Becoming a true Christian is more than giving a public response such as raising a hand or going down the front of the meeting; it is a spiritual happening, a new birth that produces hunger for the Word, a turning of the heart toward God. A fruit is a love for truth, and perseverance even when faith brings hardship. The evidence of real conversion is not only the initial belief but also the following growth, love for Jesus, and willingness to suffer for His Name. To know that one has been born again is to find a new appetite for spiritual life and a settled certainty that God’s hand has begun a lasting work within.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] I don’t know whether you have had early experiences of being in church, being in Christian families, and having people gospelise you in the kiddies’ meeting. That happened to me, my parents going along to conventions, and I’d be put in the kids’ tent. I had an older brother. And when the meeting was over and we went back to be with our parents, and we got in the car and were driving back to our lodgings, as my big brother said, Jimmy put his hand up. Now, he’s talking about the fact that the young student who looked after the kids took it upon himself to give us a gospel message, and at the end to have a call, and we had to put our hand up. And I don’t know, I remember putting my hand up, but it didn’t make any difference to me, I’ve got to be honest. I just put my hand up.

[00:00:57] And he asked us to, and I don’t think anything happened. And I’ve always had, when dealing with children’s things, evangelistic things you put on for kids, a bit of an awareness of a danger of us giving them some equivalent happening that would make them think they were Christians when they weren’t. I think that about myself. Because yes, my brother was right, the man talked us into putting our hands up, and I did. But nothing happened, there was no change. And my subsequent later proper conversion proved the point, that I had not found the Lord. Now, the Bible does talk about, nonetheless, that if we are to be a real Christian, and I know I often use the title, what it means to be a Christian for a sermon topic, and I’m doing it again right now.

[00:01:50] What it means to be a Christian is not just that you’ve given some response, because the response may be just the summation of the talkings into that the meeting contained and you prove that they got you to do what meetings were meant to get you to do, make a response, but it meant nothing. It might have meant something to you and your humanity but when we look at the Scriptures and it talks about us, I think that the Scriptures do give us a summation of how we should be able to feel having made a response to God. There is some human experience. Now, generally speaking, when you talk about people getting properly converted, you go to the Bible and what you’re talking about is the objective truth of the gospel and how it can bring you to a place of belonging to God.

[00:02:43] But what I’m trying to do here is to actually concentrate on the type of the experience or the character of the experience when someone really does come to God and whether or not that can be tabulated or set out, shown, what it is for someone to have become a Christian, how did you feel that happening or what was the human experience, does the Bible have any descriptors of how it should be described. Well, now 1 Peter 2 verse 2 is talking, Peter talking to Christians and talking to them as to their experience of having become a Christian. And it says, Like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk. There is something about little kiddies, and us older ones can report from family life that this is true. One of the signs of a new baby being born, sooner or later in the hospital,

[00:03:46] there might be a bit of a lag of an hour or two, but what are the doctors, the nurses, all the people attending, including the parents, waiting to see happen? Those newborn babies know how to suck. And there’s something about a newborn child that proves their birth by how they desire the milk. Now, here our scripture is saying, Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. Now, what this is speaking about, that salvation isn’t only just that you’ve managed to be converted and give yourself a tick and now you’re a safe person. And salvation is the beginning of a process by which God is going to get more and more active in your life. And you’re going to mature. There’s not just birth, but there’s going to be maturation that comes across the years.

[00:04:47] And so, for someone to have really, truly been born again, the evidence of it is the growth that happened afterwards. And you can be certain you’ve been born again by the facts. One, that you got rather thirsty for the milk, and the milk, which is the word of God, really began to cause you to become aware that you were growing up into salvation. Now, in my case, I know when I really did get properly born again was at a Billy Graham crusade, and my brother and I both made a response on the same last Sunday afternoon in West Australia of his meetings there. And we got counselled and given some materials, including a little gospel. It was the gospel of Mark, if I’m remembering correctly. And we took it home. And both my brother and I read that through across several nights we took to get it done.

