LEAVE THE SHORE!

Foreword

One day I picked up Paris Match, a popular French magazine, and came across an interview with movie star George Clooney, known also for his humanitarian work in Africa.

The reporter asked the actor:

“Mr Clooney, is there anything you are afraid of in life?”

“Nothing”, he replied.  “I have found myself in some very dangerous situations.  In Sudan, for example, a 12-year-old little boy pointed a loaded rifle at my chest.  One of my guides snatched the weapon from him just in time!  Fear will never stop me.  However, what would terrify me is to wake up at the age of 75, to look back and say to myself, ‘George, what on earth have you done with your life’?” 

This little book you are now holding could spare you waking up one day saying to yourself, “What on earth have I done with my life?”.

The short stories you are about to read are among the ones I have shared in different parts of the world.  Stories to inspire you to live a life you won’t regret.

In dozens of cities, from Sydney to Cape Town, Sao Paulo to Moscow, I have witnessed hundreds of God’s people responding to the call for mission. 

I have seen them leave the comfort of the shore, get into the boat and move out into the greatest adventure of all.

If you haven’t joined them yet, I really hope you will.

Timothée Paton

August 2024, Alsace, France

Chapter 1        Leave The Shore!

Message preached on May 20th, 2003, at Greenacre Anglican Church, Sydney, Australia

Luke 5: 1-11

Picture Jesus for a moment on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  As He is preaching to the crowd, He notices two empty boats.  One of those boats belongs to Peter.

Peter is cleaning his nets on the beach, discouraged at not having caught any fish.

Everywhere I go, I meet Christians who are sitting on the shore, discouraged.  Their boat is empty.

There are probably more of God’s people on the shore than in the deep end.

The longer they stay on the shore, the more discouraged they become.  Their joy is drying up.  The passion to do something worthwhile with their lives is gone.

Jesus gets into Peter’s boat and after speaking to the crowd, turns to Peter and says, “Now, go out where it is deeper and let down your nets, to catch some fish”. (Luke 5:4 NLT)

You cannot spend all your time cleaning your nets.  You cannot stay on the beach forever.  It’s time to move out from the shore.

What is the name of your shore - Disappointment?  Self-pity?  Depression?  Comfort?

Jesus is already in the boat.  He’s calling you.

God needs you. The boat cannot leave without you.

Five meters from the shore is not enough nor is fifty meters.  If you want to catch many fish, you need to head for the deep end.

What deep end is God calling you to?  Reaching into prisons?  Ministering to the sick and dying?  Bringing the Gospel into schools?

Hudson Taylor once said, “I am unable to bear the sight of a congregation of a thousand or more Christians rejoicing over their own salvation while millions are perishing - lost”.

We cannot stay on the shore when we know the facts.

It’s time to leave the crowd and launch into the deep end.

In 1999, I left France for the deep end of Cambodia. Together, for many years, with a bunch of dedicated friends, we spent our time casting our nets in the city of Phnom Penh where thousands of children are forced every day to work on the streets for a living.

Over the years in South-East-Asia, there were times when my boat was tossed by strong winds.  Many times water got into the boat.  Jesus never said we would not have any storms or trials, but He said He would be with us.

You won’t drown.  Jesus is in the boat.

“Let down your nets,” says Jesus to Peter, “to catch some fish”.

All of us have a net - the talents and gifts the Lord has blessed us with.

Don’t cast your net on the sand.  You won’t catch anything.  Well, maybe some dead fish and a few shells.

Cast your net into the deep end.  Use your talents where you’ll find the fish.

In 1885, at the age of 19, John Keith Falconer went out as a missionary to the Arabians.  He wrote, “I have, but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light”.

Our nets are not to be on display.  A net hanging on a wall might remind you and your friends of the good days spent at sea, but your net is of no use.

Your nets have probably been on display for a long time.  Take them back to the sea.  Don’t waste your God-given abilities!

And as you go and serve God, there’s a promise from Jesus Himself, “You will catch fish”.

In a refugee camp in Sudan, you will catch fish.  In a crowded Afghan hospital, you will catch fish. Among thousands of foreign students in a Western European university, you will catch fish.

At the age of 12, I started writing short stories for children. They were printed as evangelistic tracts and published in French and English in several Christian magazines. They appeared in ‘Tournesol’ as comic strips.

Not long ago, I found the stories I wrote as a child. They had stayed in the bottom of a trunk for 20 years while I lived overseas. It was with great emotion that I re-read them to my wife. The story I titled ‘Ta Seule Chance’, written when I was 13, was the very first to appear in print. It came out for the first time in the Francophone Gospel sheet ‘Bientôt’. 

Here it is in English, as it was originally published in 1986 in ‘WEC Warrior magazine’:

YOUR ONLY CHANCE 

In a region up in the great North where the snow lies very thick, a little girl was travelling alone through the forest on her way to school. It was about half an hour’s journey from her home to the school, so she was muffled up in a thick coat, with her satchel on her back and her hat on her head.

On this occasion little Elizabeth ran as quickly as she could through the snow because she was late. She thought she could shorten the journey by crossing the great frozen lake. Carefully she started across it, but soon she was running and close to the other side. Suddenly there was a loud ‘crack’! The ice began cracking in several directions. Elizabeth lost her balance and fell.

Half in the icy water, clinging to a block of ice, she cried out desperately for help. If she could keep her hold on the ice, there was a chance that she might be heard. 

Not far away a woodman heard her cries of distress. Leaving his axe and saw, he ran towards the sound. He was out of breath when he reached the place and saw the little girl in the icy water very near the edge of the frozen lake.

He could see that she was at the end of her strength, so without a thought for his own safety he stretched out his arms to the child. She had just enough strength left to stretch out her arm to him, for this was her only chance. Her hand locked tight on her rescuer’s hand, and yes! She was really saved. The woodcutter took the little girl in his arms and carried her joyfully home.

This story makes me reflect on something very important. Jesus, the Saviour of the world, offered Himself to save you (as did the woodcutter to save little Elizabeth). Elizabeth’s chance was the hand of the woodcutter. For you there is a unique chance today. It is the hand of Jesus Christ. Your chance is even more marvellous. Turn to Jesus now and he will forgive all the wrong you have done; make you clean inside and save you from everlasting punishment. Accept Jesus now into your life and grasp the hand of the living God. It is a unique chance for you!

I have accepted the Lord Jesus, and I always grasp the hand of this great friend who will uphold me to the end.

Timothée, age 13

One day, after a walk with my parents through the little village of Villelongue in Central France, I decided to create short stories for children that I called "The Adventures of Wally". Every story of the young boy and his dog Spot would invite young readers to give their hearts to Jesus. 

Writing stories became my fishing net. I could have spent my life writing them 'on the beach'. I decided instead to use them for Jesus in the deep end of the lake. A gift that is not used for God’s service and for the service of others, is not a gift.

"At this time their nets were so full of fish they began to break!”

Whether you're serving in a shanty town in the Philippines, in a suburb in Paris or in the political world, you can catch many fish for the Kingdom of God, till your nets are full. 

Jesus won't leave you as you cast your nets in the middle of the lake.

The Lord will provide other workers to help you pull the nets in. Others from the body of Christ will join in to gather the catch! Other fishermen came over to Peter’s boat, “And soon both boats were filled with fish”. (Luke 5:7 NLT)

However, when you decide to respond to the Call of going into mission and make a difference for God, you won’t make everyone happy.

When you leave the crowd, you might upset a few.

One day a man on holiday in the Bahamas noticed a big crowd gathered at the end of a pier. As he got closer, he observed someone preparing for a solo journey around the world in a tiny boat. Everyone watching was telling this adventurer all the things that could go wrong. Suddenly the man felt a strong urge to offer some encouragement. So, as the little boat drifted away into the sea, he began jumping up and down on the pier and shouted to the lonely sailor leaving the shore, “Go for it! You can make it! We’re proud of you!”.

As you launch into the deep end, you will hear The Voice telling you, “Go for it! You can make it! We’re proud of you!”.

William G. T. Shedd said: “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for”.

Who’s going to cast their nets among the 10,807,000 Patahn people of Afghanistan where only 0.01 percent are known to be followers of Jesus?

Who’s going to the deep end of Chad where 1,258,000 souls from the Shuwa people group have no knowledge of the Good News? 

I often think of Matha, this amazing woman I met in October 2013 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was at a Missionary Guesthouse as we sat down for a meal when I heard her story.

Matha was born in the US. At the age of 11, she gave her life to Christ. Suffering from strong headaches, she went to see a doctor. The doctor diagnosed the young girl with a brain tumour. She was only 12 years old. She went for an operation that was unfortunately not a success. One week before her 13th birthday, Matha woke up… completely blind. At the age of 16 she tried to commit suicide by taking in one go a month's supply of barbiturates. She opened her eyes twenty-four hours later and exclaimed: “Thank God I’m still alive! Lord, now I give you all that I am”.

She told me: “I then felt the Glory of God all around me. God was upholding me. When I cried, it was as if He was crying with me”.

Passionate about foreign cultures, Matha decided to go out as a missionary, in spite of her handicap. After obtaining her Master’s Degree at a Bible College, she applied to serve God among street children in Mexico. She wrote to a missionary agency but, when the leaders realized that she was blind, her request was denied. She didn’t give up and wrote again, this time to a mission serving in Colombia. But the door there closed too.

After two refusals, Matha, now aged 23, wondered if it was a mistake to apply for overseas mission. But God spoke to her heart: “Matha, I have indeed called you. It’s not important what others tell you!”. She picked herself up and wrote this time to Youth With A Mission in Brazil. Her application was accepted!

