have fought long and hard to defend and maintain the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. I applaud their efforts, but then I see that they do not go far enough. For although they will say that the Scriptures are inspired, when it comes to ministry, when it comes to missions, when it comes to counseling, when it comes to preaching, they prove in their practice that they do not believe that the Scriptures are sufficient.

This is especially true with regard to missions. I want you to know that there is more missionary activity in the world today than ever before. And I'm going to say something that's going to sound critical and harsh. I believe that most of it, at least theologically, doctrinally, is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Every kind of nuance of ministry on the mission field, but where are the preachers?

Where are the proclaimers? Where are the church planters? Few and far between. We seem today to care more for making culturally sensitive churches than we do making biblically sensitive churches. I want you to know that cultures are a great expression of the sovereignty of God, and there are many good things in many cultures, but there is an overarching principle, there is a rule over every culture and it is the Scriptures, the revealed truth of God.

And we are not called to be rude and we are not called to push our way through a culture and to treat it with disdain. Yet at the same time, we are called to call all the cultures to submission to the Word of God. Another great and important point. Someone wants to be a missionary, and so they go to seminary to study missions. That's not bad in itself, but it's quite incomplete.

Why? But it's quite incomplete. Why? The work of missions, of defining the message of missions, of defining the methodology of missions, it is not the work of the culturally relevant church growth expert. We define the message of missions and we define the methodology of missions through the work of the exegete and the theologian.

We care not for the dictates of culture. We only ask ourself this question. What has God told us to do? And How has God told us to do it? Never forget.

Now listen, if you go to study in a place, you want to be a missionary, then what should you study? Well, I'll tell you. Hermeneutics, Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology, and church history. If you want to work in counseling, what should you study? Hermeneutics, Greek and Hebrew, Systematic Theology, Church history.

Now although I do not lay any affirmation upon this ministry, I must acknowledge that this ministry exists, but I hear so many young people say they want to get involved in youth ministry, and so they go to a seminary to learn to do youth ministry. What should they do? They should put that to a side and they should study hermeneutics, Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology and church history. Because if you know the Scriptures, you know how to interpret the Scriptures and you can do so in the context of church history, then you can do any sort of ministry on the face of the earth and do it biblically. We should never go somewhere to learn how to do methodologies.

We should go somewhere to learn how to interpret scripture and then from the scripture draw forth our methodology. In missions, I want you to think about this. When a missionary goes out to plant a church among a people group that has possibly never heard the gospel, that missionary needs to be one of our greatest theologians, one of our greatest expositors. Why? Because the doctrine, the church life, the family life, The piety and everything else of that people group is going to be shaped by that man and by his teaching.

But isn't it true that so often those who want to do missions are more given to methodologies. Care little for the things of hermeneutics and systematic theology and church history. They want to just go, go, go. But I want to tell you this, and it's very important, missions is not about sending missionaries. Missions is about sending God's truth through missionaries.

And if they do not know God's truth, and they have no ability to communicate God's truth, they have no business being a missionary. A young man called me many, many years ago while I was in Peru. And he was in seminary and he said, brother Washer, I want to come down to Peru to work with you. I said, wonderful. How are you in your studies?

Tell me about your study of Scripture. What are you working on at this moment? What book are you studying through? Well, Brother Washer, you know, that's really not one of my strengths. I just want to come to Peru and give my life away.

Ok? Tell me about your work in systematic theology. Well again brother Washer, that's really not, that's not my gifting. I just want to come to Peru to give my life away." Well, tell me about your growth in expository preaching. Well, Brother Washer, you know, I recognize all that kind of stuff is important, but that's really not who I am.

I just want to come to Peru and give my life away. I said, Young man, no one in Peru needs your life. The people in Peru, they need God. And they need someone who can come down here, open up their mouth and open up their Bible and tell them who God is and what God requires of them. Now you see, you dealt harshly with that young man, no, I did everything I needed to do to help him.

To rock him out of this contemporary current that you can somehow do evangelism, you can somehow do missions because you're trained in culture. Or you've grabbed a hold of the latest church growth fad. Or you're riding the coattail of the latest guru in missions. There's much missionary activity. How much of it is worth doing?

Now first of all I just want to say the Scriptures are sufficient. And there is so much that I want to say about that today that I need to preach about six hours. But I've only got a short time with you, so I want to look at a few things. First of all, the Scriptures are sufficient to tell you, command you to go. The Great Commission is not an option for the believer.