[00:05:43] We were both young. But we read it through until we finished, and I couldn’t stop wanting at that moment to come to read further, because the more I read of Jesus in that gospel of Mark, the more I knew. I knew that I knew him. I knew the spiritual milk. It makes a difference. It’s an experience of Christianity that gives you evidence you actually have been born again. One of the reasons why this has become, to me, something rather important to talk about is having been a teacher at theological college. It was the fact that every now and then you came in, or they came into the college students, for whom the appetite that they had was just an intellectual one. What were the ideas? Who thought what? You know, let’s talk about bandy around. Which one’s got the most weighting? Just intellectual.

[00:06:38] But if they could sit in theology classes where you open the Word of God and not have that soul-stirring happening, we knew as faculty who were real Christians and who weren’t. People who are there and doing theological education, sometimes they may have been born again and then entered a stage where what they were fed destroyed the trust in the Bible, and so they were there for another purpose. They didn’t show any infant loving the pure spiritual milk. And we didn’t notice that sense of growing up to certainty of the truth that the Bible gives to you if you study it. It’s what it’s meant to do. But I’m talking here about the experiential side of knowing that you are a real Christian is something that you’d get from it having happened. The desire for the milk and the sense of progress.

[00:07:42] And both my brother and I, when we finished reading that Gospel of Mark, we were looking for more all the time. That’s my first verse. I’ve only got four of them and there are four ways to know that you are a real Christian and one is whether or not you went for the milk. And it’s a very telling thing. The same thing happens at later stages in our life. Keep it there. That’s where I’m going next. Thank you. Same thing happens later in our life if your family moves somewhere and there is no declaration of the word of God and you go to church and it’s just a recitation or kneelings and standings and saying intellectual stuff put together in history. If that’s all churches or on the other hand if church is made by formalities and there’s people who wear special clothes and by the specialness of how the sermons go

[00:08:43] there’s some sense in which you can have a feeling of the mystery and the churches can be very good at creating some sense of mystery and that makes people think yeah, yeah, this is what church is meant to be. But there’s something else that ought to be the product and it’s not by there being special ordained men with dog collars on or by there being things that whatever denomination you are there’s things that are meant to be done and when they’re done correctly, yes, we had a proper church. No, let’s just read a bit more in this spot and this is in Acts 11, 19 and following. Now those who were scattered abroad because of the persecution that arose over Stephen travelled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch speaking the word to no one except Jews. They had taken on board

[00:09:40] which was the status quo of the Christian group that the message of salvation was for the Jews but there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene obviously from where they come from they’re used to not mixing just with Jews who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also. Hellenists is referring to what language, what culture are the people, they could be Jews or they could be total just citizens who have the culture of Hellenism. The word Hellen is another word for Greek so Hellenists are people whose first language is Greek. And these men from Cyprus and Cyrene being used to bumping into lots of people who are not set Jews they just didn’t know enough not to preach only to the Jewish people but they preached the Lord Jesus and the hand of the Lord was with them.

[00:10:37] In other words in the history of the spread of the Christian religion God stepped in and led by what he did for his people to discover that the gospel was for more than just Jews and the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number believed a great number who believed now look at this here I’m getting to my next point a great number who believed turned to the Lord I can remember reading this and noticing the way it was expressed their believing, that wasn’t just the end of it some people believed and that’s that for the ones who believed, they turned to the Lord now if you think this through, it means that someone who’s coming to Christ it isn’t only just that their intellectual beliefs were given the evidence that they’d say and nod their heads and say yes that’s right

[00:11:34] becoming a Christian isn’t only the sort of faith that is what you’ve come to believe faith does encapsulate the mental assent on certain propositions yes that’s true but faith has got something more to it than that it’s got in it a decision now you know I’ve had a background when in my younger years of being in Youth for Christ and being involved in their rallies that they used to have and also being called, asked by them to go and preach I ran Queensland at any old place, any young place that might have had rallies and they needed someone to send us a preacher and that was me while I was a student and then when I became a teacher I was in my spare time doing this a lot and one of the things in Youth for Christ is that back then there was a culture a culture about working out whether a rally was successful

