So as I watch yet another debacle unfold in the realms of politics but also the continuing fall of Rome, only this time it is the fall of the West, I am reminded of the madness of a bygone age. In the dark ages of Britain, if one were accused of being a witch, two events would then unfold. You would be taken to the river and thrown in. If you did not drown this was considered to be an absolute sign of your guilt whereby you were then taken and burned at the stake. Think about that for moment. The moment the accusation was made, there was no possibility of you proving your innocence, for how can one prove they are not a witch?
There was only, will you drown or will you burn. How could a man prove he did not do something 35 years ago? There is no evidence that could be mustered, there is to time, no date, no physical evidence at all. All there is is the accusation. Now that we live in days of madness that is all you need. Where will all the hysteria end? Will the lunatics take over the asylum? They already have. The statesmen are long gone, a very definite sign of judgment. I told the story the other day of the man in Britain accused of multiply raping a woman. He was then remanded to a woman’s prison because he self identified as a woman. There he raped several more women. The same hysterical lunatics that we see today on our tvs are the very people who would send a rapist to a woman’s prison.
Jezebel walks among us screaming ” I will murder your babies.” She taunts them who still have their minds by pointing to the ever growing mass of hysterical lunatics and telling them ” they are coming for you next.” And they are. Dark are the days brothers and sisters. Hell and all its depths are loosed. Those not standing upon the firm foundation of God will simply be swept away by a hurricane of madness and lunacy. And the thing is, these are just the outer bands of a storm that will engulf the whole world. Is their oil in your vessel?
The Holy Spirit is calling to His people to lift up their eyes. See, that although the gross darkness is almost upon us, right behind it comes the Lord Himself hence the reason for the monumental battle that is unfolding. This is the enemies last stand and he is not going down without a fight. Yet greater is He that is in us than he that is in the midst of the crazed masses.
We have been called to comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have been comforted with. In ever great trial there is great comfort from the Lord but we have to go deep. This is like pure gold to the poor man although we often have to experience what it means to be poor to appreciate His gold. It is like light to one who is drowning in darkness although we often have to touch that very darkness to know what it means to cry out to the Light. It is like an oasis to the man who finds himself in the midst of the desert although we often have to stumble, parched and dying in the desert to know how magnificent and glorious His oasis is. He is like an anchor indeed in the great storms of life although we often have to come to the point of it seeming like the storm will simply blow us away to appreciate that He holds us fast. All that treasure, all that light, all those living waters and sure anchor are to be shared with others. He comforts us with His presence because He loves us and that very comfort He asks us to share with others. This is how the Lord is glorified in our infirmities and in the midst of our sufferings.
A famous man once said that some men hate their enemies more than they love their children. How many cultures have we seen ruined by hate and revenge and unforgiveness. Yet, a spiritual revolution begins in the heart of one man who chooses to forgive his enemies, and yes, even more than that, love his enemies. This is not natural, it is supernatural. Father forgive them for they know not what they do!! Hold not this to their account. For God so loved the world……..while they were yet in their sin.
Oh, the love of God is so much higher than we, so much wider than the widest ocean and deeper than the great depths of time and space. It is outside of the natural man, beyond his grasp or even his vain imagination, but when Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our hearts and souls and minds suddenly that which was so beyond us is now in us and through us, like rivers of flowing waters flowing out to a thirsty people, to dry and thirsty land. Glory to God we can know the height and the depth of His great glory as we journey deeper into the Father’s heart. Forgive someone today and start a revolution!!!
When our primary focus is on anything other than Jesus we become distracted and begin to distance ourselves from the Lord. The deception comes when our focus is on something that is laudable. Things like holiness and revival are a couple of examples of things that in and of themselves are not harmful if they are a by-product of our focus on Jesus. If they are our primary focus then they simply become a tool in the enemy’s hand that leads us away from the presence of God.