I have written down here five different places, Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20, Acts 1-8, that tells the church to go. That tells the church not to just wait for subjective leadership, but to open their eyes and look at the fields that are white unto harvest. That when you see all the Christians gathered together in one place, and yet there's over a thousand people groups, without the gospel of Jesus Christ, someone needs to open up their eyes and just say, the gospel is not being preached there, I'm going. To go. To go.

For those of you who are parents and serious about training your children, your goal should not be the comfort of your children, the fame of your children, the renown of your children in Christian ministry in the United States. Your goal should be to prepare your children for two things. Either to go down into the well and take the gospel to a place where it has never been preached or To with the same devotion hold the rope for those who are called to go. We need to go, we need to go, we need to go. For so many years in the back of our HeartCry magazine we would simply put this, What part of go don't you understand?

I wish I could take every one of you on a ride through the world. I wish for a moment you could crawl into my body and look through my eyes and see the horrid, ghastly things I have seen. From war, to starvation, to abuse, to suffering, to superstition. Things that have totally engulfed this planet all around the world, at this very moment, Every crime, every suffering, every whimpering child can be traced back to sin. And the only way sin is overcome and annulled is through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The only way cultures are changed is through the gospel of Jesus Christ and teaching what He commanded in the full counsel of Scripture. What part of go don't we understand? Because the Bible is sufficient to tell you to go, to get serious about the gospel. When I'm looking at a missionary candidate, or any young man, I don't look for the most brilliant, for the most proper, for even the best behaved. I look for the man who is wild in his heart, who has a passion for Christ.

I care not much for his externals. I want someone who will walk into the middle of a plaza, open up a bible and start crying out, Thus saith the Lord, until either people are converted or they take him, his bible, his tracks and his little portable pulpit and throw him out in the street. And I want that same young man to pick himself back up and walk into that plaza again and preach. So I was telling a group of young men yesterday, this conference is absolutely wonderful. I've learned so many things, just listening and just watching some of you, your children, your marriages, it's just absolutely wonderful.

But this is not the real world. You have to come down off of this mountain, don't you see? You have To go into the valley where all the demon possessed people are. You have to preach the gospel. We need young warriors, hardened, fearless, who care not for anything.

Their own life is not sacred to them. Who are willing to go, willing to go, willing to go. The Scriptures tell us to go. The Scriptures tell us why to go. Why to go.

First of all, why do we go? Well let me say this, often times in mission conferences you will hear that we need to go because of the great need, because of the great need, because of the great need, because people are perishing, people are perishing. That is true and that is one of the reasons why we go, but that is not the primary reason why we go. Why do we go? We go for the glory of God.

Listen to what Malachi says. It says, "...For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense is going to be offered to My name, and a great offering that is pure, for My name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts." Why do you go? You go for Him. I ask missionaries this, I say, Have there ever been times when you have stayed up all night, unable to sleep because of your burden for the lost? Many of them say, yes.

It afflicts my heart to know that that people group is without the gospel, that they are dying without the gospel. It hurts me, it kills me. I have spent many a sleepless night in that way. I say, good. Now let me ask you a question.

Have you ever spent a sleepless night pacing the floor? Because there were places on this globe where Jesus Christ is not worshipped as He ought to be worshipped. And many of them look at me with question. I've never heard such a thing. You see how humanistic we can be?

It's all about man. No, it is about man, but it's not all about man, And it's not even primarily about man. It's about God. Because I can tell you this, when you walk into that plaza, thinking that you're going to preach the gospel, and that angels are going to sing in the sky, and that people are all going to be converted, and then They're going to pick you up on their shoulders and carry you around singing the Hallelujah chorus. When you're a young missionary and you go into that plaza thinking everything is going to be wonderful and they start calling you a demon and they grab you and throw you out on the street, It's going to take a lot more than a love and a passion for men to make you get up, go back into that plaza and preach again.

You're going to have to have a passion for the glory of God. You will not be rid of me. Why? Because Every inch of this planet belongs to Jesus Christ. Every person who breathes belongs to Jesus Christ.

And I am here for Him. I hope all of you have heard the Moravian story. In Paris Reidhead's sermon, Ten shekels and a shirt, which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sermons that's ever been preached. He talks about the young Moravians who realized that in the West Indies, There was a group of about 3, 000 African slaves who were being held over there, but the man who ran the island said that no one, he was an atheist, he said that no one, no preacher would ever be allowed on that island. And then If one shipwrecked, they would take him into safety, but they would put him in a house or a room where he could not share the gospel with anyone.