In 1994, she flew out for a short-term mission among street children in Northern Brazil.

Back in America, she went to her church to hear a missionary speaker working in Mongolia. On her way to the service, she remembers saying to herself: “One thing is sure, I will never go and work in Mongolia!”.

But before the end of that missionary meeting, God had changed her heart. She was now convinced that Mongolia is where the Lord wanted her to go.

Not long before Matha left America for Oulan-Bator, Mongolia’s capital city, she received a vision. She could distinguish many Mongolian Christians on horses. In that vision, the Lord said: “I have not only called you to serve among the children living on the streets, but I have also commissioned you to raise servants from Mongolia for my service”.

It was in 1997 that Matha took off, blind and alone for a whole new adventure of faith.

Over 5000 boys and girls live on the streets of Oulan-Bator where in winter the temperatures go below -30 degrees c! Many children are found dead from the cold. Matha learned the language and gave all of her time to those abandoned little ones. During the wintertime, the Center where she helped out took care of 200 orphans.

I asked Matha what came of that vision she had of seeing local believers sent out to serve. She answered with a beaming face:

“You know Timothée, today the Mongolian Church sends more missionaries per believer than any other country in the world? There is a Mongolian brother, blind like me, that I’ve had the joy to send out as a missionary to his own people. Right now he is at the heart of the Gobi desert planting churches among the nomads!”

It was shortly before Christmas when I met Matha. We went out to Chiang Mai’s market where she bought presents for friends and family.

At the beginning of 2013, Matha moved into a whole new ministry: reaching out with the love of Jesus to the young Thai girls sold into the sex trade. There are up to 500, 000 slaves across Thailand today. Among those multitudes of broken women and children is a blind American hero, who has not allowed her severe handicap to determine her mission and her future.

I last saw Matha at the car park of that Christian Guest House. A taxi had come to pick her up for the airport where she would fly out alone with her suitcase and her white stick for Bangkok.

When she speaks in churches in America, facing crowds she can’t see, she often throws a challenge out: “My brothers and sisters, if I can do what I do, let me tell you: You can do it too!”.

Mark Twain wrote: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Chapter 2      The King Who Ripped His Clothes 

Message preached on November3, 2009 in Monagham, Ireland

2 Kings 6: 24-31

This is the kind of story you don’t read to your children before they go to sleep. 

Samaria: a high-walled fortified city. One day an army comes and launches a siege. No one in Samaria can come out. The city is surrounded with troops. After a few days, food prices go up and it won’t be long before the smell of death starts creeping into every home. Only the rich can now afford to buy what is left on the market stalls. 

There’s a king in Samaria. He feels terribly helpless. He might be king, but he can’t save his people.  

The Bible tells us that, ‘‘One day the king of Israel was walking along the city wall. A woman cried out, ‘Help! Your majesty!’ He answered, ‘If God won’t help you, where on earth can I go for help?’  The king continued, ‘Tell me your story.’ She said: ‘This woman came to me and said, ‘Give up your son and we’ll have him for today’s supper; tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’  So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I told her, ‘Your turn - bring your son so we can have him for supper.’  But she had hidden her son away.” (2 Kings 6: 26-29 The Message)

The king must have heard some terrible stories lately but this one was beyond anything he had heard. 

I don’t think you can go any lower than that: mothers deciding to have their sons for supper! 

The Bible says: “When the king heard this, he tore his clothes in despair”. (2 Kings 6: 30 NLT)

When you hear the horror stories on the news every day, how do you react? How do you respond to the millions of souls living in slums like animals in cages? How do you respond to Christians across the Communist and the Muslim world, who, because of their faith, have ended up locked in small, filthy prison cells? Over 100,000 Christians are now held in North Korean labour camps facing forced labour, torture and possible executions.

Does it break your heart? Does it move you to the extent that you cannot help but rip your clothes too? 

A.B. Simpson, a great missionary of the past, often hugged a globe to his chest and wept over a lost world. 

Everywhere I go, I meet people who are moved by the needs and touched in their hearts by the suffering in the world. But very few truly end up tearing their hearts.

If someone is to ask me, “Timothée, how do I know where God wants me to serve Him? There are great needs everywhere, where should I go?”  I will answer them, “If a group of people, a community, a city, a specific country, whatever literally breaks your heart, then this is very likely where God wants to use you”.

Too many of God’s people have only unbuttoned their shirts during a short-term mission trip overseas or at a church outreach in their community. It’s good, but more is needed. Your clothes have to be torn from the top to bottom.

Thankfully, in Samaria there’s a man of God. He announces that the next day, the troops will go, the famine will be over, and the gates of the city will be wide open.  And it happened just as the prophet had said. 

This is what I see here; the very day after the king ripped his robe, the gates of the city were ripped open too.

The day your heart is ripped open, the gates to your destiny will open up. No one will be able to stop you from running into your calling. 

Some people have prayed for years asking God to open the doors but few of them are really willing to pay the price. Ripping your clothes will cost you, but the blessings you’ll reap will be countless. 

Two thousand years ago, the King of kings ripped heaven open to come down into our world. On the way to the cross, His clothes were ripped. His heart was ripped. The temple curtain was ripped. Jesus is calling for “ripped-clothes, ripped-heart followers”. 

If your heart is already torn, keep it torn. Don’t go looking for a needle and a thread to sew it up again. Keep your heart on fire for Jesus and for the lost. Don’t let anyone try to make you look more respectable by giving you a new shirt. 

The day the city of Samaria opened up again, the crowds like a mob came pouring out through the gate. In that joyful crowd I’m sure there was that boy, the one those two mothers had planned to eat. His life was spared. 

Today millions of boys and girls are trapped in the jaws of death. You’ll find them in dark rooms in Karachi making carpets from dawn to dusk. You’ll find them locked up in brothels in New Delhi. You’ll find them eating out of rubbish bags in Cairo and Mexico City. But they don’t have to die. There is, for each one of them, the promise of a new life. 

The following story happened in Cambodia in 2012. After more than three hours’ drive, almost on the Vietnam border, I drove into one of the most frightening places I have ever been to: Kompong Cham CC3 prison.

A Korean missionary had invited me to preach at the once-a-year Easter Gospel Outreach, along with an international medical team. As we walked into the prison compound and sat on nice seats under big trees, hundreds of prisoners came out and rushed to the barbed wire fence that separated us from them. It looked like a scene from a World War 2 concentration camp. They were poor, thin, broken men, but excitement was growing among them...they had been waiting so long for this event.

After a number of songs, a long speech from the Head of the Detention Center, (hard to follow with the microphone not working properly and the millions of insects buzzing in the trees above) I went up to speak and stood in front of the fence. The noisy insects stopped, not one of them was heard, and the mic worked perfectly. There was such an anointing. I have rarely felt so much freedom in preaching the Gospel.

Many prisoners were not allowed to come down and sit in front of the fence. They were at the back listening from their prison cells. I could only see their hands waving at me. Some were holding up Christian signs in English that I could read from where I was standing. I was told there are 100 prisoners per cell! No room for all of them at night to sleep at the same time. Hell on earth. At the end, I gave an invitation to turn to Christ. Hundreds prayed the sinner’s prayer. Boxes and boxes of food were then distributed to all 1449 prisoners.

And then one of the most moving scenes I have ever witnessed happened. As we were about to leave, the prisoners down at the fence, sweating from the scorching afternoon sun, started to sing songs of praise with beautiful voices. Those in their cells joined in. I still could not see their faces, but I could clearly hear their voices and see their hands waving as they sang. I was trying hard to hold back my tears.

I will never forget my visit to CC3 in Kompong Cham. My heart goes out to prisoners. One day my heart was ripped open for those locked up in prison.

Let your heart break today with what breaks the heart of God. 

And by all means, keep it broken. 

Chapter 3     Shammah

Message preached on April 2, 2011, at the Salvation Army ‘Palais de la Femme’, Paris, France

2 Samuel 23: 11-12

As a little boy going every week to Sunday school, I heard the stories of many great heroes of the Bible - men and women of faith like Moses, David, Esther and Paul.  But I never really heard of those ‘hidden heroes’ of God until one day, I discovered Shammah. Most people have never heard of him, probably because there is no book written after his name or any long chapters in the Scriptures which talk about him.  His exploit is mentioned in only two verses, and if you read them too quickly, you wouldn’t even realize what this unknown hero had actually done. Those two verses are so powerful they could be the scenario of a Hollywood action movie! 

‘Next in rank was Shammah son of Agee from Harar.  One time the Philistines gathered at Lehi and attacked the Israelites in a field full of lentils. The Israelite army fled, but Shammah held his ground in the middle of the field and beat back the Philistines. So the Lord brought about a great victory.’ (2 Samuel 23: 11-12 NLT).

The Israelites are about to face the Philistines in a field of lentils (interesting place for a battlefield!). For some reason, the whole army of Israel fled from the battlefield. Why did they run away? Were they outnumbered?  Was their enemy better equipped? 

All fled the field. All, except one man, Shammah - A True Hero. 

Most of us would have run with the rest of the army. Nobody in their right mind would have stayed by themselves in the middle of the battlefield. 

Nobody in their right mind would spend their lives translating the Bible among some lost tribe in the middle of nowhere. Nobody in their right mind would go to Albania, Europe’s poorest country, learn the language and establish a church. Nobody in their right mind would spend all their time and resources to help HIV AIDS children in an African war zone. Nobody in their right mind would spend their life reaching out in Phnom Penh’s slums like the many unknown heroes I have worked with. 

