Kennystix's podcast
Open Their Eyes: Doing What Only God Can Do
Father, I pray that one of the missions that this campus crusade organization would embrace is that to believe that all of you is more than enough for all of me has to be filled up with truth. What is all of you, Lord? Do these young people and these veteran staff believe in all of you? What is all of you? Wrath, that's part of you. Rage against sin. Well, I just pray that when we sing these songs that are so true that we would get our arms around the fullness of their meaning and be broken and tremble, there are many things about you that many Christians do not like. God, I pray that that would not be true if campus crusade. I pray that the fullness of your being and your love and your wisdom and your power and your justice and your truth and your eternality and your unchanging ways would come like a weight of glory upon this organization so that that song would be explosive with theological content in its biblical fullness. So come now and help me take up this second challenge of call to the world with the whole counsel of God. Guard me from error and give ears to hear. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. People of the mission captivated by God through the gospel. That was yesterday. People of the mission called to the world with the whole counsel of God is where we're going today. Now, to go there, I would like to have you open your Bibles, if you will, to 2 Timothy 2, where we ended yesterday all too quickly. 2 Timothy 2 verses 24 to 26. I want to build a bridge between yesterday's five points and today's points. So let me rehearse where we were and then focus on the bridge that is in this text. Point number one yesterday is that the gospel has events, death and resurrection of Jesus for sins. It has an offer, believe, and you will be saved, and it has a good, a benefit offered and bought by the events. And I argued that people don't have the gospel if they just know the events. They don't have the gospel if they just see and understand the nature or dynamics of the offer, namely that it's by faith. People have the gospel and are saved when they penetrate through the events, through the offer, to the ultimate final, best, highest, good that is offered in the gospel, namely, 2 Corinthians 4, 4, the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. To be saved through the gospel is to see and savor and treasure Christ. Point number two was therefore lostness is fundamentally blindness to glory. Point number three was therefore conversion is fundamentally verse six, the miracle of God who said that there be light speaking that same creative word into the dead blind heart and saying let there be light and Christ shines with compelling, glorious beauty. That's conversion and people are drawn to him. They can do no other. He has become irresistibly true, beautiful, attractive, compelling, satisfying. And that simply left two questions, how do you fit in and how does the teaching fit in? And I went to Acts 26, 18, I send you, campus crusade, Paul, I send you to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. That's your mission to do what only God can do. That's your mission. You must do what only God can do. And then very briefly, all too briefly, which is why I ask you to go back to this text, I posed the question, where does teaching fit into that? So I want to read this with you again. Second Timothy 2, 24 to 26, notice four massive steps. If I were discipling somebody in what it meant to be a Christian or how to get saved, or helping somebody lead people to Jesus, this would be one of my main texts and these would be my four steps. Verse 24, "The Lord's servant," that's you and me, "must not be quarrelsome." So I'm going to get messed up with unnecessary quarrels here, but kind. So our life is in this. It's not just words, it's our life kind to everyone. Able to teach. That's my first step. Able to teach, teach lovingly, patiently enduring evil, correcting opponents. So part of your teaching is going to be to set people right when they got wrong ideas, correcting the opponents with gentleness. Here's step two, "God may perhaps grant them repentance." That's God's work. You can't make anybody repent. You can't engineer this or in any way bring this about. This is a work of God. Repentance is a gift. If it happens in a soul that you're talking to, God has mercifully made your teaching His instrument of bringing about repentance. So that's the way we do evangelism. That's the way we live. We do what only God can do and our part is teaching. So you've got two steps now. Teach patiently. God may grant repentance. Here's step three, leading to a knowledge of the truth. Now they can have knowledge of truth before they repent, but not the kind of knowledge that comes after they repent. This knowledge here is a result of a God-given miracle of repentance, and it's the same thing we saw in 2 Corinthians 4. This is God saying, "Let there be light." They're broken. They're brought to contrition. And the lights go on. And now all that Word, all those teachings you were giving them at Pizza Hut become life, beauty, power, wisdom, satisfaction. They're free. Well, that's step four. They're not free yet. So let's go to step four. The knowledge comes. The cross shines. Jesus is beautiful. He's compelling. Now verse 26, and step four, they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been captured by him to do his will. So there's the sequence. We open our mouths and we teach. God comes down in mercy, takes our teaching, makes it the instrument of His divine, regenerating