Two Moravian boys heard that. It so broke their heart that they wanted to go there as missionaries. They knew they would not be allowed to go there as missionaries. And so what did they do? They contacted the man from Hamburg and they sold themselves into life long slavery.

So that they could go to that island as slaves and be able to witness to the other slaves. And as the boat was pulling away from the dock, and the parents were crying and weeping for the loss of their sons, The two boys locked arms and one of them cried out, May the Lamb receive the full reward for His suffering. They went there, they sold themselves into slavery for the glory of God. Oh, that we would have children like that. The privilege of having children like that.

To have your boy come to you one day, 17, dad you have trained me, you have trained me, I must go. Where are you going, son? To such and such country. Son, you go across that border and you preach the gospel. They'll kill you.

I know, dad. Will you walk with me to the border? Son, I will walk with you to the border. I will pray with you. I will send you off and I will kiss the ground your blood has fell upon.

Go! Preach the gospel! You're going to die son. You might as well die for something. For Him.

For Him. What does it matter if a man gain the whole world? Lose his soul. But you not only go for the glory of God, you go for the sake of the elect. You go for people.

There is much being said today about the glory of God, the glory of God, everything for the glory of God, and that is true. It cannot be said enough. It is as true as any statement ever made, everything is for the glory of God, but I want you to know something, you do not glorify God and you do not love God if you do not love and pity people. Even the worst sort of people. You love them, your heart goes out to them.

You want the whole world to come to know Christ. I remember going up a mountain there in the northern Andes, in the province of Pura, going to preach at a place, and I'm walking along, and it was during the war with the Sendero Luminoso, and I heard someone running down the path towards me, so I got behind a boulder knowing, this may be enemy, I don't know who this is, Maybe a village has been attacked. I get behind a boulder and I peer out and I see a mountain man running down the path, carrying a bundle in his arm, crying and crying, and I stepped out in front of him. I said, what's happened in the village? What's going on?

He says, it's not the village, it's not the village, it's my baby. I said, let me see him. I have some medicine with me, what's going on? I looked down at a baby that was going to die. And I said, why are you running?

There's no doctor down the hill. He goes, I know, but I've got to get to the priest. I've got to get to the priest. I've got to get to the priest. Why?

My baby will die. We'll go to hell. We'll go to hell. We'll go to hell. And I said, you just found a priest, one who knows the Word of God.

Let's sit down and talk about the Gospel. I'll give you a great assurance, not from some religious superstition, but from the Word of God itself. People like that all over the world, perishing, suffering, But not just people. The elect of God. Listen to what the apostle Paul says.

For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory. Listen to me. Some of you have come around and talked with me and the moment we talk, it's just obvious. We're brothers, we're sisters in Christ, We're closer to one another than blood-kin. We would die for one another.

Even after just a few minutes of conversation, we want to go home with one another and talk about the great things of God. We're sad that the conference will come to an end. We're sad that we don't have enough time to meet everyone. We're so in love because of Christ. Well, I want you to know, in the darkest nations of this world are found the elect of God.

When we go to the missionary field, when we go to the darkest holes in the world, One of the things that burns in the back of my mind is this, I'm going down into that dark and dangerous hole to pull out of there some of my brothers and sisters in Christ for whom Christ has died. I'm going to get family that are in bondage, that are oppressed by the devil himself. I'm going to get them. Men, draw your swords. It's time to enter.

Suffer all things for the sake of the elect. I'll tell you this, I've never regretted one scar. I've never regretted one wound no matter how deep. I've never regretted one sacrifice but I have regretted the times I have chosen comfort and self-preservation over death. We go for the sake of the elect, that's what the Scriptures tell us.

We also go. I don't have time to get into this, but it is so very important. The Scriptures command us to go, not to get decisions, not to get hands raised, not to count baptism so we can come back and tell everybody how great our missionary endeavors are. No, we go for the true conversion of the souls of men and for the establishment of biblical churches and biblical people and biblical families. My dear friend, what a travesty, how full of lies are the evangelistic and missionary reports.

People coming back after a week in the field on a missionary trip saying a thousand people were converted. No they're not. No they weren't. It is the joke of indigenous missionaries. Oh, here comes the Americans and they're going to preach and do their conference and count all the heads that are converted and go back to the states and boast about how many people were saved but none of them are going to show up to church on Sunday.