[00:12:34] and often you get a rally to speak at and the young people would be brought by there being a good music band and they had a lot of good things that they did in getting people to come off and they depended upon local churches who utilise Youth for Christ rallies and I got to be the preacher many times but what with those who were the leaders, Eric Leach and Sam Hayburn and some of these characters who were the leaders here in Queensland, what they wanted to know was how many decisions did you get? How many decisions did you get? I’ve been in different circles where people criticised Youth for Christ because they concentrated and the people who ran the organisation were practical men who were very good at organizing and people who love the gospel, and they were unaware of how they worded things,

[00:13:27] how they were getting some opposition from theological educators, particularly the Queensland Bible Institute, which was up at 1 Cross Street in Tuong, used to provide a lot of young people to come into Youth for Christ service, but then something happened in the Bible College where they had teaching that it’s wrong to put emphasis on the human experience. In fact, they actually taught their students that you shouldn’t get this business of getting people to give testimonies because it concentrates on human experience. They actually had a semi-good idea, I have to say and admit, that they wanted to stress that it’s more important that you concentrate on the historical facts and what the scripture says about them. I don’t actually disagree with their emphasis. I think that’s where it counts most.

[00:14:20] Just don’t go on how many experiences people have had and whip up, you know, a few of these people here have a rather inflaming testimony to give or someone very famous and they say how they turned right around and became a Christian and because of their fame others might listen and follow suit. I agree with the Bible College that the emphasis really that the Bible would put to us about evangelism is that you put the rest in the historical happening and the evidence from the scriptures about it. I don’t disagree with that. But I think you can take that idea too far because how they then applied it was that you must not talk about human experience. And poor old Eric Leach and Sam Harburn had the terrible thing that they’d have these young people who got keen

[00:15:06] and they’d send them off to QBI, Queensland Bible Institute, yeah, that was its name back then, to be trained but they’d get taught, get out of youth for Christ because they’re emphasising human experience when the Bible would want us just to stress on God and not on humanity. And they identified sinfulness with human experience. But if you read our passage, they were preaching the Lord Jesus and the hand of the Lord was with them and the great number who believed turned to the Lord. And if I’m not wrong, those words mean that there is human decision-ness in someone deciding to become a Christian. And what Youth for Christ were doing is that they would ask people like me and others who they’d send, they’d say, how many decisions did you get? They’re talking about people who came up to you after the rally

[00:16:04] and said, I want to come to Christ. And one of the things you did when you counselled people was to make sure it was what they really wanted to do and you were watching to see if something had moved them to decide to come to Christ. We used to have these big camps down in the Gold Coast, Talabudra, 1,200 young people from all over Australasia and I soon got myself a job. I didn’t ask for it but to be in charge of the counselling and this business about who makes a decision and who not, I didn’t force anybody to make a decision but I sure did notice when they wanted to and I sure knew sometimes some of them cried and cried and cried and I didn’t know what to do to stop them crying. And there are others who seem to be a different personality. This is before the days anybody taught me about extroverts

[00:16:55] and introverts and about all the different types of mechanisms of thinking we’re meant to have and my family talked to me about these and I’m meant to be one style and some of them are another style I’m an extreme introvert but I can act extrovertically if I make myself and people explain what happens according to personality types I knew nothing about that but I did know that the Bible talked about there being a place for someone who heard the gospel message and it’s worded, turn to the Lord. And what really drew my attention to it, it was just down in South Australia before I came up to Brisbane that there was a time where our church got going with the youth and they were getting outsiders coming in and there was a young man who came and it was a car rally. He was in my car and I got to know him.

[00:17:44] But he was from outside the church, totally different, but he’d become a Christian. And he told me, he says, I feel envious of someone like you, Jim, because you got taught and didn’t have to go and make a big mess of your life before you came. But then he’d talk and say how glad he was. And do you know the language that he used? He found the Lord. Found the Lord. Turned to the Lord. He knew, he knew that he had found the Lord. When I meet people who say they want to become Christians, I get them talking. What do you want to become a Christian for? Or I ask questions about, Why do you think you have not yet found the Lord? And I’m drawing out of them a certain self-awareness as to whether anything actually happens. And the reason I do is that I remember the little boy who put his hand up and nothing happened.