work of bringing about repentance and faith. Let's go on in the fallen heart and Christ is seen as beautiful. Now why does that liberate you from the devil? It's because the devil only has one power, deception. He's a liar, and he murders through lying. And if eyes can open to see that there is a superior pleasure, a superior satisfaction, a superior truth, a treasure beyond anything the devil could offer. His power is broken. And that's what happens when God grants repentance unto a knowledge that is a taste of the truth. So you want to set students free from sleeping around or pornography or watching endless television or just living for money or grades. You want to set them free? Teach them. Teach them. Now that's today's message. What's the relationship between call to the world? You're going to take up this challenge this afternoon, I believe, to wrestle with, how do we do 2,000 new campuses? Now we'd like to be a little teeny part of saying, "Go for it. Make this happen. I send you out." Now I'm going to ask the question, how does teaching relate to that? So that's where we are. Teaching, it appears, in that text anyway, to be essential to God's work. My aim, in these two minutes, is to wrestle with campus crusade. I just feel like this is an unbelievably golden opportunity for us to think together about some essential elements of this ministry called campus crusade. Here am I. Here's what I want you to wrestle with me. What is the connection in campus crusade between theological depth and aggressive entrepreneurial breadth? It's the connection. What's the connection in campus crusade between biblical thought and evangelistic action? What's the connection in campus crusade between treasuring the fullness of Christ all that you are for me? What's the connection between the fullness of Christ and taking the world for Christ? Now I don't want to take you down a rabbit trail. I do not want campus crusade to become a theological think tank. That's not your calling. You should not be that. I don't want campus crusade to become preoccupied with immobilizing intramural disputes. I don't want that to be your plague. I hope God keeps you free from that. I don't want you to wait around until you've got all the answers before you get dirty with unbelievers. I don't want that to be communicated in what I say. I don't want passion to be quenched by, and I'm tempted to say, knowledge. It chokes me to talk like that. The reason it does is because for about 40 years I'm 59, for about 40 years the opposite of that connection has been true in my life. That is knowledge chokes passion. That has never been true for me. I don't get it. I don't understand people who say the better you know God, the less you will love Him. There are people who believe that. Don't try too hard to know God, to understand God, to go deep with God, to go high with God, because you're going to get messed up in your head, and you will lose your first love. You know that little comment about first love? The last thing I want in my life is my first love. My first love as a six-year-old was so small. I want more than my first love. Those kinds of songs and testimonies returned to our first love. I know it's a biblical statement, but that group evidently had a powerful first love. My first love was not big. Was yours? I mean give me a break. 99% of you did not have big first love. Those of you who did praise God, go back there. But for the rest of us, we got to go forward to some bigger love for Jesus than we had when we were six or fourteen. So I'm not getting it when it comes to people saying that your love for Jesus, your passion for God is going to go out like a candle if you get to know Him better. There are people who believe that we will marvel. There's a certain epistemological thing out there today that says you will marvel at the mystery of the mountain of the truth of God more if you don't try to climb it. Just kind of stay in a safe distance. Whoa, that's a big mystery. All that He is for us, all that we are, blah, blah, blah. And you have a clue what you're talking about. Because you're afraid to climb the mountain, because halfway up you get cold and you might lose your warmth for Jesus. You're nice, touchy, feely, warmth for Jesus. Well, I just have a hard time empathizing because that's never been the case for me and I can't find it anywhere in the Bible. That to know Him better to go deep into His Word is going to put out your light. So I'm crazy about that, I think. So I'm going to ask what's the teaching that you should be giving and how does it relate to evangelism, red, hot, lay down your life, risk, die for Jesus, reach a thousand campuses next year for Jesus. How does teaching relate to that? So now I've got a new text I want you to go to. And so let's go to Acts 20. The book of Acts 20. Here are my two questions that'll form the rest of this message. What is the teaching? If I'm talking about a teaching that ought to be revelant in campus crusade, what am I talking about? What's the content of it? And then the second question is how does it relate to call to the world and the mission that you're all about? So I'm going to read verses 24 to 27 of Acts 20 in search of the answer to the first question. What is it? I love this verse 24. It's one of my favorite verses. I do not count my life. I do not account my life of any value or as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course and the ministry I receive from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. It seems to me like everybody in campus crusade should memorize that verse and live that verse. My calling is not to live. There's something more important than staying alive. This to be faithful to my calling to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. Not a great life verse. I love the Apostle Paul. Verse 25. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. He's heading away. And therefore, I testify to you this day. I'm innocent of the blood of all of you. Now, will you be able to say that of those you've had for a few years? I'm innocent of the blood of all of you. Here's the ground for why he's innocent, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Now, that's a phrase that I'm going to put on the word teaching. The whole counsel of God. I got to be real careful here because I know you're not the church. This is the responsibility of the elders. He's talking to elders here in the church. You're not elders in a church. Some of you are maybe, but that's not the nature of this organization. But I was talking with Mark and he talked about apostolic ministry with a little A, penetrate, move, go. If we're going to think in sort of analogical terms here, like campus crusade is not in the Bible, like this funny paratured thing is not in the Bible. So you have to think in terms of analogies. I think it's free for you to exist, by the way. I wouldn't be here if I didn't. But mainly the Bible is about the church, so you're a little armed. But if you're going to think an analogy then for how you decide biblically what your task is, you might want to just say it's a little something like this, a little something like this, that if I've got a band of 20 or 200 students for two or three or four years and they're hanging out with me and I want to equip them to be laborers forever, would not take some cues from what Paul just said here. So I'm not going to overstate it and say it's your main responsibility, not the churches. That's not the point here at all. It's just sort of yours and mainly the churches. So you just learn a little something from what he's saying to elders here. If you're going to hang out with somebody and you'd like them to grow up and be mature and effective and powerful for Jesus, what might you do with them? And I'm suggesting you might deposit in their hearts the whole council of God. Or partner with the church in doing it anyway. So that now raises the question of what in the world is that? What is the whole council of God? I mean, I didn't go to seminary and like, what are you asking me to do here? Let me try to just get at what this is. Don't go to these texts. Let me just read them to you. Romans 6, 17 says, "Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed." Paul's never been to Rome. He doesn't know these people. He's assuming that every Christian in Rome, to whom he's writing, has been handed over to a standard of teaching. Tupon did a case. A standard of teaching. So there's a phrase to put alongside whole council of God. There's another one. 2 Timothy 1, 13. Follow the pattern of sound words. Isn't that an interesting phrase? Pattern of sound healthy words. So you've got whole council of God. You've got standard of teaching. You've got pattern of sound words. I'll keep reading in verse 14. "By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us guard the good deposit entrusted to you." Now we've got four phrases that are getting at this reality. We've got the term whole council of God. We've got the term standard of teaching. You've got the term pattern of sound words. In 2 Timothy 1, 14. The good deposit. So my point is that there is a body. There's a group of teachings that wasn't post-seminary. Otherwise Romans 6, 17 wouldn't be true because every single believer had been handed over to it. This is basic discipleship, this whole council of God. This is something everybody needs to know. It's not way off ethereal, advanced, 305 classes. All right. What is it? What are the clues? Now back to Acts 20, if you're still there with your finger in it. I want to link, I want to link in verse 27 the phrase in verse 24. Verse 27 in Acts 20 says, "I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole council of God." Wouldn't that relate closely to verse 24 where he says, "I don't care if I live. What I want to do is finish my ministry, which is to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." So I'm going to put beside each other, whole council of God, gospel of the grace of God, and say, this is my effort. You test it. The whole council of God, the pattern of sound words, the faithful deposit, the standard of teaching that everybody needs to receive and understand is the gospel and the surrounding doctrines of the gospel that are necessary to make it intelligible. That's all. So I'm going to try to outline that for you and show you what it doesn't include that you don't need to be too worked up about as an organization doing this part of the church, okay? So here's my effort. This is the sort of thing that I think every campus crusade worker who has a disciple should care about getting into that disciple's head, or I'll get to this later, who has a possible disciple who's willing to hang out with you once a week for a few months and listen to you. Not yet converted. This is what they need to know. They need to know something about God. He exists. He created everything. He has rights over the world. He deserves our trust. Admiration thanks, honor. They need to know something about man. He's in God's image. Moral. Got a will. Got a reason. Got some affections and emotions. He exists to trust and admire and thank and glorify God. That's why we exist to display the glory of God. They need to