Mission Impossible: Your Commitment to Christ (Urbana 81)

message from Urbana 81
by Billy Graham

There are a thousand things you can do with your life, a thousand things for which you can spend it. But how many of them will enable you to say at the end of your life, "No reserve, no retreat, no regrets"?

I well remember 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland, going after the city of Gdansk, which was then called Danzig. Hitler wanted a corridor to the sea, and his action marked the beginning of World War 2.

Poland sits astride Europe and has been the battlefield in many of the great wars that have raged across Europe. And many of those wars have started because of Poland.

One year ago I was in Poland, lecturing and speaking at the University of Warsaw. They were kind enough to give me an honorary doctor's degree. I talked to the foreign minister and many other people whose names are in the news right now, including the late Cardinal Wyszynski. I went to Rome and saw the Pope. We talked about Poland and other events in the world, and I could see his concern over world peace. My own conviction was strengthened that Christians cannot be silent and allow the world to approach the point of the genocide of the human race without at least speaking and praying for peace.

That has not always been my position, but it is my position now because a new factor has dawned upon my thinking - the terrible technology that science has created that can destroy the human race. Of course, we know from the Bible that ultimately God will intervene, and the Prince of peace will come back, and the kingdoms of this world will be his. But till then, whatever hour that may be, thousand years from now or a hundred years from now or tomorrow - we ought to be about the business of witnessing to the whole world of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Jesus gave the apostles an impossible task, a mission impossible. It was geographically impossible because a great part of the world had not been discovered at that time; physically impossible because they had no airplanes or radios or television or printed pages, and they had no way to get about except by donkey or camel.

Numerically, there were too few of them: one hundred twenty at most at Pentecost. Financially, Josephus says the wealth of the church at that time was equal to about 50,000 American dollars. Legally, in most parts of the known world it was against the law to talk about Jesus Christ. Logistically, Jesus Christ had told them to go to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria all at once. They couldn't do it. By every rule of the book, it was impossible to do what they were told to do except for one thing - the power of God that came in the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

People were there on that day from every part of the world, and they heard the gospel and carried it back to the then known world. And I pray that God will do it again in the decade of the '80s.

Two and a half weeks ago I was a guest at the house of Vice President Bush and his wife who have been friends of ours for many years. He gave a little dinner party on the evening of December 12th, and in the middle of the party he was called to the telephone. Jim Baker was on the phone from the White House and said that he must come to the situation room immediately. He had to leave and explained to us that things had broken loose in Poland.

I waited up for him that night and, when he came back about 11:00 or 12:00, he had a grim look on his face. I'll never forget when I went to bed that night. I said, "Oh, God, you have told us to pray for those in authority." I did not pray just for President Reagan that night and Vice President Bush. I prayed for Mr. Brezshnev; I prayed for the leaders of Poland, that God would give them wisdom because God puts up one and takes down another. God is sovereign.

Three times Jeremiah talked about a pagan king by the name of Nebuchadnezzar and quoting God he said, "Nebuchadnezzar my servant." We are to pray for our enemies.

Though we are different geographically, denominationally, racially, all those who know Christ as Savior are members of one body. The apostle Paul said, "The body is one and has many members" (1 Cor 12:12 RSV). It is to this "one body" that the Lord Jesus Christ committed his work. Christian service is not limited to a certain group within the church. We all have one or more gifts that the Holy Spirit has given, and it is the privilege and duty of each member to serve him.

Proclamation and Service Throughout the world today there is a lot of discussion within the Christian church about the mission of the church. And it is our purpose to consider missions and the mission of the church. I believe that mission can be summed up in two words: proclamation and service. These represent the essence of the Christian mission at home and abroad, and they are inseparably linked together as the key both to evangelism and to penetrating culture with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

During this century many evangelicals have removed themselves from culture instead of penetrated it. Many of them have accommodated themselves to the culture. We have all but lost our sense of what it means to be "in the world but not of the world." The Lord, I believe, taught that we are to be spiritually insulated but not isolated. We have created two separate realms, sacred and secular. The sacred is the realm of the church and things that pertain to our faith, and we place a high value on it. The secular realm is that of the world and culture, and we place a lower value on that. Richard Halverson, who is chaplain of the U.S. Senate, said recently that we have created a "destructive polarization between secular and sacred, a distinction you do not find in the New Testament. It is this thinking that makes the assumption that teaching public school is secular; teaching in Bible school or a Sunday-school class is sacred. Running the business of a corporation is secular; running the business of a church is sacred." When lay persons have little time to do these so-called spiritual things, they experience a low-grade frustration, and they don't think of themselves as ministers of Christ.