The Church of Jesus Christ is still at war. Our enemy is real. When faced with the challenge, we can either run away with the crowd or stay back and take our stand in the middle of the field. 

History is full of unknown heroes, who like Shammah, have made a difference in God’s Kingdom. 

You have probably never heard of Charles Loring Brace. I never had until a couple of years ago when I came across his story. 

Imagine yourself as a child, abandoned on the streets of New York City.  Your immigrant parents died on a ship on the way to America or of sickness in the city. You have no money and no relatives. You can’t speak English and you don’t know how you’ll get your next meal. 

Thousands upon thousands of orphans in the 1850’s found themselves caught in that kind of life. They slept in dark streets, huddling for warmth in boxes or metal drums. To survive they mostly stole, caught rats to eat and went through garbage. 

Immigrants were flooding New York City then and no one had time or money to look after orphans; no one except Charles Loring Brace, a 26-year-old minister.  Horrified by their plights he began the Foster Home Plan. When he ran out of homes, he organized a unique solution - The Orphan Train. The idea was simple: put hundreds of orphans on a train heading west. As the train passed through towns along the way, Christian committees would bring approved godly families to the train stations to claim a son or daughter from the Orphan Train. 

By the time the last Orphan Train steamed west in 1929, between 150,000 and 200,000 children had found new homes and new lives. Two orphans from those trains became governors, one served as a United States congressman, the other became a U.S Supreme Court Justice. 

Charles Loring Brace took his stand in the middle of the field. 

There’s a field of lentils for you.  If you are not in one yet, go out looking for one.  It won’t be long before you’ll find yours. 

For every child of God there is a field of lentils. Whether it is at an eye clinic in India or in a slum in Nigeria or at an IT company in a high-tech building. 

We can sometimes feel alone and weak as we face the challenges of the field. But remember that the God who stood by Shammah is also the One who stands with you. Don’t be intimidated by anything. Let your voice be heard. Don’t run away. History is full of those heroes of faith who overcame the majority.

I was listening once to a sermon of Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke speaking at a large conference in Singapore.  He said, “Some people at every conference get a new calling from God.  You don’t need another calling from God.  You need to go to the shopping mall and buy yourself a suitcase and get going!”  Everyone in the audience cheered, but I wonder how many actually did get going. 

Who is going to stand in the middle of the field of child labour and make a difference?

The International Labour Organization estimates there are 50,000 girls working as domestic servants all over Morocco - some as young as five and six have been sent from the countryside to work as domestic servants in private homes in Casablanca alone. These children are often made to labour 16 hours a day, sleep on the floor and eat only scraps. Some girls have been chained up when their employers go away for the weekend. Others have been starved to death, burned with irons, or raped and thrown on the streets when they become pregnant.

Lakshmi, a nine-year-old cigarette roller in Tamil Nadu, India says: “My sister is ten years old. Every morning at seven, she goes to the bonded labour man, and every night at nine, she comes home. He treats her badly; he hits her if he thinks she is working slowly or if she talks to the other children, he yells at her. He comes looking for her if she is sick. I don’t care about school or playing. I don’t care about any of that. All I want is to bring my sister home from the bonded labour man. For 600 rupees, I can bring her home – that is our only chance to get her back. We don’t have 600 rupees…we will never have 600 rupees”.

Children in Morocco and India and all over the world are waiting for Shammah.

Make every hour of your life count for what really matters.  Don’t waste it.  Go join Shammah on the field. 

For those of you who are still in the middle of the field, I want to encourage you not to leave.  Don’t quit.  The same Holy Spirit who has called you and equipped you is still with you today.  The Philistines won’t win; Jesus is on your side.  Whether you are trying to establish a Christian Outreach at some large university or making Jesus known in the world of politics, sports, media or the arts and entertainment, you are not alone. 

‘But Shammah held his ground in the middle of the field and beat back the Philistines’.

Did you get that?  Not only did he face the whole army, he beat them!  It’s not one man beating another man.  It’s one man beating a whole army! 

You have no idea what God will do through you in a field of lentils!

Pastor Maurice Boinet reminds me a lot of Shammah.

I first met him in 1993 in his church in St-Quentin, Northern France. Two years later, after my theological training in England, Maurice Boinet took me under his wing as a trainee pastor with the Assemblies of God. The timing couldn't have been better. It was a gift from God to work alongside him. 

Mr Boinet devoted his life to preaching the Gospel, planting churches and strengthening the scattered Christians of Picardy. No one will really know how many miles he travelled over the years across that vast ‘field of lentils’ to meet the sick, the elderly and those in need of encouragement.

Most meetings were held in small churches or homes. My two years in St-Quentin were among the happiest of my ministry.

Pastor Boinet is one of the most humble and meek servants of God I have ever known. A man of peace and reconciliation. Tall and strong, but with a gentle heart. I never heard him raise his voice (only when he was preaching the Gospel). He never lost his temper. He preached the Word with conviction, always pointing souls to Jesus. He was always open to new ways of reaching the lost. He connected with other church denominations in the region. Few pastors today would be prepared to give so many years of their lives to serve in such a barren part of the country. The Picardy region was the scene of terrible battles during the two world wars. It was in 1916 that more than a million soldiers perished on the Somme, the deadliest battle of the First World War. Picardy is a field of lentils that you would easily be tempted to leave because the spiritual ground is so arid.

This soldier of faith travelled the length and breadth of this region. From Péronne to St-Gobain, from Ham to Béthisy St Pierre, returning home sometimes very late after a long day visiting isolated believers.

Maurice Boinet would often encourage his flock in his sermons to “go all the way for Jesus!” And that's what he did. He never stopped. He went right to the end of his call.

He never put himself forward. And yet God allowed him to meet in France great names such as Billy Graham and the Prince of Monaco.

When I learned that he had cancer, I was devastated. The last time I saw him was in his bedroom. He was very weak, lying on his bed. We wept. In 2016 a faithful servant of Christ, a "Shammah" of the faith, a friend, a mentor went to be with the Lord. 

In a region where hundreds of thousands of soldiers over two wars lost their lives, a French soldier of the Cross gave his life for the sake of the Gospel.

Chapter 4    The Man Who Killed His Oxen

Message preached in November 2007 on the WEC Tour in Canada

1 Kings 19: 19-21 & 2 Kings 2: 1-11

It was just another day. The young man went out to the field as he had probably been doing for years. He was ploughing his field with a pair of oxen.

Elisha was a farmer and one day he would eventually take over the family business.

He had no idea that from that day on, his life would never be the same again.

A whole new chapter was about to unfold.  A chapter that had not been planned at all.  It all happened when an old man, with a similar name as the young farmer, came upon the field that day.

Elijah, an anointed prophet of God, threw his cloak over Elisha’s shoulders. That very same day, the young farmer killed his oxen and invited his friends for a farewell BBQ.  He kissed his Mum and Dad goodbye and followed the old man into a whole new world.

Elisha could have stayed on his farm for the rest of his life.

Peter, Andrew, James and John could have stayed on the shore of Galilee for the rest of their lives.  Instead they left their nets and followed Jesus.

Charles Studd, founder of WEC, could have stayed comfortably in England and enjoyed his fortune, but he left it all behind to serve as a missionary in China, India and the Congo.

Jackie Pullinger could have stayed her whole life in England.  Instead, she travelled on a ship that took her all the way to Hong Kong.  Decades later, she is still there ministering to men caught in the web of drug addiction.

The Bible says that ‘Elisha returned to his oxen and slaughtered them.’ (1 Kings 19:21 NLT)

What is the name of your oxen?

What is it that is holding you back from following Him?  A relationship?  A comfortable life?  An addiction?  Bitterness?

If you don’t put your oxen on the altar as a sacrifice you can never fully serve God.  Don’t even hide the oxen in a small barn somewhere, because when the ride gets rough, you will run back to it.

I'll never forget the man who stepped forward at the call I was giving at a conference in England. I began my message by saying, "What happened to those who used to go out into mission with a one-way ticket? We're seeing fewer and fewer of them!”  At the end of the meeting, among those who came to the front, is this man in his sixties who kneels down near the platform. I go over to pray with him. He tells me: "God has spoken to my heart tonight: every year for 17 years I've made a missionary trip to Uganda. I've always bought a return ticket. For my next trip, I'll be going on a one-way ticket!”. I hope he kept his promise and left his home country for good. God is still looking for men and women who, like Elisha, are ready to ‘burn their bridges’ and set off on a one-way ticket.

The old prophet has now taken Elisha as his young disciple.

In 2 Kings Chapter 2 you find them travelling together.

At a place called Gilgal, the old mentor tells the young man, “Stay here, for the Lord has told me to go to Bethel”.  Elisha turns around and says, “As surely as the Lord lives and you yourself live, I will never leave you!” (2 Kings 2:2 NLT)

They both then head off for Bethel where the very same scenario happens again. Elisha will not stay in Bethel; he will follow his teacher to Jericho.

In Jericho, the same thing happened.

Elisha is not settling in Jericho. He is heading for the Jordan because that’s where God’s anointing is.

Burning your oxen and saying goodbye to your farm is good.

But as you walk with the Great Mentor Jesus, you can end up stuck in Gilgal.  You feel the Lord is blessing you, you have brought some souls to Christ, you attend a good church but after some time you reach a plateau.

Some Christians have been stuck in the ‘Gilgal Christian life’ for years.

Don’t stop halfway.  Don’t die in Gilgal, Bethel or in Jericho.  Head for the Jordan!

I have met many believers, even missionaries who, though they had left the comfort of their farm, got stuck somewhere between Gilgal and the Jordan.

They never made it to the River!