[00:18:42] And subsequent to that I discovered it was in the Billy Graham crusade because the preaching seemed to come telling me every night. My jolly father was in charge of the council there and I had to go every meeting. And it seemed like something in the message was saying the same thing night after night to me. You’ve never done any business with Jesus as a saviour. I had never decided to turn to the Lord. It’s a decision. It doesn’t have to be manifested by emotion. There are some people who make decisions and it’s not just a question of being stirred to do it. And some of them do it very tentatively and some have several attempts before they actually do it. Like in that crusade every year I got in charge of the counselling. I had a lot of different styles of people.

[00:19:33] One was a young man who came running up to me after. He didn’t somehow get herded there by answering the call of the preacher but he came running up himself. He was a bit slow at deciding he’d do something about it but he came up and says, I want to do it. And I thought to myself the previous person I’d just helped get counselled was a girl who wouldn’t stop crying and she wept and wept and wept. And I’ve told the church this before. I didn’t know what to do with a girl that was crying and in a long while I just let her cry it out. And I had to wait a while and then at last when she’d run out of emotional steam then we let her to Christ. And there she walked off and she was thankful. And I thought that was a real conversion. Then it was soon after her that this bloke ran up and he says, I’m going to do it.

[00:20:22] And so I had him sit down and I showed him the few Bible verses and he wanted me to lead him in the prayer and I led him in the prayer and he got up and shook my hand and says thank you and ran off. And I said to myself, oh no, the girl was genuine because she had the emotion. And he, I don’t know what happened to him, but 12 months later, the next crusade and I was in the same role and he comes running up. This is just his personality. Hi Jim, you remember me? Yeah, I did. And he told me how it was a terrific thing that he’d been a Christian all year long. And I decided that people are very different and don’t put one style of emotional experiences to be expected from all. But what you should recognise in the scriptures is that there is such a thing as people turning to the Lord.

[00:21:15] That language means that they make a decision that they’re going to be a Christian. If you’re asking yourself, have I ever been converted properly? Have you come to the place of saying, I am going to be a Christian and I’m going to put that into practice and did whatever you had to do? Because it just might be your different style of personality. But if you’ve turned to the Lord, I can’t forget that young man in my car saying how he envied us because we had turned to the Lord as little kids or I had and he had to make so many messes before he found out the truth. But he was so happy that he had turned to the Lord that he made a decision. A great number of them who believed turned to the Lord. It’s in the Bible. And true getting converted includes you coming to a decision to do something about it.

[00:22:20] We’ll move on to the next one. That was number two, was it? Yeah. Number three, Acts 26, verses 27. Now, this is a bit of a negative example, an example of the truth that didn’t get to happen on this occasion. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? This is Paul. Paul’s meant to be on trial before Agrippa, but somehow this happened a lot with Paul. But when they tried to put him on trial, he would, with his gospel, make them suddenly aware that they’re the ones who were on trial. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe. He knew a bit about King Agrippa’s other statements. I know that you believe. And Agrippa said to Paul, in just a short time, would you try and persuade me to be a Christian? Now, tell me, have I read this wrong or is it that King Agrippa is feeling

[00:23:24] a bit of persuasion that’s coming from Paul? Is that fair enough to assume? The King Agrippa replies, in a short time you would persuade me to be a Christian? I’m not going to be persuaded. No. True evangelism does include there being something that happens whereby a person gets persuaded. Now, I don’t think you should use tricks to persuade them. I don’t think you should use human things. You should rely on the power of the Holy Spirit and you should rely on the power of the Word of God. I’m pretty sure that was Paul’s method as well. But it got felt. You know, there’s people who, when you’re a travelling preacher, which I’ve been for most of my life, I’ve been for a longish time here in your church as well, but travelling around, you get criticised. And one of the biggest things

