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Some have asked me how to approach these meetings? I might ask that you approach them with a concern for New South Wales. Secondly, may I ask that you intensify your prayers? We have one Achilles heel, one great danger, and that is overconfidence, complacency, and a feeling that the crusade is off to such a good start we can relax. Satan is going to attack from some direction, I don't know where. Let's build a wall of prayer. Thirdly, I hope you will come with humility and an open mind. I know that a lot of the methods used are foreign to many of you, and I feel for some of you ministers.

Fourthly, I trust that as you preach, you will make your sermons heart-warming and evangelistic. Take some of the old subjects like the new birth, repentance, faith, and justification, and see what happens. You say-but my people are already far beyond that! I do not believe that your Christian people are going to bring the unconverted into the church unless they think a simple gospel will be presented.

Fifthly, a word must be said about tolerance to theology and methods. Just after the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches, I was invited by a Bishop and 18 of his clergymen to a city in Europe. The Dean of the Cathedral there opposed me until he had split the town, the Bishop being on one side with 18 clergymen, the Dean on the other with sixteen. And I wrote the Bishop and said it might be better if I don't come because of the press headlines. He answered me, "No, you can't let us down now. You must come." So I went. I said, "Isn't this particular man the man at Evanston that made such a wonderful statement in the committee about the need of unity when he expressed himself on the ecumenical movement?" He said, "Yes." I replied, "then why isn't he tolerant enough to go along with you now?" I shall never forget the Bishop's smile when he said, "You see, Evanston is nearly six thousand miles from here." In other words, in the top echelons we talk about an ecumenical attitude, but on the parish level when it comes down to something personal; when the chips are down, we're not quite as ecumenical as we thought.

Perhaps when we get through, it will be like it was in Scotland when a Presbyterian came to me and said: "You know, I never had any use for those P.B.'s, but I met some of them who would make wonderful Presbyterians." A Plymouth Brother has already told me that he has to change his whole attitude about the Church. He commented, "I have found men of God in the Anglican Church." And he looked surprised! That happened down in Melbourne.

May I emphasize this important fact, however: a church's spiritual life will never rise any higher than the personal life of its people. I am praying that to all of us will come a new spirit for Christ, a new consecration and dedication. One of the great Anglican leaders in Australia called me to his home, closed the door and locked it. He said to me, "I've been an Anglican priest for many years," and then he started weeping: "I need a new experience of God." We got on our knees and we prayed together.

Do you need a new experience with God, a new encounter with the living Christ? I pray that you will not be like Samson when he got up and wist not the Lord had departed from him. Have you done it the same old way until you are almost a perfectionist, but have lost the compassion, love, burden, and vision of the living Christ? Pray that it might return, and with a double portion of His Spirit.

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October (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52