During the reign of Oliver Cromwell the English Government ran low on the silver it needed to make coins.  So Cromwell sent his men into the cathedrals to search for some.  They reported back that the only silver they could find was in the statues of the saints standing in the corners.  Cromwell sent back word, “Good, let’s melt down the saints and put them into circulation”.  

We are called to be melted by God, filled with His Spirit and put into circulation into a world that desperately needs Jesus.

Between each town on his way to the Jordan, Elisha was faced with groups of prophets.  They became a pain in the neck by reminding him that his mentor would soon be taken away from him.

As you move into your next level of service with God, you’ll meet the so-called prophets who will try to slow you down.

They will tell you, “You’re too old now to serve the poor in Bangladesh!”

They’ll tell you, “Your level of studies is not good enough to start a church in Dublin or Brussels!”

They’ll tell you, “Forget about ministering into prisons. Your past life is worse than some of those prisoners!”.

Don’t let anyone, whatever title or position they may have, distract you from going all the way with God.  Don’t compromise your vision!  Don’t settle for average.

Our world is in great need of the Gospel. Go where the need is the greatest.

I remember meeting a young man in New Zealand years ago.  He said, “I will soon be going out to the mission field, but not to a place already reached with the Gospel.  I have gone through a whole list of countries to look for those with less than 1% believers and I will go to one of those places”. 

That’s someone who is willing to go all the way to the Jordan. (Dear Kiwi friend, if you’re out there and you’re reading this, I hope you’re serving among those unreached with the Gospel!)

Why do so many people waste the only life they’ve been given?

According to Christophe Nick in a TV documentary (‘Le jeu de la mort’, 2010) we live on average 80 years, fourteen full years watching television. Fourteen precious years from the only life we have, watching a TV screen! And how much more if we add time spent in front of our smartphones and computers? What a tragedy!

Some people are so distracted by screens and social media that, without even realizing it, they end up falling asleep: they've missed out on what God had planned for them. Don't let the virtual stop you on your way to the Jordan.  

I've hung a photo on my office wall. It was taken in 1995 in the chapel of Elim Bible College in Nantwich, England. We were 97 students, from different countries and different churches. All smiling and proud to be able to study God's Word in such a fine school. We were young, full of passion and zeal.  

On graduation day we couldn't wait to embark on new adventures with God. A few weeks after this photo was taken, I went into full-time ministry in France. 

I've lost touch with most of the students. I sometimes wonder what has become of them. Are they as committed to God today as they were then? Did any of them stop at Jericho or Bethel? How many are still full of faith and fire, on the road to the Jordan River? I ask the Lord to renew them in their calling, and if some have stopped along the way, may the Spirit urge them to go forward.

In a race, there are often more people at the start than at the finish.

Paul writes to the Christians in Galatians: "You were running well: who stopped you...?"

Where are you today?  Still on the farm?  In Gilgal?  Sitting on the roadside?

I encourage you to move out, in faith.  Go for it!  He is with you!

Chapter 5     Go Down Into The Valley

Message preached in May 2007 on a WEC South African Tour

1 Samuel 17: 1-51

On one hill is the army of the Philistines.  On another hill the army of Israel.  Thousands of soldiers facing each other. Between those two armies, a valley.  The valley will soon become a battlefield.

In the ranks of the Philistines, there is a warrior and a champion.  A giant of a man.

Every morning and every evening Goliath comes down alone onto the battlefield.  He looks up to the Israelites and shouts, “I defy the armies of Israel today. Send me a man who will fight me!” (1 Samuel 17:10 NLT)

When he finishes his speech, he heads back to his camp.  Goliath goes through that same scenario every day, for 40 days.

When King Saul and all of the Israelites hear the words of the Philistine, they are terrified.

They are God’s people.  God’s army.  Anointed for battle.  But when one man comes down into the valley, they are paralyzed with fear!

In God’s Church today there are a lot of people on top of the hill.  Most of them are enjoying great worship, attending conferences, reading good Christian books.

They are well equipped and anointed for battle. But when the giants come onto the battlefield, they freeze.

There are so many valleys in our world today, where giants of all kinds are still defying the Name of God:

The valley of Central Asia where millions are still held in darkness.  The valley of slum communities across the third world where drugs, poverty and hopelessness are rampant. The valley of Western Europe where the giants of secularism, the occult and atheism reign.

What about the valley of the 10/40 window, stretching from Mauritania to the China Sea? Nearly 3 billion souls live there without access to the Gospel. 

A few years ago, I was preaching at a youth gathering in France. At the end of one of the meetings, a young woman came up to me and said: "2 years ago, I heard you preach in Lyon. At one point in your message you said: 'Whether you go to serve in Guatemala or Angola...' I turned to my friend sitting next to me in amazement: she was going to Angola, and I was going to Guatemala. We did go and serve God there for 6 months. That day, in Lyon, God had confirmed in His Word that He wanted us in those two countries”.

Often the Lord confirms our place of service after we've already set out on our journey. Don't wait until you've understood everything before you get going. Even if you don't have much information, even if the future isn't very clear yet, get up anyway. If you wait until you have all the pieces of the puzzle sorted out, you may never get started. If God has given you a project, a dream, a country, trust Him.  

Speaking of Guatemala and Angola, these are two countries with great needs. I was reading recently that corruption is so rampant in Guatemala that it has almost become an institution! The country has a high rate of unsolved crimes. On average, sixteen people are murdered every day, making Guatemala one of the most violent countries in Latin America. 

What about going out on mission for a month or 6 months? A short-term trip is often the first step towards a life entirely devoted to serving God on the battlefield.

Where do you stand today?  On the hill or in the valley?

It is always easier to be with the majority of God’s people. It’s safer on the mountain.  It's easier to live on the mountain than to go into prisons and share Christ. It's easier to live on the mountain than to set up a weekly Bible stall in a marketplace. It’s easier to live on the mountain than to run a program for inner-city kids.

You can stay up there till you die.  Or you can make your way down to the battlefield. 

The Bible tells us about David, a young shepherd boy.  He is too young to be a soldier, but he has three brothers in the army.

One day his Dad calls him, “David, take this basket of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread, and carry them quickly to your brothers”. (1 Samuel 17: 17 NLT)

As David arrives, the Philistine and Israelite forces are facing each other.  But as soon as the giant appears, the whole army of Israel runs away from him.

When David sees Goliath, he turns to the soldiers and says, “Who is this pagan Philistine anyway, that he is allowed to defy the armies of the living God?” (1 Samuel 17:27 NLT)

The majority is too scared to face the giant.  The minority (one young man) is ready to stand up for God.

Few people today would know who Telemachus was. Telemachus was a hermit from Syria. He was among those who devoted themselves to a holy life of prayer and self-denial and kept themselves apart from the wicked life of Rome. Although few of the Roman citizens followed their example, most of them had great respect for these men of God, and the few who recognized Telemachus knew he had been on a pilgrimage to visit the churches and celebrate Christmas in Rome. Rome was celebrating its victory over Alaric the Goth by watching its gladiators fight to the death in the arena. Telemachus, dressed in his monk’s robe, found himself in the Colosseum among the crowds. He bravely made his way through the spectators and leapt down into the arena.

He came face to face with the gladiators, not intimidated by their swords. Laying a hand on one of them, he reproved him for shedding innocent blood, and then turning towards the thousands of angry faces around him: ‘Do not repay God’s mercy by murdering each other!”

Angry shouts drowned out his voice. “This is no place for preaching! On with the fight!” Pushing Telemachus aside, the two gladiators were about to get back into their combat, but the man of God stepped between them. The gladiators were enraged. They turned on Telemachus and stabbed him to death.

The crowd fell silent, shocked by the death of this holy man. His death however was not in vain, for from that day on, no more gladiators ever went into combat in the Colosseum.

Telemachus went down into the valley on January 1st of the year 404 and changed history.   

Edmund Burke, a well-known philosopher once wrote, “For the triumph of evil, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing”.

Where do you belong?

The day you decide to go onto the battlefield and face the giants, don’t expect everyone to get excited.

David’s own brothers looked down on him, “What are you doing around here anyway?” he demanded, “What about those few sheep you’re supposed to be taking care of?” (1 Samuel 17: 28 NLT) 

The king himself makes things worse by saying, “Don’t be ridiculous! There’s no way you can fight this Philistine and possibly win! You’re only a boy and he’s been a man of war since his youth”. (1 Samuel 17: 33 NLT)

If you decide to spend your next summer holidays helping out in a refugee camp, you won’t make everybody happy. If you announce you are off with a mission to fight giants in Niger or Burma, your friends won’t all be cheering.

The day your family sees you leave the hill of comfort and head for the valley of God’s service; they probably won’t understand.

Where is the valley God is calling you to? What are the giants God has called you to face? There are still not enough workers in the valley.  The giants will not fall by themselves.

God is looking for people who will go, regardless of the cost.

In different parts of the world, I have met ordinary men and women in all kinds of valleys, slaying giants for Jesus. I think of Dave, in the state of Utah in America facing the giant of Mormonism.  Hundreds have found Christ through his ministry. 

Or my brother Marc and his wife Rachel. Through music, songs that they write themselves and the many outreaches and seminars for children and parents, they are advancing God’s Kingdom in France and beyond. 

Or Magali Jézéquel, another of God's soldiers on the field. This missionary from Brittany helps street children in Senegal, West Africa. For years she keeps on communicating God's love and grace to lost street boys. Magali could have easily thrown in the towel. Despite the trials and storms, she has decided to stay in the valley!

These servants of God have one thing in common: they have responded to the call.