know something about sin. It's a choice and it's a contamination and a depravity. It's a power within me. It's a blindness. It's a helplessness. It's a deadness. It's a rebellion. It's insubordination. It's not mainly about hurting people. It's mainly about dishonoring God. They need to know something about Christ. He's a real person historically. He's a God man incarnate by virgin birth. He fulfilled all the promises of God. He was perfectly righteous. They need to know something about the cross and the death of Christ. It was designed by God from the beginning. Before the foundation of the world didn't happen willy-nilly. It was willing and obedient by Jesus. It was substitutionary. My sins go on to Him. His righteousness comes on to me. It was sin bearing and wrath bearing and curse bearing. He became a curse for us. It was purchasing the new covenant promises of the law, being written on my heart and me being enabled to walk in faith. They need to know something about the work of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise they're going to take credit for their decision. The work of the Holy Spirit. He opens the eyes of the blind. He illumines Christ. He convicts of sin. He calls out of darkness. He regenerates. He gives the gift of repentance. Finally they need to know something about faith and repentance. Faith. The soul instrument of justification. Repentance and faith. A gift of God preserved by God. You don't have to hang on by yourself. He's going to keep you hanging on. It's a duty as well as a gift. It involves seeing the truth and savoring Christ and embracing Him as Lord and treasure of your life. It's expressed in baptism. That's the whole counsel of God as best as I can see. I don't know of any of those things that I just said that you don't need to know to understand the gospel. I might have one or two stuck in there that shouldn't be there. What I'm trying to do is not be extraneous when I talk about the whole counsel of God and what you need to be teaching and teaching and teaching. It's something like that. Something like that. Now notice what I did not include. I didn't include timetables for the end times. I didn't include church order. I didn't include modes of baptism or the Lord's Supper. I didn't include charismatic gifts and whether you're a cessationist or not. I didn't include Sabbathkeeping. I didn't include meat offer to idols or styles of worship and the list could go on. So don't hear me when you hear whole counsel of God. You've got to have an opinion on everything and make sure it gets in the head of your disciple. You don't. But you have to have a vision of God, man, sin, Christ, cross spirit faith. And you know what? That's a lot. That's a lot. And you can go wrong in a hundred places on those issues. Now, if that's the what of the teaching that I think campus crusade ought to be exclusively driven by, then why? I mean, you're an evangelistic group. You want to reach lost people who don't know anything about the saving gospel of Christ. You want to penetrate thousands of campuses, every student on every campus in every country of the world. Yes, I like that kind of talk. Amen. I'm glad there are entrepreneurial evangelicals and not just reflective evangelicals. I am so thankful, there are both kinds. I remember one time Greg Livingstone, radical, crazy head of frontiers once upon a time, said there are unity boys. And I mean, there are, what do you call them? Oh, shoot, I shouldn't have started this illustration without knowing where I was going. Unity boys. Oh, yeah, I've got it. There are unity boys and purity boys. And what he means by that is the unity boys want to keep everybody together under the same tent and the purity boys want to get the gospel exactly right. And if you don't agree with this, then you're not in the tent. And he said, he's just thankful that there are unity boys and purity boys. And he had me in one of those categories. And I would like to be in both of those categories. Now the question is, why is this teaching so crucial to call to the world this big mission that you have as an organization? Now I have three answers. Number one, people come to know the person of Christ through knowing true propositions about Christ. And say that again. It seems so obvious and so simple. And yet it is so controversial today in this post-propositional emergent hour. People come to know savingly the person of Christ by encountering and knowing and understanding true propositions about the person of Christ. Put it this way, knowing Christ savingly comes through knowing about Christ truly. Knowing Christ the person savingly comes through knowing about Christ truly. Therefore, you can't as an organization if you care about people knowing Christ and being saved, you cannot be indifferent about true propositions about Christ and the gospel. That is the whole council of God, the standard of teaching. Now, this needs to be said today, especially among your age group. I got this conception of who you are and I know you're mixed, but you're younger. And you're therefore imperiled in this day where your generation is fascinated by being called post-propositional, post-even gelical, post-conservative, post everything into the some branches of the emergent church where the upshot of that post is heresy. Now, let me take you back to my encounter with Athanasius on this issue of propositions. Now, there's what I'm saying is I hope that the campus crusade, you know, without getting any ruffled feathers at all, simply says, we really believe in propositional revelation. We really believe that it's important in