[00:24:21] travelling evangelists gets criticised is they think that you shouldn’t be out to persuade anybody. I don’t know how you could preach the Gospel and not want to persuade someone to become a Christian. How could you be Paul? See this king, who believes the prophets and spends time inquiring, and why has he got Paul there? Has he wanted to get to interview Paul? He’s a very interesting person. He’s someone who’s always delving in these things and he’s curious. In a short time, would you persuade me to be a Christian? It’s not wrong for us to put our best evangelistic foot forward in order to persuade people because the evidence will cause the verdict to come. One of the ways that you preach the Gospel is presents its legitimacy that you present its truthfulness, that you present what it offers is so important

[00:25:16] that they better listen because it’s about the eternality of their soul and where they’re going to go at the end of time. There’s a very strong persuasive element in the Gospel and we’re not wrong to be persuaders and there’s a lot of different evangelistic groups who will use the word persuader and there’s a lot of groups back in history with Scripture Union and whatever that understood that the purpose of the people is to bring people to come to know Christ and they want to lay before the people the opportunity and see them decide, see them choose. If what you do is just say facts and never try to persuade somebody, I don’t know what’s not happened to you. In my younger years, and some of you have heard me talk about them a lot because I can never stop talking about the African guy who came from overseas

[00:26:14] and he used to have a way to ask people the question about where they’re at Christian-wise and he used to say, do you love the Lord Jesus as your own personal Saviour? Do you love the Lord Jesus as your own personal Saviour? He never asked me that question because he assumed I did But I heard him ask an awful lot of other people. But the reason why they listened to him with his question is because there’s something about that fellow who’d come from Africa and seemed to only have one thing that he was completely taken over to do and that was to tell as many people, now Australians, while he was studying at university, about his Jesus. And you couldn’t help but listen to him as he did it. And I did many times overhear him or stand by while he talked to people. He loved Jesus. And when he talked about Jesus

[00:27:12] it was the most natural thing for him to say do you love the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour? And when you asked him further what’s he really talking about for him and what he talked about for him was the fact that he was a drunkard as a young man and the Christians of his village would find him lying in the streets, absolutely out to it. They’d take him back to their meeting place. They’d sober him up across time and they’d teach him a little bit of the gospel. He was such a wreck. And when he came to know Christ, he was so grateful. What gave him the strength to change what was his entire non-future because of the wreck that he was. And he grew stronger. He got himself a degree. He got himself to come to Australia to do further higher studies. All because someone introduced him to Jesus

[00:28:19] for which he’ll always be grateful. And when he asked the question, do you love the Lord Jesus as your own personal saviour, when you knew him and knew the love that he seemed to have for Christ? It was the most natural question that could be asked. That was one of the major effects on me. I was afraid that one day he’d ask me, because I knew by now that I knew Jesus. I was absolutely certain, but I don’t know whether I loved him like Jason did. It greatly shook me to make that personal discovery. Actually, evangelism isn’t only because we become concerned for the world. Evangelism has a deeper root to it. It is when you have so come to know Jesus that talking about him is the thing that you can’t stop doing. I have the same trouble sometimes when I have to give sermons just for Christians.

[00:29:30] There’s nothing that turns me on more than to talk about Jesus or to find a passage that says things about Christ. Did you get the opportunity to point out a concerning him? Sermons come naturally from that. In talking to people, it doesn’t matter where I am. If I meet someone and I discover they don’t know Jesus, I, at the beginning, used to be rather blunt and jump in too quick, but I’ve learned now to wait for the right moment. But it’s just my desire. I don’t want to let anybody get past the opportunity to tell them about Jesus. And the reason isn’t only just for their conversion. It’s because Jesus is really the only person worth talking about. No, well, that’s saying it in an exaggerated form. There’s lots of people worth talking about. But I’m trying to say that in comparison, knowing Christ,