On two occasions, I have visited the ministry of Bill Wilson in New York City.  When he arrived in the 70’s on the ‘battlefield of Brooklyn’, he faced huge giants: gangs, rape, violence, drugs, prostitution... He started out by himself in ministering to street kids.

Today he has the biggest Sunday school in America. Every week more than 30,000 children are exposed to the Gospel.  Bill is old now, but he has no plan of retiring.  He will stay in the valley till the Lord calls him home.

Don’t head back to the hill. Every month 1,200 pastors across America quit the ministry.  Don’t join them.

David then picked up five smooth stones from a stream.

God has given you stones.  He has anointed you and He has equipped you.  Don’t keep your stones in your pockets!  Use your sling.  He has given you all you need to face the giants.

Amy Carmichael, a great missionary to India once said, “We have all eternity to celebrate the victories, but only a few hours before sunset to win them”.

Remember: When you walk out onto the battlefield, you are not alone.  God is with you.

The same David wrote in the famous 23rd Psalm, “Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me”. (Psalm 23:4 NLT)

Whether you are slaying giants in a rundown hospital in Mali or on a remote Greek island, He is with you.

Chapter 6     He Is Waiting For You At Lo Debar

Message preached on August 16th, 2008, at the Mission Conference, Osasco, Brazil

2 Samuel 9 

David is king.  From his palace in Jerusalem, he remembers Jonathan.  They were best friends back in their youth.  Jonathan is dead but the love between David and Jonathan has not died.  David calls one of his servants, Ziba, who was working for the previous king, Saul, father of Jonathan and asks, “Is anyone still alive from Saul’s family?  If so, I want to show God’s kindness to them”.

Ziba replies: ‘‘Yes, one of Jonathan’s sons is still alive, but he is crippled in both feet”.

‘‘Where is he? ’’ (2 Samuel 9:3-4a)

The Bible goes on to say that when King David heard that Mephibosheth was living in a place called Lo Debar, he calls Ziba to head off for Lo Debar, find Mephibosheth and tell him to come and live at the palace. 

Mephibosheth: 

Across the world today, there are millions of lives like Mephibosheth - broken, bruised and sick. 

Mephibosheth is the prisoner, behind bars. Mephibosheth is the young girl who sells her body on the streets for a few dollars.  Mephibosheth is that baby who’s been diagnosed with an incurable disease.  Mephibosheth is that unreached people group who is living far from God:  the Afghani Tadjik people (4 million of them) or the Shawiy of Algeria (1.6 million). 

Mephibosheth does not know that Jesus Himself is calling him to His kingdom.  There’s a seat at the Father’s table for each Mephibosheth of the world.

Lo Debar: 

Most Christians are too busy to find out where Lo Debar is.  Some might pray for the unreached people of the earth but very few will ever go there.

The name ‘Lo Debar’ actually means ‘No pasture’.

Lo Debar is that slum in the Philippines where people, like animals, are crammed together. Lo Debar is that remote village in Turkmenistan where, to this day no one has yet made Christ known.  Lo Debar is that town in Italy where unemployment and the mafia are holding many in bondage.

It is always easier to stay in the comfort of the palace than to head out for Lo Debar.

Ermine is an evangelical Christian from France who has worked for many years in a very fashionable clothes shop in London. She has dressed celebrities like Princess Diana and Dustin Hoffman. One of Ermine’s employees was a Cambodian woman who once invited her to visit her native country. Ermine agreed and the two women flew to Phnom Penh. This is where she fell in love with a young man, grandson of King Norodom Sihanouk. Sihanouk, who was still king back then, married Ermine and Nary at the Royal Palace…and from that day Ermine, became Princess Ermine Norodom!

But Ermine quickly got a heart for the poor of Cambodia’s capital city. She has become one of the most fervent and faithful missionaries to the slums.

Every week she goes visiting her ‘little brothers and sisters’ in one of the dirtiest places in Phnom Penh. The entrance to the little slum of Bang Trabeik is so narrow that a large person might find it difficult to get in. The workers at the restaurant next door dump their bags of rubbish; children from the slum jump into the trash to find anything worthwhile. The children of Bang Trabeik still find it hard to believe that the nice French lady who comes to their rat infested shacks is a princess from the Royal family. Because of Ermine’s commitment, every Sunday the boys and girls from those needy families make their way, by themselves, to church. Ermine found Mephibosheth. The slum of Bang Trabeik has become for several years now her Lo debar.

Have you found your Lo Debar? 

Ziba: 

Ziba, David’s servant did not look for someone to replace him on his mission.  He did not look for any excuse.  He promptly responded to the King’s call, the way Isaiah the prophet responded, “I’ll go!  Send me”. (Isaiah 6:8 The Message)

Many Christians think that Mephibosheth is going to arrive all by himself just like that, at the doorstep of the palace.  Jesus never said the lost would come by themselves.  He said.  “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone!’’ (Mark 16:15 NLT)

Do you remember the Ziba God sent to you?  The Ziba who led you to Jesus?  Was it a friend from work?  A neighbour?  A missionary?  Do you still remember the day when you walked through the doors of the palace, and in spite of your broken life, Jesus welcomed you to His table?

There is a long table in God’s palace. Around the table are men, women and children of all races, from every language.  They are sitting in the palace because one day, someone found them in Lo Debar. They are no more orphans.  Today like you and me, they belong to God’s great family.

But around God’s table, there are still many empty seats. We cannot yet celebrate because those afar have still not responded to God’s invitation.

International mission Wycliffe, that wants everyone on earth to have God’s Word in their own language, estimates that the Bible still needs to be translated in almost 2000 languages. Wycliffe is desperate for new workers.

Hudson Taylor, one of the first missionaries to China, tells the story of how a young Chinese Christian, who had recently become a follower of Jesus, came up to him one day and asked, “Mr. Taylor, since how long is the Good News of the Gospel known in your country?’’

“In England where I came from,” answered the missionary, “we’ve known about Jesus for a long, long time.  Actually hundreds of years.’’

“Hundreds of years!” exclaimed the young Chinese, astonished.  “And no one from your country ever came to tell us about Jesus!” And he added with much sadness in his voice, “My dad searched for the truth his whole life.  He searched and searched but he died without finding it.  Oh!  Why did you not come to China sooner?’’ 

Today in China and elsewhere, lost souls, broken lives are waiting for Ziba.

I read in a newspaper about a major blunder committed a few years ago by the U.S. Army recruiting agency. It sent out 14,000 letters to Pennsylvania residents, asking them to register to fulfil their military obligations. The catch was that the recipients were all dead and buried. They had, in fact, been born between 1893 and 1897. The agency apologized to their families. During the transfer of 400,000 records, the files of men born between 1993 and 1997 had been mixed up with those of people born a century earlier.   

When the Great King calls to join the ranks of his army, his call is not to those who are already dead and buried. His call is to you and me, still very much alive today. When we cease to live, his call will have no effect on us. Don’t leave this world with the regret of having missed God's call on your life.

In 1964, my mother, a young single nurse from England took a boat and crossed the Channel. The following year, my father, a soldier in the British Army, waved farewell to Scotland and came also to France. My parents answered God's call to serve Him in a land that many still consider to be the "missionary’s graveyard". 

For decades, as part of Worldwide Evangelization for Christ (WEC), they have planted churches where there had not been any. Their passion for those who don't know Jesus is still as real today as it was when they first settled in France. There's not a day goes by when they don't look out for Mephibosheth.

See you in Lo Debar.

Chapter 7       Can You Carry A Stretcher?

Message preached on July 8th, 2010, at La Porte Ouverte Chrétienne, Mulhouse, France

Mark 2: 1-12

People started running all over Capernaum when they heard He was in town.

Children leaving the playground. Mothers leaving their kitchen. Students running out of their classroom. They were all heading to that one house where the Healer was holding a service. Those who got there late probably could not see the Master but could hear His words of hope.

Somewhere else in town, there is another house. This one I guess is very quiet. There’s only one man living there. He’s crippled. There is no way he is going to get to where Jesus is. His road is quiet too, as everyone has gone to see the One, they might never see again.

I can picture him saying to himself, “If only Jesus had chosen my house to hold His meeting. How can I let this unique opportunity slip away?”

A crippled man. All alone.

That is much the way our world looks today. There are crippled lives everywhere. People are dying, alone, without any hope for this life or for the next.

Around the world, there could now be up to 200 million children living on the streets. From Dakar to Dacca, multitudes of boys and girls, crippled and alone. 

People trafficking, with 1.2 million children trafficked every year, is the fastest growing international crime.

Four men decide to do something. They’ll be late for the service, but it doesn’t matter. Jesus could be gone when they get there, but they are going to try it anyway.

They get the crippled man on a stretcher and carry him down the streets. 

We don’t know who these four men were. Neighbours? Family members? One thing we do know, they have something in their spirits. A compassion that compels them to action.

Your title and position don’t matter. The diplomas or degrees hanging on your office wall don’t mean a thing if you’re not picking up a stretcher and bringing broken lives to Jesus.

When these four friends get to where Jesus is teaching, the house and the entrance to the house are packed with people.

When you decide to pick up a stretcher and serve God, you’ll find a few ‘overcrowded door entrances’.  But if you’re serious about the lost, the least and the last, you’ll find ways to bring them to Jesus (sometimes innovative and odd ones)!

You’ll even use the stairs along the wall leading to the roof. 

Getting a sick man on a stretcher and carrying him up a flight of stairs is not an easy job. 

A number of times, when working among the poor in Cambodia, I found myself wondering, “How in the world are we going to get this child, this family up the stairs?”  How many times did I find myself stuck halfway up the stairs, wondering what to do next?