We must tell the truth. Missionary work is hard. And sometimes, every once in a while, there is a great move of the Spirit, and people are swept into the kingdom, but it means more than a decision. When the Spirit of God is working and sweeping through the people, it does not simply leave a few carnal people behind with hands raised. It leaves behind people who are dramatically changed, who gather together in the fellowship of a local church and start living like biblical Christians.

It transforms the culture. We are called to go out, not with this puny little gospel, begging for puny little decisions. We're to go out with the gospel of Jesus Christ and calling all men to repentance and faith and knowing that God has a great desire to make His name glorious in this world and He will do it and He will do it through the establishment of real solid local churches, real solid Christians, real solid families. So we go for the establishment of mature local churches. There is a thing today in missions that we just need to rapidly advance everywhere.

We need to go into a people, preach for a couple of weeks. If five people are gathered together, we call one of them an elder and we go on somewhere else. The only problem is, you can count all those little groups you start, but if Someone goes back a few months later, they're not there. My dear friend, to truly plant a church could cost a man his entire life to plant a biblical church, but it's worth it. It's worth it.

It's worth it. Now I want to talk for a moment about scriptures telling us how to prepare. You desire to be a missionary? Good. But that does not mean you've earned the right to go.

It's like young men when they are awakened to the opposite sex, when they are awakened to love, our culture tells them, well It's now time to participate. No, that is God's signal to them that it's time to prepare even more seriously than before. You do not have the right to take to yourself a wife unless you have prepared yourself to be a biblical man. In the same way, I desire to be a missionary. That is not enough.

You must prepare. And how must we prepare? Look at the example of Ezra in chapter 7 verse 10 it says, For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord. He'd set his heart. He had made it his purpose to study the law of the Lord.

Why? The people of Israel, their greatest need was to know God and to know God's will. It's the same for missions today. We must set our hearts to know the law of God. I care little about other things.

To know the law of God and to practice it. Teaching them, Jesus said, what I commanded you to do. And to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel. Paul told Timothy, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. Again, missions is not about sending missionaries.

Missions is about sending truth through missionaries. And if you're going to be a vessel of God to the nations, you must know how to handle truth. You must be trained in the Word. Young men, listen to me. You need to just literally breathe the Bible.

You need to bleed the Bible. You need to be saturated in the Scriptures, memorizing Scripture, reading the Scripture. Because that's your usefulness. That when your mouth opens, it does not open with the opinions of men, but it opens with thus sayeth the Lord. Now another thing that I want to say, And I mean to say exactly what I am saying.

In the preparation, we need the Word of God. But I'm going to say something that will scare some of you. We must be filled with the Holy Spirit. One of the great problems in Reformed movements, serious conservative movements that take the Bible seriously and want to be biblical, is that we have become afraid of the person of the Holy Spirit. And it's obvious, because there is so little power among us.

I want you to realize something, the apostles, the apostles, They spoke to the resurrected Christ and yet they were still timid and had no power to proclaim until the day the Holy Spirit fell upon them and they were transformed. We have allowed false teachers, false movements, heretics, many TV preachers, we have allowed them to steal our heritage. I want you to know something. I used to tell young men, you cannot preach without the power of the Holy Spirit. Now I want you to know, no, that's wrong.

You cannot breathe apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. I'm not talking about all the strange doctrines and the terrible things that are being done in His name. No, I'm talking about a man, if he's going to the mission field, if he's going to preach, If he's going to do anything, he must be a man who is constantly crying out for greater and greater infusions and outpourings of the Spirit of God in his life. It's not just an intellectual endeavor. It is an endeavor that requires the fullness, the filling of the Holy Spirit, seeking the face of God, His anointing upon your life.

Read the Puritans and see if they do not agree with me. Read Charles Spurgeon and see if he does not agree with me. I want to read to you something from the most respected Ian Murray, a man that I admire greatly, one of the most respected theologian historians of our day. He says this, While Pentecost instituted a new era, the work of Christ in bestowing the Spirit did not end then. And the fuller communication of the Spirit which marks the whole age of the last days begun at Pentecost was not to be constant and unvarying, for were it so, what purpose could be served by praying for more of the Spirit of God as disciples are clearly directed to do.

It was in response to the request, teach us to pray that Jesus said, if you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. This promise has no continuing relevance for the Christian, unless there is always more of the Spirit of God to be received. I want to read to you George Smeaton. No more mischievous and misleading theory could be propounded, nor any more dishonoring to the Holy Spirit, than the principle that because the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, the church has no need and no warrant to pray for effusions of the Spirit of God. On the contrary, the more the church asks for the Spirit and waits for His communications, the more she receives.