[00:30:30] if you really know Jesus and you go deeper into loving him, you’ll discover it in yourself that you will want to share that. It’s true about… I watch my kids, if they fall in love and all those things. Being careful what I say because they think I say too much sometimes. But when I watch my kids, as if they could hide it, Michelle knows what’s going on in them. And they give it away every time. You can’t fail to notice when real love comes. And if you have a couple who have a relationship but the girl wonders, does he love me? If I were counselling her, I’d tell her, stir him up a bit and if you still don’t know whether he does, give him a rest. Because I don’t think he does. If you really love someone, it will leak out somewhere. You can know. And that’s how it is with Jesus. And so Agrippa says to him,

[00:31:36] look at the wording, he says, in a very short time, in a short time, would you, do you think you can persuade me to be a Christian? Now tell me, surely the persuasion is coming out of Paul pretty, pretty strong. So I think that whether or not you’re a Christian is somewhat evidenced by the degree to which you get a buzz of joining in with any effort that’s geared. If there’s an evangelistic thing on and many people are going to hear of Christ who don’t normally get that opportunity and you think, oh, I couldn’t bother with that, I don’t think you’re converted. Because you’re not like Paul. In a short time, would you persuade me to be a Christian? He wants this king to get converted. Persuade me to be a Christian. He’s feeling the persuasion. One of the features of Paul is because of his love for Christ, he would later say,

[00:32:39] the love of Christ constrains me. In other words, there’s a leash on him that his love causes him. The love of Christ constrains me. And that’s where evangelism comes from. It comes from our love for Jesus. And that African guy, I used to go around with him and you just hear him talking about Jesus and you just knew something had happened in his teenage years that made him forever going to love the Lord. His favourite question that he asked people, do you love the Lord Jesus as your own personal saviour? And as I said earlier, I had become scared he’d ask me one day. He never did. He believed I was a Christian but I was scared he’d ask the question because I was becoming aware of there being something lacking in my love of Christ, not to be able to be quite like him. Maybe he had a special gift

[00:33:41] but I think there’s something about the relationship with Christ that’s speaking to us here. I want to go to a final verse and it is in, that was 1 Peter 4, have we done three verses or here we are, yeah, thank you, 1 Peter 4 and 16. Now this one’s a little bit off what you wouldn’t expect in a sermon like this. I’ve been giving you reasons to know that you really have been converted and they’re talking about things to do of your self-awareness in the whole task. But this is what happens to people who do raise the flag for Christ. I don’t know whether you’re someone that, how you’ve raised your flag where people, when you’re in high school and it’s different when you’re in a what’s a supposed Christian place than a non-Christian one. I went to a school that’s meant to be a Christian school. I would say that 90% of them

[00:34:49] were not Christians and they all knew it. But it was a good school and they wanted to get good marks and go to university. and the other reasons why they went to that school, it was good for sport and we used to win all sorts of sporting things. Anyway, in the school I learned that if you’re a Christian and you raise the flag for Christ and I became keen so I never used to let anybody get off the hook of getting a bit of a telling them about the Lord and I soon got kickbacks and my year, which had a lot of strong-minded, this is a boys’ school, right, and they’re strong-minded, going to be professionals, people who are also sportspersons and they had high egos but they would try their best to rubbish me. They only had one person they rubbish more than me and it was the chaplain’s son, poor fellow.

[00:35:51] One day, one of those leaders stood down near the back of where the bags were. He waited for other people to go and I was left there standing and he came down and I had to make sure I didn’t get scragged by him and his friends on different occasions so I always had my eyes careful when I knew he came and stood next to me. Was he going to try and do something, run off? I don’t know. And he said, Jim, I’ve got to talk to you. He wanted to know, he says, why I was like I was and then he said, this other friend of mine who was the chaplain’s son, they said, he really gets it hard from us and he does all sorts of things to try and swear and carry on and get accepted by us. They saw through him trying hard to look like he was the rest of the gang idea and then he says, but you don’t do any of that.