They finally made it to the top. The roof is closed (how could it be otherwise?)

They are so determined to get their friend to Jesus that they break the roof open.

The only way some crippled lives are ever going to meet Jesus, the only way un-reached people groups are ever going to hear the Gospel, is when men and women, who are passionate for God, bypass protocol and break some roofs.

The reason why countries like Chile or Argentina are seeing phenomenal church growth today is very much because, back in the 50’s, small groups of believers, in spite of persecution, did just what those four men of Capernaum did. They broke some roofs (and rules at the same time!)

D.L Moody once said: “The world has yet to see what a man totally committed to God can do.”

The day you gave your life to Jesus, you were given a stretcher. Sadly, too many Christians have never picked it up. Some die and go to Heaven without ever using it. God has equipped you with tools, talents and a testimony to get busy for Him.

The majority of God’s people prefer sitting in ‘a packed house’.  They never do anything for Jesus outside of church.  Another conference in their church.  Another concert in their church.  Another seminar in their church.  Another ‘Me Centred Christianity’ speaker in their church.  

I want to belong to the minority.  Those who have decided to spend their lives carrying a stretcher.   

I once got a newsletter from an elderly couple serving with a mission to children-at-risk.  They wrote, “Can we challenge you to consider that retirement, meaning doing little or nothing is a ‘man-made’ concept and not found in the Scriptures.  Each of us can do something wherever He has placed us in the world and under whatever circumstances, until He calls us home”.

No one is too old to get involved in mission. In the same way, no one is too young.

My brother and I were encouraged to serve God at a very young age. 

It was 1985, in Clermont-Ferrand, Central France. I was 12 and my brother 13. Every Sunday, we would go with our parents to the Assembly of God church downtown. One day, we made an interesting discovery that launched a ministry that would go on for many years. Behind the church main building was a small room. On old shelves we found, rolled up and covered in dust, evangelistic posters. Different sizes with different messages in French such as 'Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved' or 'Prepare to meet your God! '.

We looked at each other, and said, "Why don't we go into town and find some free billboards to put up these posters?"

After buying some paste for wallpaper and large brushes, Marc and I got on our bicycles. At the time, Clermont-Ferrand, like other cities in France, had everywhere billboards for everyone to use. These boards were very much used during election periods featuring all kind of political candidates.

What a joy it was to see the message of the Gospel displayed in the city's intersections and streets, often under the astonished gazes of passers-by.

When our stock of posters ran out, we thought it would be a shame not to continue. That's when we decided to produce our own posters. A friend from church, an artist, helped us in creating them. 

We photocopied thousands of A4 size (210x297mm) posters. The town and surrounding villages were covered with the Gospel message. You could see everywhere ‘Lisez la Bible!’ ('Read the Bible!) or Jésus revient bientôt!’ (Jesus is coming back soon!)

I was so passionate about this work that I regularly got on my bike, equipped with a bucket of glue and posters, to make Christ known in my own way! I fully gave myself to this new found ‘hobby’: pasting the Gospel. 

Years later, we went from our own photocopied posters to large posters printed at a Christian press. Thousands of highly visible posters in red letters on a white background were printed.  

Didier, a teenager, use to take the bus home from school every evening. One evening, he was touched by a poster that read: 'Jesus is coming back soon, are you ready?’ His sister had already shared with him about Jesus. She had been praying much for him. Didier decided to attend a meeting at our church. He responded at the invitation to give his life to Christ. He was baptized. He became one of my best friends. Didier soon joined our small evangelistic team going out pasting God’s Word so that others like him would discover the Savior. 

I was 14 years old, and every week we got all kinds of free newspapers (full of classified ads) in our mailbox. In these newspapers you could find just anything: advertisements to buy or to sell used cars, furniture, pets, ads from single people looking for a soul mate or even charlatans promising happiness and prosperity. With the arrival of the Internet, those weekly newspapers disappeared.

I said to myself: "Why not put evangelistic messages in these newspapers?"

One day, with enough money in my pocket for a classified ad, I went to town to the office of 'MAXI' newspaper. The lady behind the counter was quite surprised when I handed her my ad to publish: a verse from the Gospel of Luke: "Jesus came to seek and to save the lost". To my surprise, she agreed to run it. 

The following week, I couldn't wait to open my mailbox. I flipped through the dozens of pages of the newspaper looking for my verse. And there it was! When I realized that my one-line Gospel message was now in 135,000 copies, distributed to every household in and around the city, I was filled with joy. Sure, it was a very small verse, lost in the mass of classifieds and advertisements of all kinds, but it didn't matter, it was there like a little light.

"If this newspaper has accepted my ad, I should try elsewhere too!" I said to myself.

Other newspaper agencies such as 'Le 63' and 'La Montagne' also accepted! The Gospel was now appearing almost every week in some newspaper. The machine was now up and running! 

Over time I had enough money that I had been putting aside to run larger ads in bold letters. It cost more, but the message was more likely to be seen. 

And so was born in 1988 L’EPAJ: L'Evangélisation Par les Affiches et les Journaux (Evangelization through Posters and Newspapers). 

When we moved to Roubaix, Northern France the following year, L'EPAJ took on a scope we'd never imagined. 

This Gospel outreach spread throughout the North of France. We organized poster campaigns with young people from different churches. In a single day, within a few hours, hundreds of posters were plastered on billboards in several towns in the region, and over the border into Belgium.

Sometimes, we would stick our posters up late at night. Then, in the morning, people in the towns of Lille, Tourcoing, Wattrelos, and elsewhere would discover a message from Heaven on their way to school or on their way to work. 

A youth group, who had managed to publish in a local newspaper a Bible verse along with a telephone number, received a phone call shortly after from a man in distress who was touched by God’s grace and who gave his life to Christ. 

Mail was now coming from all over: France, Switzerland, Belgium and from the four corners of French-speaking Africa. Christians from all walks of life wanted to know about these two evangelistic tools offered by l’EPAJ. My brother and I set up a committee. Rachel (who became Marc's wife) and two brothers Mikael and Vincent joining in. 

We set up (from our office in France) 4 l’EPAJ branches on the African continent: in Zaire (now the DRC), Côte d'Ivoire, Central Africa and Burkina-Faso. Each national leader would organize poster campaigns as well as the publishing of Gospel messages in local newspapers.

Only God knows how many people have been touched over the years by the ministry of l’ EPAJ.

L’EPAJ became our stretcher to lead lost souls to the feet of Jesus. 

God is calling children and teenagers to be used in His Kingdom.

The servant girl of Naaman’s wife was probably just a young teenager when she was courageous enough to speak out and encourage Naaman to go to Elisha for healing.

Jeremiah was a teen when God called him to be a prophet.

Esther was probably in her late teens when God used her to rescue a whole nation.

It’s very likely that Timothy was still very young when he joined Paul in his missionary ministry.

There are too many men and women of God carrying a stretcher all by themselves.  You’ll find them caring for orphans in poverty-stricken Haiti; ministering to drunkards on the streets of Manchester; you’ll find them planting a church in a remote Romanian village or working alone translating the Scriptures among some forgotten tribes.  They need you to go and help them. 

The day you get hold of that stretcher, you’ll never want to let go of it.

Chapter 8   Have You Seen The Beggar At The Gate? 

Message preached on October 16th, 2009, at The University of Southampton, England

Acts 3 v 1-11

Peter and John are heading to the three o'clock prayer meeting.  It must have been something to have those great men of God at the service. 

As the two apostles arrive at the Temple, they notice a lame man being carried to the gate of the Temple called ‘The Beautiful’ (My wife and I stood at that very place in 2021).

One thing is sure, this poor man's life was anything but beautiful!  For how many years has he been begging at that same spot?  10 years? 20 years? 

Today at the Gate of God's Kingdom, there is a beggar. 

Just outside the Church, there is a broken world.  A world begging for hope, for peace and for a new life.  Millions of souls are sitting at the Gate. 

Many people that day had probably walked past the beggar as they entered the Temple.  Over the years, they had seen him so many times that they did not see him anymore. 

It’s like having a painting on the wall in your living room. You see it every day, but you probably can't describe it accurately if you were asked to! 

Likewise, being so used to seeing on the news so much trouble in our world that we don't pay much attention anymore!

Millions of children living on the streets, from Bogota to Kampala. We don't see them anymore. 

A multitude of broken lives lying in darkness in slums, prisons, refugee camps and mental hospitals.  We don’t see them anymore. 

One and a half billion Muslims without Jesus, sitting at the Gate. We don't see them anymore. 

Most Christians have no interest in North Africa. No interest in the multitudes without Christ in Central Asia.  No interest in reading about the Unreached People Groups of the world. 

For many Christians, it doesn't matter that 23% of the world has never once heard the Gospel, as long as they get a good seat in the temple! 

Some of God's people are so busy going from one Christian conference to another, flipping from one Christian TV channel to another, they've forgotten about the beggar at the Gate. 

Some have never even checked outside the temple to see if there could be someone at the Gate! 

“I don't have any silver or gold for you,” says Peter. “But I’ll give you what I have. In the Name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!’’ (Acts 3:6 NLT)

You and I have what Peter and John had: Jesus, living in us.  We have what money will never be able to give. Only Christ can restore a broken world.  Only Christ can bring forgiveness and lasting peace. 

The apostles did not just see the lame man.  They got involved. ‘Then Peter took the lame man by the right hand and helped him up.’ It’s not enough to know the facts.  It’s not enough to watch every day on our screens the great needs of the world.  It’s not enough to read a newsletter from missionaries overseas.  It’s not even enough to give to a mission organization.  We need to meet the man at the Gate.  