If we are ever going to do the job of getting the gospel to all the world, we are going to have to break out of our false distinction between the sacred and the secular. We as citizens of Christ's kingdom are living in occupied territory - as sheep among wolves. It is terribly dangerous, but what a challenge! It is even exciting! I would not want to live in any other period of history if I had a choice. We are in this world with a mission - the mission of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ and serving a needy world. If we try to separate proclamation from service we are doomed to failure. Jesus never separated the two and we dare not either. Jesus said, "I am among you as one who serves" (Lk 22:26-27 RSV).

A friend of mine who is writing a book on coping with culture asked a youth worker whether he thought a young person today could be a committed Christian and still be an accepted, respected member of his or her school scene. And the youth worker replied that he could think of only one person he knew who was successfully doing that - a young lady who had made it her
aim not to be popular at the university, not to be accepted, but just to serve others. In her school she had assumed the role of a servant and gone about doing the jobs that no one else would do. She was willing to work hard and let someone else have the credit, to do things behind the scenes in order to make others look good. Later she became very open in her proclamation of her Christian faith, and people listened and respected her for it. She had won the right to be heard through her service.

The Scriptures teach, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is Yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Phil 2:5-7 RSV).
As members of the body of Christ, we are called to the same radical commitment exemplified by our Lord. Put bluntly, it is a "self-emptying" ministry. He said we are to deny ourselves and take up a cross.

I have had the privilege of being with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. When she received the Nobel Prize a few years ago, the world was brought face to face with just such a "self-emptying" ministry. But I have met others and heard of others around the world who are carrying on similar ministries of sharing and giving that we will never hear about until we get to heaven. They haven't gotten a Nobel Prize. Their names have never been in the paper, but there are thousands of them out there. I have met them in the four corners of the world as it has been my privilege to travel and preach. That calling to be a servant of Christ and others begins right now. It is a calling given to everyone who names the name of Christ. It's a calling that begins right where you are - in your home, on your campus, in your dormitory, your apartment, your sorority, your fraternity. It begins in the school where you teach, the hospital where you are a nurse, the office where you work.

I believe that God wants many of you to go overseas in the future as his ambassadors around the world. I am also convinced that he wants all of us to live lives of total commitment and service to him right now where we are. Christ has loved us totally. He demonstrated this by his death on the cross and the shedding of his blood, and only total commitment to him and to his command to go into all the world is a reasonable response to that kind of love.

But first you must face the question of your own personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Many of you could not stand up and say, "I know my sins are forgiven. I know that I have received Christ as my Savior. I know that I am going to heaven if I should die. I know that I have eternal life." You couldn't say that because you are not sure.

Perhaps you're like I was - reared in the church, vice president of the young people's society. But I didn't know Christ. I thought I did. I had churchianity and Christianity, but I didn't have Christ. Many of you are like that. Has there come a time in your life when you repented of your sin and received Christ as Savior? Are you sure of it? Are you certain of it? He died on the cross; he rose again for you, but he also demands a response and that response must be repentance of sin. That means that you acknowledge that you are a sinner and you are willing to change, to turn from sin and live a new life in Christ. It means that by faith you receive him.

This is not something you can understand fully intellectually, because your mind has been affected by sin. Perhaps you don't know why you chose to attend Urbana, but God is speaking to you about your relationship with him. You know that you need to repent of your sin, to quit living for yourself and give your life to Jesus Christ in response to his love. That is the first step in becoming a part of God's mission in the world. The Bible says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." Only those who have been redeemed and have experienced salvation through faith in Christ have a message to proclaim. As God's own people, he gives us the privilege of declaring his gospel to the world.

Last year we held six crusades in Japan, and in every place we saw thousands of students. In some places, like Osaka, the police had to lock the big stadium gates. The governor of one city, a man who governs thirty million people, gave a reception for us with about a thousand guests. These included both Christians and non-Christians. When the governor stood up to speak, he suggested that there must be a reason why Christianity has not grown much in Japan since the seventeenth century. He said, "I think I know the reason. The gospel has not been made clear to us here. And I'm challenging you, when you travel throughout Japan, to make the gospel clear." That's all I needed. I had the authority from God and the authority from the government to make it clear!

Worship and Vocation As you consider your role in world mission and how God is leading you to express your proclamation and service for him, I would like to focus on several aspects. First, worship.

Worship is not a passive activity, but an active one. It's not something we watch, but something we do. Worship, both corporate and private, is necessary to sustain us in the midst of the sometimes hostile culture in which we live now or will be called to penetrate in the future for Christ. The apostle says in Philippians 2 that we should be "blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation" (v. 15). Certainly this is a crooked and depraved generation if there ever was one.