When we are regenerated, I want you to know we are complete in Christ and the Spirit of God indwells every believer. The believer in Christ does not have to go and ask that he be given the Holy Spirit in that sense because he has been given the Holy Spirit and the Spirit indwells Him. But throughout the Scriptures and throughout the history of church, men of God that have truly been used of God have spent their lives crying out for greater and greater manifestations of the Holy Spirit's power in their lives. Dear sister, you must raise children a most noble and important task. Dear sister, in all your learning, all your training, all your love for Christ, all your discipline, let me ask you a question.

Have you cried out for greater and greater infusions of the Spirit of God? To be strengthened by the Spirit of God. That the Spirit of God might be poured out on you in greater and greater measure. That you might do your task in the power of the Holy Spirit. Pastors, is this even a reality in your lives?

When was the last time in your desperation, your need, your weakness, you went to God and cried out for greater and greater manifestations of the Spirit's power in your life. To live a life of greater godliness, to live a life of greater usefulness and power for the ministry. That is one of our greatest, greatest needs. Spirit of God could sweep through this place in a moment and transform men, transform women. This is our need.

Do not be afraid of what God has given you. Do not be afraid of your inheritance, for it is necessary if the Gospel is to be taken to all the world. Now, how are we to go? Scriptures tell us we're to go thoroughly. He says, of course, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria even to the remotest part of the earth.

We go thoroughly and thus we eliminate romanticism. Now what do I mean by that? This is very important. I'm going to teach on it in the next session. I mean this.

It is not enough to go. We must go biblically. There are men who are thinking possibly about, I must go to China, I must go to China, I must be a missionary, I must preach, I must preach on the streets, I must teach, I must hold Bible studies. But what they've done is this, they've jumped from Jerusalem to the uttermost part of the world and they haven't passed through the rest of their responsibilities. What do I mean?

I have no problem saying before you that the great purpose of my ministry is that the Gospel be preached to the nations. But That is only one part, no matter how great the passion, it's only one part of my calling. I cannot neglect the other callings in my life in order, in order to do missions. I'll give you an example. I live my life based upon what I call concentric circles of concern.

Circles around me, like you were to drop a pebble into the water and circles would flow out from there. The center of that is my own training in godliness and seeking to be Christ-like. Because if I do not care for growth in personal piety, I will be no use to God. So my great concern is not going over to preach the gospel to the world, my great concern is first of all growing in personal piety and Christ's likeness. My second concern is my wife.

When I was single, I did not have those commands laid upon me. I could preach the Gospel 18 hours a day if I wanted to. I did not have a wife, I did not have children, but now in the providence of God, in His good will, I have a wife. And I cannot leap over her, I cannot neglect her to go do missions somewhere else. My wife.

Then after my wife, the next concentric circle, my children. What does it matter? Forgain the whole world, save the whole world, preach the gospel to the whole world, neglect my children unto death. As a matter of fact, if I neglect them, I cannot minister to others. And then from my children, it is the body of Christ.

And then from the body of Christ, the world. I do not simply just jump someplace else. Let me give you an example. A young man came to me years ago and said, I want to be a missionary to China. I love China.

I want to be a missionary to China. All I can think about is China because I love the Chinese. I love the Chinese so much. And I said, do you know why you love the Chinese? And he said, why?

I said, because you don't know any. He said, what do you mean? I said, I know many Chinese brethren and I love them dearly. But you see, you're talking all about this great love you have for them, this passion, because you're not over there with them. It's easy to love someone 10, 000 miles away.

If you can't love the person closest to you, I can assure you, you cannot love the person 10, 000 miles away. If you cannot love someone who is one with you, your own flesh, how are you going to love someone who is not of your own flesh. We go thoroughly. And how do we go? We go preaching.

We go teaching. We need men who find nothing in themselves to scatter about the world, who look inward and see that the world needs nothing of what they personally possess as man. We need men who realize that they must be sent out, not to carry themselves to the nations, but to carry the Word of God to the nations. Our usefulness in the mission ministry is according to our ability to communicate God's truth to men. It is truth that transforms and therefore we need preachers and we need teachers.

We need men who's going to make it their job to spend half the day alone with God, studying, and the other half of the day making known what they have learned to others. And teaching the full counsel of God's Word. Not just going into a culture and saying, you have Jesus now, everything's going to be alright. But you have Jesus now, and now I must teach you how to Walk in Him. And little by little, like good leaven, leavening a whole lump, the truth of God's Word is going to pass through your life and pass through your family and transform everything in its path.