Don't wait for someone else to do something for that beggar. He has already spent too many years at the entrance to the temple. Now it's time for him to walk through the door.

Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, many years ago, wrote: “Millions have never heard the name of Jesus.  Hundreds of millions know nothing of our King.  Shall we let them perish?  Can we go to our beds and sleep while China, India, Japan and other nations are being damned?  Are we clear of their blood?  Have they no claim upon us?’’ 

I remember reading a book about an American missionary reaching out to the lost in India through an evangelistic film on the life of Jesus. 

In the last chapter, he shares when he and his family were back in the US once, taking meetings and sharing about the great needs of the people in India. In one church of about two hundred, the missionary’s son, John who was just five years old at the time, was seated about eight rows back on the center aisle.  He liked to draw, but on that night, he was very attentive as his father spoke to the congregation. 

While in the middle of the sermon, without an invitation, the little boy slid off his seat and ran down the aisle, dropped to his knees, his big blue eyes flowing with tears.  His body shaking, he cried, ‘‘We have to do something, Daddy. We have to help those people!’’ 

Though the little five-year-old boy had already been to India, on that day he was moved by the needs of that great country.  He could see the crippled man, on the other side of the world, begging at the Gate. 

“The beggar jumped up, stood on his feet, and began to walk! Then, walking, leaping, and praising God, he went into the Temple with them.’’  (Acts 3: 8 NLT)

What should have been two men walking into the temple, became three! 

We don’t want to walk into Heaven alone. We want to bring the beggars with us. Our broken world has the right to come into God’s Kingdom too.  Jesus died for all. 

The Gate is open! 

In Cambodia, the team I worked with spent a lot of time ensuring that children could stop working on the streets and go back to school. 

However, we made it our priority that each one of those boys and girls had the opportunity to hear the Gospel and walk through the Gate of the Temple.

I want to stay busy at the Gate.

“The Lord does not want that any should perish…” (2 Peter 3:9)

When the man walked into the temple, the people worshiping “realized he was the lame beggar they had seen so often”. (Acts 3: 10 NLT)

So often, we’ve seen the needs.  So often, we’ve heard about those without Christ.  So often, we’ve been encouraged to reach the lost. 

In 2015, I was volunteering for 3 months with a Swiss Christian radio station. I went around interviewing all kinds of amazing people making a difference in the world. The very first interview was at ‘Digger’, a mission led by Christians based in the French speaking part of Switzerland. They make huge de-mining machines. Several millions of square metres in thirteen countries have already been cleared from landmines. I interviewed Steve, a courageous young man. He has served in countries like Bosnia and Senegal where land mines are still maiming and killing the innocent. Since 1999, those working for ‘Digger’ have not stopped being busy at the Temple’s Gate. 

In Cambodia I saw how much havoc those landmines have created for the people. There could be between 4 and 6 million landmines still hidden in the ground, from the time of the Khmer rouge genocide.

We are not all called to work in fields full of landmines, but we are all called to find our place of service at the Gate.  

Peter and John remind me of the two Chinese missionaries, who went out to the village of Shang Pu to bring God’s Word. 

My wife will tell you how her great-grandmother heard the Gospel for the first time. I hand over now to Yukki:

My great-grandmother was born in China in 1902 in the province of Guangdong.

She didn't know God. Her life was strongly marked by sadness. After giving birth to a daughter (who would become my grandmother), Madame Lee had the misfortune to give birth to stillborn babies.

She would have liked to have boys, as is often the wish of parents in Chinese culture. 

My great-grandmother turned to Buddhist practices and even incantations to obtain boys, but without success.

One day, a couple of Chinese missionaries arrived in the village. When the missionary's wife met my great-grandmother, she soon noticed the sadness on her face. 

The missionary then invited my great-grandmother to discover the Bible in a house meeting. She accepted. She went to these meetings with her daughter Lin, then aged 12. Each time, she reminded her daughter: "We mustn't let Dad know we're going to see Christians. Don't ever tell him.”

Mrs Lee and her daughter kept going to the meetings where those native missionaries shared the Gospel.

Their hearts gradually opened up to the love and the grace of God. 

They both gave their hearts to Jesus. A few years after her conversation, Mrs. Lee had the joy of giving birth to a boy and a girl.

My great-grandfather, who was very opposed to God, also turned to the Lord.

Little Lin grew up and one day met a young man who she married. They decided to leave poverty in China and move to Cambodia, where life under the French protectorate was more pleasant.  

Lin, who would one day become my grandmother, began to pray for her descendants, so that they too might discover the Savior.

It was in the Cambodian capital city that my mother was born. She grew up going with her parents and siblings to the Chinese Protestant Church in Phnom Penh. It was there that she met the man who would become her husband. Together they attended the church's Sunday school and youth group. 

Thank God my parents escaped the Khmer Rouge regime. From 1975 to 1979, Cambodia suffered one of the worst genocides in history.

Ten members of my Dad's family disappeared under Pol Pot's dictatorship. My mother, who didn't know if she would ever see her country again, committed herself to praying for the Cambodian people.

In September 1978, my parents, my little sister and I made it to France. 

Shortly after our arrival in Paris, our Mum and Dad opened a Chinese speaking house church in our apartment in Belleville.

All 26 of us, survivors of the Cambodian genocide, gathered weekly to worship the Lord.

Being so cramped in that apartment, we finally managed to rent the Reformed church near the Gare de l'Est train station, where my father regularly taught the Bible.

I was a good little girl. I went to Sunday school every week. I knew many of the Bible stories. I prayed, sang and even gave my tithe. I thought I was a Christian. And yet, I still hadn't given my heart to Jesus.

Around the age of 15, I found myself in a theatre in Paris where a large evangelistic event was held featuring several Christian artists from Hong Kong.

At the end of the concert, when the call for Salvation came, I stood up and publicly gave my life to Christ.

Then the Lord opened the doors for me to serve Him in my church. For some twenty years I was involved with the children, the youth group, the choir and leading the service.

I was getting so involved in "doing" that my relationship with Jesus started to fade till it almost dried up.

My life consisted of working during the week and serving in my church on weekends. My schedule was so full that I no longer took care of my relationship with God. 

However, during this period of my life, I greatly admired those who had dedicated themselves to missionary service. Many pastors and missionaries came to my house. I thought they were flawless, knew the Bible perfectly and loved just everybody.

With that in mind, I thought I'd never be good enough to become a missionary one day.

In 2003, I started working in the world of gastronomy and events, in a family business that I had planned to take over one day. Professionally, I was doing well. In the eyes of others, I was living the good life. I travelled a lot.

At the end of 2013, after 10 years of prosperous life, I went through a particular time in my life. Driving to my office, I would cry a lot. It went on for several days in a row.

I didn't understand what was happening. I ended up talking to the young people in the church I was in charge of. They prayed for me.

God was actually shaking up my quiet little world and preparing me for a whole new life.

I decided to go and see my aunt (the boss of the company) to ask for a sabbatical leave. Just as I was about to say: "I'd like to take a sabbatical", to my surprise I said: "I'm quitting!” With those two words, a big burden fell off my shoulders and I felt free. I was let loose like a bird leaving its cage. 

My heart was at peace, even though the future was now uncertain. I would no longer have a salary, yet I was happy.

I was entering a new season that the Lord had prepared.

When you obey God, even if you don't understand everything, you have nothing to fear. He knows what He's doing. All you have to do is to follow Him. 

I also realized that I had lost my first love for Jesus, a love that began when I was a teenager. I needed to rekindle my relationship with the Father and to rediscover my identity as a child of God. 

The Holy Spirit directed me to Youth With A Mission (YWAM), a missionary organization.

It was in January 2015, that I flew to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean to attend a 6-month Discipleship Training School. It was during this time set apart that the Lord spoke to my heart. He showed me how my years of professional experience could be used to help set up Christian cafés. Places where people could feel at ease, open up their hearts and discover the love of God.

After this blessed time of training, I realized that this was only the beginning of a new season. 

To my great surprise, God directed me to Cambodia, the country where my parents were born. It was among these broken people, for whom my mother had prayed so much, that I was going to serve. For years she had prayed unceasingly for Cambodians to turn to Jesus. She could never have imagined that her own daughter would one day return to the country of her childhood.

I wasn't very reassured about going to live in a poor country, so different from the life I'd led until now. As the plane prepared to land on Cambodian soil, I could see through the window the bright colours of the houses, the landscape: blue, red, green... and the brown of the earth. I was at peace, and I knew that it was in this Southeast Asian country that God wanted me.

I had told my family and friends that I would only be in Cambodia for 3 months. God gave me such a love for those dear people that I stayed for 5 years. 

I lived in Battambang, the country's second-largest city, with dozens of other YWAM missionaries.

From 2016 to 2021, with a small team, we opened two cafés in the northwest of the country: in Battambang and Pailin, known as former strongholds of the Khmer Rouge.

The two cafés were built using two converted freight containers.

Over the years, many young Cambodians came through the doors of these places, and several found peace with God. 

I think of a 19-year-old girl who came to ‘Who Am I’ café in Battambang, every day to spend time with us. Sometimes she just wanted to talk. She opened herself to us and finally discovered the Lord.

There were times during those 5 years when I felt discouraged and wanted to go back to work in France to earn a living. 

But I persevered because I was in the right place. 

If you are where God wants you, even if you're not guaranteed a salary, trust Him. He will provide for you. Looking back, I don't regret for a moment having answered the call to mission.

In March 2021, after training Cambodian brothers and sisters to take over the ministry, I packed my bags and said, "Au Revoir!" to Cambodia. 

