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OUT OF THE COMFORT ZONE
Introduction
This book is written for Christian leaders and especially servant leaders who long for greater reality in the whole Body of Christ. It also is written for anyone who is hungry for God and wants to understand better what God is doing and wanting to do across the world.
I am hoping that young people, who would be willing to be leaders in God’s great kingdom-building programme, will read it. And I hope it will be read by thousands of former OMers and prayer partners who have stood with us in the work over so many years. I believe it will give a greater vision of that which burns in my heart in these days.
I wrote a proverb years ago that I have often quoted in meetings. It always gets a laugh because people know it is true:
‘Where two or three of the Lord’s people are gathered together, sooner or later there will be a mess.’
We, however, have a great and sovereign God who specialises in working in the midst of a mess.
We see this all around us and also from Genesis to Revelation. The Word says, ‘This treasure is in earthen vessels’ and we must face the implications of that. I often refer to it as ‘The Human Factor’ and much of it is a result of our sin.
As I write this Introduction, my wife and I have just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary and about 450 people came together here in the UK where we live, to give thanks to the Lord and to celebrate. I’m very aware that without my wife Drena, I would not be writing this book. Together we have been involved in the task outlined in this book for over four decades and we continue to grow in grace and knowledge of Him in the midst of weaknesses and struggles. We are still learning ‘His grace is sufficient and His strength is made perfect in weakness’.
This book is a plea for reality, the kind of reality we see expressed in the life of Jesus and in the passages of His Word. It is my prayer that we will be driven deeper into God’s Word with all of its mystery and paradox and that we will learn more about what is really God’s priority.
It is often easier to over-emphasize the ‘distinctives’ that divide us rather than the biblical basis of the faith that unites us. As we get involved in missions, and remember missions is people, we will have our hearts broken many times. If we don’t want to be hurt, we have a real problem because living on this planet as Billy Graham once said, ‘Life at its best is full of sadness’. To be able to forgive those who have truly hurt us is one of the very basic principles of this great spiritual revolution.
George Verwer
Acknowledgements
I want to acknowledge the work of Falcon Green who listened to so many of my message tapes in order to put this book together with other articles I had written.
I also want to acknowledge Vera Zabramski and Hilary Price for the enormous amount of time they put into further changes and editing.
And I want to thank those thousands of people and hundreds of books and articles that have had such a powerful influence in my life.
I especially want to thank Billy Graham, my spiritual father, through whose preaching I discovered life and life in abundance.