We need to go. He says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, make followers of Jesus Christ, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. We need men who not only preach the truth, but seek to live it. Not only seek to get others submitted to the kingdom, but strive for their own submission to the kingdom. Teaching what has already been commanded us.

Teaching what we ourselves are applying to our own lives. Now here's another thing. I have eight minutes left and I've got to get this part in. We must not only go thoroughly, we must not only go preaching and teaching, we must go praying. So you want to be a missionary.

You've got the theology of David Brainerd. Congratulations. Do you have the prayer life of David Brainerd? Are you known in the night watch? He was.

Past the entire night, praying on a log in the snow, crying out for the conversion of the Indians, praying hide of India. If they asked him, do you want to preach or do you want to pray, He would say, Let some other man fill the pulpit, I will retire to the closet. Spurgeon, you know him as the greatest preacher who maybe ever lived apart from the apostles. Do you know him as a man of prayer? I have studied men and their usefulness to God.

And many times I do not find much in common, but I find this. They recognized their weakness and they were men who sought the face of God. Men who prayed. Isn't it amazing? Now pastor, listen to me.

We all struggle, we all do, but I want you to listen. Missionary, I want you to listen. Walk up to a pastor, how's your study time? Well I'm studying well, reading good books. How's your prayer life?

Well, it seems to be a common malady. What if you asked me for a recommendation for a certain pastor, certain elder to come to your church? And I write a glowing recommendation. He is a wonderful preacher, a wonderful expositor, seeks to submit himself to the Word of God. He's a wonderful family man, takes care of his children, loves his wife.

I fully recommend him. Signed, Paul Washer. P.S. But he cusses a little when he gets drunk. You would go, well that kind of ruins the rest of it.

He studies diligently. He seeks to be a good expositor of the Word. He loves his wife, loves his children. I fully recommend him. P.S.

His prayer life is the weakest aspect of His life. I hope you're convicted, because that's why I said it. I hope it hurts you. It hurts me. We have not, because we ask not.

I don't understand that in the providence of God, but I am not called to understand it in the providence of God. I'm called to believe it. I'm called to obey it. We have not because we ask not. I say this all the time.

I have many, many friends who are medical doctors. Just been blessed. They know more about my wife than I do. They can tell you everything about how she functions, how she breathes, how she gives birth. They can tell you everything about my wife, but they don't know my wife like I know my wife.

You may outshine the world in your theological doctrinal knowledge of God. But do you know God? Do you know Him? Do you walk with Him? Are you a man of prayer?

I want to just give you a prayer promise. It comes after a new covenant promise in Ezekiel 36. Now just listen. It's in verse 37. But after he goes through this new covenant promise of creating a new people in which He'll take out their heart of stone, put in a heart of flesh, put His Spirit within them, cause them to walk in His commands.

He's going to make this beautiful people, a people raised from the dead, regenerated by the Spirit of God, called back to God through the work of the Messiah. It's a beautiful promise, a beautiful passage. And then in the end of it, he says this, Thus says the Lord God, This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them. Isn't that amazing? This also I will ask the house of Israel, or I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them.

I will increase their men like a flock, like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed feast, so will the waste cities be filled with flocks of men. Then they will know that I am the Lord." It's as though God looks down on His child. I have regenerated your heart. I've taken out your heart of stone, given you a heart of flesh that will respond to Me. I've put My Spirit within you to indwell you and to cause you to walk in My commandments.

Oh, and as I send you forth, this also I will let you ask for Me. Ask Me for men. Ask Me. The fields are wide unto harvest, ask Me for them. Ask and ask and ask, and I will give them to you.

I want to say this last thing and it's simply this, go caring and loving. My dear friend, listen to me. In the church, in the new covenant, love is not something. It's everything. It's everything.

It's everything. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. To love your neighbor. To love. To love deeply.

To love sacrificially. To love that leads to mercy. To be willing to befriend the most broken, the most degenerated, the most filthy human being on the earth, because such were some of us. But we've been bought, We've been cleansed to go into this world because your heart is aflame with love for God, love for God's people, and love for even your enemies. Your enemies.

Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would use this exhortation in my life and in the life of my brothers and sisters in Christ that we would go and go biblically trusting in the sufficiency of Scripture. Jesus' name, Amen. For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the church and the family to the word of God and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches where you