A few months later, in my parents’ garden near Paris, Timothée and I got married. 

Among the guests at our wedding, was a 96-year-old woman... my grandmother. She was the one who, as a child, back in China, went along secretly to a house with her mother to hear the Word of God. 

If these Chinese missionaries in the 1930’s hadn't come to bring us Christ, as Peter and John did at The Beautiful Gate, I wouldn't be here today to tell my story.

Mission work at the temple gate is never in vain. What you undertake in His Name will certainly one day bear fruit.

Chapter 9   Make Sure Your Bread Goes To The Back Rows 

Message preached on April 29th, 2011, at the Baptist Church of Volgograd, Russia

John 6 v 6 -15

On one hand, you have thousands of hungry people - men, women and children.  On the other hand, a young boy.

We don’t know where this boy is from, what his name is or how old he is. However, this is what we do know - he has five loaves of bread and two fishes. He probably kept them inside a small basket.

What he has, he gives to Jesus.  This boy’s simple act of obedience is the key to a miracle.

I want to invite you to look up and see the masses of hungry faces, where you live and beyond, who until this day have still never had the opportunity to hear the Good News of the Gospel.

86 per cent of Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists do not personally know a Christian.

Look in your hands.  You and I have a basket.  We have gifts and talents God has blessed us with.  Some of us have one fish.  Some of us have a fish and a piece of bread. Others have been blessed with 4 or 5 loaves of bread.

When I was 10 years old, I discovered I had ‘a piece of bread and a fish’ in my basket. I started recording in my bedroom short gospel messages on audio cassettes. Two year later, at a scout camp, in the French Alps, I gave my first open-air sermon; my first ‘piece of bread’.  I actually spoke on this story of the boy who gave the little he had to Jesus. I did not speak for very long but how great I felt!

That same year I started writing short stories for children. I had found a ‘fish in my basket’.

If we open our eyes and listen to His voice, we'll find new ideas and projects in our baskets to reach hungry crowds.

Don't keep the loaves and fishes God has entrusted to you in a basket.

There are too many Christians today who are keeping their basket to themselves. Their fish is rotting.  Their loaf of bread has gone stale. They will die with a basket full of rotten gifts.

The greatest tragedy in the Church today is having millions of Christians holding onto a basket while a huge portion of the world’s population is dying from spiritual famine.

You can either be so overwhelmed with the needs that you keep your talents to yourself, or you can let Jesus take your life and use it to bring the Bread of Heaven to a lost world.

Jesus’ disciple, Andrew said, after seeing the small amount of food the boy had, “What good is that with this huge crowd?” (John 6:9 NLT) Andrew should have known better.

Do not let anyone look down on you and on the gifts God has blessed you with. Don’t let anyone’s ‘wisdom’ hinder you from going out to serve Jesus.

I constantly get emails from Christians from different parts of the world who are leaving the shore or who have already left the shore for the deep end of the lake. A young Christian girl from France wrote this:

‘I thank you very much Timothée for the precious articles posted on your website that I have devoured more than once. They are a blessing each time because they stir the flame within me for mission, women and children in need. I received a missionary call at the age of four or five. Very soon I was confronted by people more or less close to me who put me down. Either they said that this call was not from God or that like everybody else we end up staying, getting married and having children. But as for me, I will not let go of my dream because my heart is burning so much for the nations. God and mission are my priorities. All the rest is a bonus. I don’t know if I have the gift of celibacy; however I have completely placed in God’s hands this area of my life. If the Lord thinks I would be more efficient with a husband, I will obey, otherwise, no worries! I am convinced that I will find enough people to love around me, wherever God leads me.’ 

The city of Birmingham in England is known for Cadburys, one of the world’s most famous chocolate brand.

Its founder, Richard Cadbury, had a daughter called Helen.  Over a century ago, when Helen was 13, she went along with her father to a mission hall he had built in a poor area of the city. That Sunday evening she responded to the preacher’s invitation to trust in Jesus. Immediately she wanted to share her faith with her school friends. She put her Bible on her desk ‘to show what God said, rather than what I thought’.

Her friends started to turn their lives to Christ. Within two years, Helen founded the “Pocket Testament League” (PTL).

When Helen got married, she and her American husband Charles travelled the world, sharing the Gospel.

Millions of copies of the Gospel of John were distributed through PTL missionaries in Japan and Germany following World War 2. The pilot who led Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, Mitsuo Fuchida, became a Christian after reading a PTL’s Gospel of John.

Today PTL works in 25 different countries.

It all started when a young girl gave the little she had to serve Jesus.

There’s one key line in the film ‘The Imitation Game’: ‘It’s the people that no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one imagines can be done.’

Just go back with me to the story of the feeding of the five thousand.

A Norwegian evangelist who ministered much in Africa until he died some years ago, shared the following analogy:

Imagine that the story had actually been different from what we know it in the Scripture.

Jesus fills the disciple’s baskets.  They go and share the food with the people sitting in rows on the grass.

They start with the first row. Everyone in the first row gets their share. Then they go on to the second row and then the third.  By then the baskets are empty, so the disciples go back to Jesus who fills them with more fish and more bread.

Philip, Andrew and the others go back to the people but instead of going to the fourth row, they start from the first row again. They serve row number 1, number 2 and number 3. Their baskets are once again empty. They go back to Jesus. He fills the baskets again. All day long, until the sun goes down, only the first three rows are being served.

What do you think the people in the back rows would have said?

 “Hey!  What’s going on here?  How is it that those in the front rows are being served again and again while we haven’t had any food yet?”

Thankfully this is not what happened.  We all know the story.

The tragic fact is, this is actually what is happening across the Christian world today.  Most churches are serving the front rows again and again and again, while over 2 billion souls are still waiting in the back rows for a single piece of bread.

Eighty-seven per cent of all mission work and finances is still going out to peoples and nations who have heard the Gospel over and over again.

God is looking for men, women and children who will make the back rows their priority.

Oswald Smith said, “Why should some hear the Gospel twice when others have never heard it even once?”

A friend of mine from Scotland served the Lord for many years among the nomads in Northern Chad.  For twenty years, she was one of the very few missionaries among 250,000 Muslims in that region.  She slept in tents and travelled through the desert. In spite of health problems, she brought Jesus to those sitting in the back rows.

Don’t spend the rest of your life on the front rows.  Millions are hungry in Chad, in Oman, in Turkey, in Japan.  They have the right to the Bread of Life.

I invite you to pray, “Lord, if you can use the young boy in the Gospel, you can use me. I give you my bread and my fish. Take my life and use me. I respond to the Call to go to the back row, wherever that may be. I will never lack bread, for you will faithfully provide as I faithfully give out. In Your Name I go.”

In September 1999, I ‘left the shore’ of Northern France for South East Asia.

At Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport, I was trying to hold back my tears as I hugged my parents, my brother and his family. I was leaving alone with two suitcases for a country I had never been to.

When I got to Phnom Penh, I felt lost. I did not know anyone except three WEC missionaries I had once met briefly in Europe. I did not know a word of the Khmer language. I had never seen so much poverty in my life before. An English family took me into their home for a couple of months before I found my own place. Back in France, I had been a pastor; now it seemed I was nobody. Did I really hear from God? Was I in the right place?

Then one night, shortly after my arrival in Cambodia something beautiful happened. It was around midnight, and I was not able to sleep. The air was still hot and humid in spite of the fans blowing at full speed. I switched the bedroom light on and felt drawn to my Bible. I ‘fell’ upon the book of Haggai and read this: “from the twenty fourth day of the ninth month…. I will bless you”. (Haggai 2: 18-19)

Suddenly, it was as if a bulb had turned on in my spirit: The 24th day of the 9th month is the exact day I had arrived in Cambodia! Though I felt lost in this unknown country, I knew God had called me here and He was promising His blessing.

Over the years, when September 24th came, I would often read those two verses from that Old Testament prophet and would have to say ‘Yes, the Lord was right. He has kept His promise. I am blessed.’

Yes, it was worthwhile leaving the shore. 

If I had not left the shore, I would have never witnessed God at work in the middle of the lake.

I would have never witnessed believers of all ages and church backgrounds, from New Zealand to Finland rise up, leave the shore too and go cast their nets in the deep.

Every time I get an email from someone who is willing to ‘Leave the Shore’ and move out into the ‘Deep end’ of mission, I get excited.

We want to see more of God’s people in the boat casting their nets and less on the beach! 

The Lord has laid it on my heart to contact some of my very good friends, each of them serving God in all kinds of places around the world.

Some of them are on the mission field. Others are back in their homeland but very passionate to see a new generation launch out into mission.

If you are looking for someone to help you on your journey into mission, those missionary friends would be happy to be a big brother or a big sister to you. They will advise you, pray for you and answer your questions. 

If you would like to receive the list of those ‘mission-mentors’ I would be happy to forward it to you.

Leave the shore! has been translated into braille (for the visually impaired), French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, Romanian, etc… We'd love to see the book available in new languages, so that more people can be encouraged to launch out into the deep. If you’re keen and able to help translate this book into another language, please contact us: timothee.paton@gmail.com

Each month, we publish messages from believers around the world who have been impacted by reading Leave the shore! Be inspired by their testimonies by clicking www.timotheepaton.com under MY BOOKS

‘Leave the shore! continues to fill me with a desire to live out my "one and only life”.’ Switzerland

‘24 of our students presented a summary of Leave the shore! We will finish our basic mission training with a trip to the Amazon Warao tribe.’ Venezuela 

‘We bought several copies when it first came out - it is a bomb to get people off their backsides!’  England

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