And you and I are to live in the middle of it as pure children without fault. We are to shine like stars in the universe as we hold out the Word of life. Where do we get that kind of life? Where do we get that kind of power? Many of you are wondering how you will face the temptations and discouragements of your campus culture. How can you maintain the closeness to God that you found at Urbana? You are going to have to make worship a part of your daily life - worship alone or with a few other Christians. You are going to have to establish a disciplined devotional life. Satan will oppose you at this point more than any other. In addition to systematic Bible study and prayer each day, get a good devotional book to help you, such as Oswald Chambers's My Utmost for His Highest. You will be a flop and a failure as a Christian witness unless you have a disciplined, daily devotional life. I have never met anyone around the world that was growing as a Christian that did not have a daily devotional life.

Besides worship, another aspect of your ministry of proclamation and service is vocation. Whatever vocation you follow, you are called to Christian service in it. You may be a politician, a business representative, a laborer, a teacher. But you are first and foremost a Christian. Everything you do is to be sacred in the sense that it is done for the Lord. "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.... It is the Lord Christ you are serving," said Paul (Col 3:23-24).

We often lament the fact that certain countries are closed to Christian activity. But there are opportunities and possibilities we have never even imagined. I heard about a young man and his wife who are right now living in a country that is closed to Christian missionaries. They are there at the invitation of the government to teach the young people of that country to play a certain sport. When they applied for their visa, they openly told the government that they were Christians and that they often spoke of their faith. The government told them, "We don't care what you talk about in private on your own time as long as you teach our young people to play your sport." There is another couple that we got a Christmas card from in code. They cannot talk openly about Christ, but they can bear the fruit of the Spirit. People often come and inquire what makes the difference. Thus, because of their dedicated service, they are able to give a quiet proclamation.

In Galatians 5 the apostle Paul lists the fruit of the spirit - "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." Then he goes on to say, "against such there is no law" (vv. 22-23 RSV). There is no law in the world that can keep you from loving somebody. There is no law that can keep us from having the joy that is produced by the Holy Spirit within us. In some countries you may not be able to use the public gifts like preaching or teaching, but you can bear the fruit of the Spirit. And when people see you are different, they will ask your secret. This is what brought Solzbenitsyn to Christ in a concentration camp in Siberia. There were three men from Estonia in the camp. They never talked about God, they just lived it. They were the hardest workers; they went out of the way to befriend everybody. One day when Solzbenitsyn was ready to commit suicide, one of them came up and drew the picture of a cross and walked away. Solzhenitsyn said, "I realized for the first time that that was the only place where real freedom was to be found." These men were the freest people in the world, even though they were in a concentration camp. When you know Christ, you can be free anywhere.

Is Jesus Christ the Lord of your vocation? Are you training so that you can serve him or yourself? Are you willing to let Christ change your motives and be the master of your life's work? If you're willing to go anywhere and do anything for him, you will be amazed at the opportunities he will open up to you. Whatever your vocation, it is part of your ministry of proclamation and service for Christ in the world.

Go Jesus said to his disciples, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit" (Jn 15:16 RSV). The first word of Jesus' Commission to his disciples was go. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. The Bible is filled with God's calling and God's sending. God calls us to his son the Lord Jesus Christ and then he sends us into the world. God does not reveal himself to satisfy our curiosity. He summons us that he may send us. When the thought that God had chosen me for ministry first struck me, I was humbled and astounded. I agonized and said, "No, Lord, no. I'll do anything except be an undertaker or a preacher!" Yet here I was. Having just accepted Christ as my Savior, I had said in a service of dedication, "Lord, I'll be what you want me to be."

And God was saying, "I want you to preach my gospel." "But Lord, I stutter when I talk I can't even stand up and talk in a classroom. How can I ever preach? I'm nothing - I have no education; I have no money; I have nothing." But God said, "I want you; I have chosen you." He didn't say it in so many words. I did not hear an audible voice. There was no lightning, no thunder. There was just that quiet working of the Holy Spirit, and one night on the eighteenth green of a golf course near Tampa, Florida, I knelt down and said, "Lord, I'm yours." And I began to realize the consequence of that - my whole life changed. Even the person I was to marry changed. Everything changed. He took me step by step.

Then after I had prepared four sermons, nobody wanted me to preach. And I said, "Lord, please send somebody to ask me!" Finally, I got a chance to preach in north Florida. I had prepared those four sermons, and I had spent weeks practicing them. I figured each sermon could last forty-five minutes. But that night, in a cold little Baptist church in north Florida, with thirty-six people present, I preached all four sermons in eight minutes!

The biblical emphasis upon God's call is a call to responsibility. It is an appointment to the exacting, rigorous work of God's redemptive mission - calling men and women to faith in Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die."

In the April 1981 issue of the Wycliffe Bible Translators' publication In Other Words, the editor, Hyatt Moore, wrote:

Years ago, a group of missionaries was sailing to a remote place where they hoped to minister the gospel. The captain of the ship warned them that they were risking their lives and tried to dissuade them. Their response was simple: "In every way, we died before we left." On March 7,1981, Chet Bitterman, in the service of the Lord, died his 'second death.' After being held for 48 days by terrorists, Chet had been executed and his body left in a bus in Bogota, Colombia. He was 28 years old. He left a wife, Brenda, and two young daughters.