saving souls that you say true things about Jesus. Isn't it remarkable? Listen to this. I just thought of this because I had it somewhere in my notes and wasn't going to include it, but I'm going to include it now because it just came into my head. Acts chapter 16 verse 14. Paul comes into Philippi. He finds a group of women and he starts telling them things, just teaching them things by a river. And it says in verse 14, "The Lord opened Lydia's heart." That's not the end. The next clause is, "The Lord opened Lydia's heart to give heed to twice, la loyce te palo, to the things spoken by Paul, things coming out of his mouth." The Holy Spirit looked down and said, "I like those words. I like those truths about Jesus. I'm sent into the world to make much of Jesus. I will now open some eyes to see the truth of those things spoken." I hope that's your whole mindset as you do evangelism on campuses is that true propositions about Jesus are the means by which the Holy Spirit enables people to know the person of Jesus. We're not into idolizing propositions. We're into making Jesus king and saying true things about him. Now, here's what Athanasius got worked up about. Athanasius, three hundreds he lived a long time ago, and he was against Arias, the heretic who said Jesus was created. The Son of God did not exist forever. He was created. And Athanasius said, "No." The Bible teaches, "He always was." And he said, "Sentences like this." Now, these are propositions. There was a time when the Son was not, or the proposition he was not before he was made, or the proposition the Son of God is created. Now, those are three propositions about Jesus, which are strictly damnable. If a person receives them, embraces them, believes them, bills a life on them, they will go to hell. Propositions really matter. That's what Athanasius made so clear to me. And it would have grieved him, I think, to hear many in our day say things like, "It's Christ who unites. It's doctrines that divide." Or things like, "We should ask, whom do you trust, not what you believe?" I think Athanasius would have said, "That's exactly the way the Aryan bishops talked." To lure us into saying, "Just trust Christ." And I think Athanasius said, "Which Christ, which Christ, the Christ that has always existed, the Christ of whom it can be truly said, he has no beginning, or the Christ of whom it can be said, he had a beginning. Which Christ do you trust?" Oh, I hope campus crusade does not get suckered in to this kind of talk. It doesn't matter what you believe, it matters whom you trust. You see the kind of division that's being drawn there, and what a deceptive, demonic thing that is? Who is this whom that you trust? A doorknob with the name Jesus on it? That's where we're going. If you start belittling propositions, so I am thankful for Athanasius and his awakening last January of my concern about this. So my first answer to the question, what's the relationship between the teaching, the pattern of sound words and evangelism and reaching the world and going on to thousands of campuses? My first answer is that knowing Christ, moving from death to life and darkness to light, happens through the embrace of true propositions about Jesus. People need to know the truth about Christ. Here's my second answer to the question, why teach? I mean, we're not a teaching organization, we're an evangelistic organization, so why should there be this concern for holding to the deposit and holding to the standard and holding to the whole council of God and teaching and imparting? Why should we be concerned about that? Answer number two, students, along with everybody else, don't have the categories to embrace a simple gospel statement yet, by and large. There are exceptions. There are exceptions. But you're the experts on this. You tell me, do they have a right conception about God? Do they have a right conception about who they are as human beings in God's image? Do they have a right conception about sin and the nature of it and why it's a problem? Do they have a right conception about Christ and who He was and what He did? Do they have a right conception about the cross? Do they have a right conception about the work of the Holy Spirit in saving them? Do they have a right conception about the nature of faith and repentance? And the answer is going to be no. This generation is not the fifties generation. There might have been a day when you could assume so much about who God is, who Christ is, what the Bible is, heaven, hell, sin, cross, belief, and now, come on, now finally make the decision and thousands would. It's all there because the Holy Spirit landed on it and kindled that kindling. And now you're dealing with people, God, sin, Christ, who? That's a swear word, isn't it? Jesus. What are you talking about? So what are you going to do? And the answer is teach. I've got to give you an illustration here. I just love the way Paul. He was so flexible. You're a flexible organization. So you know there's a lot of different ways to do this and I don't want to pin you down. I'm just pleading that this is a big piece of it. So here's Paul. Third missionary journey, right? He had made one brief little stop at Ephesus on the way home on his second missionary journey. Just kind of went in, looked around, taught in the synagogue one Saturday probably, and then boom, he's back on the boat heading for Caesarea. I'm probably thinking, no, I've got to go back to that city someday. That's the hub of Asia Minor, pagan to the core. They don't have any of the categories for God. They're all polytheists and they're all sleeping around. They're all doing sex in the temples and I mean, this is God's great place to do ministry and he's going back. So he cuts across Asia Minor on the third missionary journey and he beds down and I'm going to start reading at Acts 19, 8. It goes like this. He entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading about the kingdom of God and he started with Jews and he takes three months. I mean, you got work to do, Paul. Get going. You got Spain. Come on. What are you wasting three months in Ephesus for? He's reasoning and he's persuading and it gets even more amazing. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way, Christianity before the congregation, he withdrew. So he's been three months now teaching in the synagogue. He withdrew from them and taking his disciples with him reasoning daily in the Hall of Terenas. This continued for two years. Two years every day in the Hall of Terenas reasoning and he is the apostle to the Gentiles who's got Spain in his view. What are you doing, Paul? So my second answer is the reason you need to hang out with these kids for an hour a night for three or four months is because they don't have the categories. You got to teach them and they're going to be real skeptical and blow it off. Why do you believe that? I just suspend those things and just keep teaching them. Just say things like, look, I'm not asking you to believe it's true yet. I just want you to understand it. Can you hang out with me? Just understand it. And then the Holy Spirit will take care of other things for you. Just get them with you, get inside their skin and put in the presuppositions and put, not that they're going to embrace them right away, but they've got to know them. They've got to have enough facts in their head about God and man and sin and cross and faith. So that's my second answer and I close with my third answer because it's the next phrase in this verse. I stopped in the middle of verse 10, or is it nine, in Acts 19. My third answer to why this organization, Campus Crusade, should become a kind of organization where to reach the world, to touch thousands of campuses should have, as one of its methodologies, a holding fast to the whole council of God that is those cluster of doctrines that are around the core of the gospel to make it intelligible and are imparting them over and over and over again where people don't understand them yet and therefore can't make a reason, a decision, and the Holy Spirit is not going to move in and drop knowledge into people's heads that you don't put there. So the third answer to why that matters is that when you know him like I want you to know him, like I'm pleading with you to know him in the fullness of his being more power, more wisdom, more going, more risk, more death, is going to flow from your life. You're going to be willing to die, you're going to be willing to risk, you're going to be willing to go to places and do things and have a passion than you would have if you had not known him this well. And I'm just going to build that on one phrase at the end of this verse nine or ten, I didn't write it down in my notes here, of Acts 19. It says, "This teaching in the hall of Terenas continued for two years, so that," you do watch those little connectors, don't you? "so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord." You got this word catalytic. Is that what that is? Is that what that is? He's in Ephesus. He never moves from Ephesus. He's teaching every day for two years and three months, and all of Asia heard the word of the Lord. One last verse, I'm going to read to you. Here's my plea, my prayer. Acts 5, 28, the rulers are bent out of shape because these rascals have taught, and here's what they say. We strictly charged you not to teach this name, yet here you are and have filled Jerusalem with your teaching. So, I'm going to pray, God, would you please take Campus Crusade and cause it to be said of them on 2,000 new campuses in two years and 10,000 new campuses in 10 years, you rascals have filled this campus with your teaching. What's, don't you understand? You don't do that on this campus. And may 10,000 campuses rise up and say, Campus Crusade has filled this place with their teaching. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I pray earnestly that you would grant a thorough, deep, comprehensive grasp, not of everything, not of everything. There are things in your Bible. We want to believe it all. I'm not saying we shouldn't believe it all, but oh God, we want to hold together around this pattern of sound words, this standard of teaching, this deposit of faithfulness, this whole council of God, this gospel of the grace of God. Lord, granted Campus Crusade would hold together and not just hold together, but would be explosively energized for this afternoon's dreaming and brainstorming, explosively energized for catalytic ways of reaching 400,000 students on 100 campuses when you only have a half a dozen workers. Lord, grant, I pray that there would be dreams born out of the teaching, confidence born out of the teaching, love born out of the teaching, passion born out of the teaching, risk taking, born out of the teaching, and a readiness to lay your life down in Tibet or China or Afghanistan out of the teaching. Lord, don't let them become intramural in their little squabbles. Don't let them become dead by virtue of false understandings. Grant, I pray that life would abound here and that it would run like a river to the campuses.
John Piper | The calling to open up the eyes of the blind must be carried out through the means of teaching the whole counsel of God.