[00:36:51] You seem to bring it on yourself. What is it? And then I witnessed to him. I got a good opportunity that day but it’s true enough what took me several years of getting picked on in that school before I won their respect and I suffered. If anyone suffers as a Christian when you’re a teenager particularly if you’re one that hasn’t gone through puberty and all the rest of the boys have and someone who’s anyway you want to somehow get clear of that suffering. If anyone suffers as a Christian let him not be ashamed but let him glorify God in that name. I went home that day and shared with my parents this conversation I’d had with this fellow who couldn’t understand why I brought it on myself. I didn’t worry. I said I’ll just let it happen. And that chaplain he was my cricket coach as well and our cricket team

[00:38:06] that I was the captain of got some of the best scores. We weren’t the top team partly why we got good results because the teams from the other schools we got their second team to play. But he had the joy the chaplain did they used to you know laugh at him too but he used to give all the results and our team got some of the best scores and some of the best wickets and and God found his way well that chaplain decided to I think he was cashing in on some of the better vibes about him and the work that he did. He was also our French teacher, but he was a chaplain and he was my cricket coach. And he announced there to be a middle of the week, middle of the school day when you have the cup and the wine and all, to have communion service. And he announced it for one o’clock. Now, lunch started at half past 12.

[00:39:15] When it got to one o’clock, we were free to go down the over and do what we like. But he announced there to be a communion service at one o’clock. Do you think it would be very popular? I knew there wasn’t going to be anybody going but me. And sure enough, the bell went and the sun was shining on this beautiful chapel they built. And I knew I had to go. So I started walking across. They had all these steps up in the sunlight. And they came out from the side, a young Asian boy who’d been watching all this. And he decided he’d actually come to Australia, money from his father, who I think was, anyway, had a lot of money. And he wasn’t a Christian, but the family he bordered with were. And they’d led him to Christ. But he’d stayed undercover. And when I went walking up to go up the steps,

[00:40:09] he came walking out and walked with me. And to get together, we walked up into the chapel and we had the communion service. And from that moment on, that young, he’s only short, but he was a kung fu expert. He was a fellow with hardened wrists. And he punched all sorts of sticks with straw on them to get the wrists. And he was an expert trained by his dad in all the martial arts so that he wouldn’t get killed by the dad’s enemies. And he came walking with me and everything at that school changed because there was one guy who went to have a go at me and he got me on the floor and was trying to choke me. And my friend came over and he just did a flip, flip, flip. The other bloke went like this. And no one ever, I never had another problem from that day on. You don’t need to be ashamed

[00:41:09] if you think you’re being suffering for Jesus’ name because glorify God in that name. And he, who knows what God do, he doesn’t always deliver his people being persecuted, but he will bless you. And he has an answer to that. And when that happens and you’ve found yourself being persecuted because you’ve had the message of the gospel, just if you don’t think you get persecuted much, start giving the gospel more. You’ll discover the evil one is busy. He will try and stop you or make you bluffed. There might not be a person who wants to get you around behind the toilet and scrag you or something. It’s happened to me once. It might not be something quite drastic like that. It might just be something that people will not invite you to the parties or leave you off the lists of the important people.

[00:42:08] But let God glorify himself in your suffering and he will be the answer to it. That’s one way to know that you’re a Christian when God has stepped in on your behalf. And I’m grateful for my years at high school to have absolutely certain that I was born again and I was a Christian because of the things that I’ve given in my memory. I can’t be doubting it any longer. It’s a marvellous blessing when God gives you the security to know that you are truly born again. Let me have a bit of prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the things we’re talking about. I thank you because they’re so important to me that you got me to know for absolutely certain. I remember that reading the Gospel of Mark after the Billy Graham moment and finding my heart and love reading it.

[00:43:10] And the more I read of Jesus, the more I knew I loved him and wanted to talk about him. I thank you for what happened in my school and the difficult times that were answered by, Lord, you arranged a lot of circumstances. That teacher who was the chaplain, Lord, he ended up liking to use me as people to use in evangelism. I thank you for all of that because, Lord, you gave me experiences of what it is to speak the Gospel and to see you use it. And I pray, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Lord, I pray about those boys that I used to talk to. Some of them came to know you. And, Lord, I don’t know about a lot of them. Lord, whoever they are and wherever they be, even now these many years later, would you bring back to their minds the simple Gospel that there is a Saviour and that there can come that persuasion to become a Christian that comes from you. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.