Those who have already given their lives to the Lord can say with Paul, "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Phil 1:20-21). That is the call of God to your life. That is the great question you are going to have to face. Is God calling you to that kind of life and death? God is now appealing to your will. You are going to have to come to the point. I find that many students at many campuses do a lot of talking and debating and arguing, but they never come to the point of commitment. Someone said this is the generation of the uncommitted. I was at Oxford last year and met a sociologist who told me that the '60s was the generation of trouble; the '70s was the "me" generation; the '80s is the generation of survival. Will we survive?

God has chosen; God has commanded. Are you ready to answer? If we do not respond in obedience, we can become castaways, as Paul was afraid of: "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway" (1 Cor 9:27 KJV). What about you? Have you given God every key to your heart and life? Are there spaces and rooms and closets into which he has not fully come because you have not given up all the keys to your spiritual house?

I am asking you to make an affirmative response to the call of God, a response in which you dedicate your life totally to Christ. God is looking for young men and women who will say to him, "I'll go where you want me to go; I'll be what you want me to be, at home or abroad. I'll put my life under the lordship of Christ and recognize that I am in Christian service, even though I may be working at a secular job. And I am willing to go to the ends of the earth if that is your will, Oh Lord." A missionary is anyone, anywhere, who will obey the command to faithfully witness at home or abroad. You may be doing it under the auspices of a mission board or as a private citizen, working and supporting yourself. But God has given you a spiritual gift, and he calls you to put that to work in his service. But first you must be sure that the Lord Jesus Christ lives in your heart.

In 1913 a young man arrived in Cairo, Egypt. He was twenty-five years old, a graduate of Yale University and Princeton Seminary. He was tall, strong, handsome, intelligent, single and very rich. His name was William Borden from Chicago. He had come to Cairo as a missionary. Eventually, he wanted to go to China. Many people had difficulty understanding why a young millionaire wanted to spend his life like that, but those who knew Borden for any length of time understood it. The consuming desire of his life was to share the love of Jesus Christ with people wherever he was, whatever he was doing. He loved people and longed for them to know the God who loved them and died for them and who had changed his life. After only a few months in Cairo, Borden contracted cerebral meningitis and died. In the weeks following his death, the world began discovering some remarkable things about him. He never owned an automobile because, he said simply, "I can't afford one." Yet during his three years at Princeton he gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars to Christian work. Borden's biographer said of him: "No reserve, no retreat, no regrets had any place in Borden's consecration to God." Borden had planned to go to China as a missionary. But God had other plans. And the story of his life and early death became a rallying cry for hundreds who went to the mission field because of Borden of Yale.

Sandy Ford was only twenty-one. He was a great athlete, a great student and had just been elected president of the largest Inter-Varsity chapter at any university in the United States - the chapter at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He was one of the most remarkable young men it was ever my privilege to know.

One day Sandy Ford was running the mile and winning. Then he stumbled and fell. He was having a heart attack. He looked back and saw that he was still ahead, and he got back up and went a few more yards and fell again. He saw that he was still ahead, so he crawled across the finish line. Newspapers carried his picture on the front page.

Last month, on November 27th, after an eight-hour operation to fix it, Sandy's heart stopped beating. It never started again. Many people said, "What a tragedy." The newspapers in our state wrote editorials about his life. Thousands who knew him or didn't know him were shocked - but challenged. Sandy's life had not been cut short at twenty-one. It had been completed.
I was in New York the Sunday before Sandy's operation. Something said to me, "Go by Duke University and see Sandy." He was at the Duke hospital. I went seven hours out of my way to see him. He was my nephew, the son of Leighton Ford, who married my sister. I went into the hospital room, and we had two wonderful hours together. And Sandy said an interesting thing: "You know, Uncle Billy, I believe that my illness here has something to do with those meetings at the University this next fall. " Little did he know that by death he would be bringing the first message. God had a plan. Sandy had put himself totally and completely in the hands of Christ: "no reserve, no retreat, no regrets."

You do not know how much time you have. But that is not the important thing. The important thing is that from this moment on, you decide to be God's man or God's woman - without reserve, without retreat, without regrets - wherever he sends you. Jesus hung on the cross publicly with hundreds of people watching him and mocking him. He hung there for you, and if you were the only person in the whole world that needed him he would have died for you. That's how much he loves you. He is ready to come into your heart and forgive you, cleanse you, make you a new person and start you on a new road. Will you dedicate yourself to him without reserve, retreat or regrets?

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Mission Impossible: Your Commitment to Christ (Urbana 81)

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December 27-31, 2009