Only as Jesus is lifted up, only as He is glorified, only as He is worshiped can there be change. He is the central focus of our lives and as we make Him the center of all things only then can we expect to see Him move in power. Everything else, and I mean everything, is religion and vanity. Many a good man has been drawn away from Jesus by focusing on the by-product and not the primary object. This is the essence of religious activity as opposed to the presence and power of God. The work of the Holy Spirit, first and foremost, is to magnify Jesus in the hearts of men.
It is a strange paradox that we Christians must find Jesus but keep on seeking Him. We must find forgiveness but keep on seeking to forgive. We must find mercy but keep seeking to be merciful. We must read His word but continue to abide in His word. We must find life in Him yet continue to seek life in Him. Like a rushing spring time river we must be ever flowing. And the source of the waters of that river is the Lord Himself. And when we do these things, when we abide and when we pursue, when we keep abiding and keep pursuing then the river keeps flowing and everything the river touches brings life. Rushing waters bring life and in stagnant waters there is death. Will you live today and will that life that is in you bring life to others around you? This is the will of God. The Lords saints are His evergreen trees.
When Paul was in the dungeon, by faith he was able to see the glory. When Stephen was being stoned, by faith He was able to see the glory. When the Hebrew children were in the midst of the fire, by faith they were able to see the glory. When Daniel was in the lion’s den, by faith he was able to see the glory. Being able to see the glory of God is a delivering force. The power of this force will shake buildings to its foundations and open prison doors. In the midst of death it will produce visions so that one is engulfed in life. In the midst of fire it will protect you from the flames. When danger is all around you it will keep the lions at bay. In a desert it will be a cloud by day and a fire by night. When your back is to the ocean, it will create a path before you for your deliverance. When danger surrounds you and fear threatens to overwhelm you, it will give you power and love and a sound mind.
The glory of God is a dwelling place, it is a tabernacle, a place of meeting for where the Lord is, there is the glory. We were made for glory. And the glory that God the Father gave to the Son, the Son gave to us. And the purpose for that glory is that we may be one even as the Father and the Son are one. And when we are one in Him then we are walking in the glory, walking in the light that beckons to those in the darkness to come forth and live. We have been called to behold His glory. To behold means to look upon, to gaze with wide open eyes. It means more that the casual word to see, it means to look at intensely. How intense is your gaze upon the Lord? Do you see His glory? Have you experienced His glory. If you cannot see it nor have ever experienced it, can you then walk in the presence of God and the power of His Glory? You must be able to see the Lord high and lifted up. You must experience His glory if you want to walk in His deliverance, deliverance not only for yourself but for others. Seek out the glory, do not rest until it rests upon you. It is found in Jesus. It is the light of the world.
Every great relationship with Jesus attracts the enemy. He cannot stand to see someone get close to Jesus and so he comes against that one. He has never learned, not ever, will that the more he comes against this one who has decided to follow Jesus no matter what, the more he drives him deeper into the heart of God. It must be an agonizing dilemma for the evil one, leave him or her alone and she will do great things for the Lord. Come against him/her and she will shine like the brightest star in the darkest sky, so much is the illumination that so many more will see and hear of the glories of God. Is the enemy at your heels today saint? has he come against you over and over again? Victory in Jesus, you have been counted worthy by the enemy as an enemy of his kingdom, you have been counted worthy to suffer for His name sake and you will be counted worthy to rule and to reign with Him throughout eternity. This is the word of God, anything else is the lies of the enemy. Sleep well saint, you are in good company.
Hi saints. In my mind’s eye I can see the Holy City far and deep into a mighty desert.I know that in my flesh I would avoid deserts. The vision in my mind’s eye would, I suppose, be metaphorical for the narrow path that leads to life. It makes no sense to think that if I was seeking life that I would go seek it in the desert. Yet there it is, the church of God, surrounded by a mighty desert. There is no way to the heart of it but by striking out and heading deep into a place where my only resource, in fact life itself, will be God. If He does not go before me I will die, I will never get there. If He is not a cloud over my head then the sun will kill me. If He is not a fire by night then I will surely freeze to death. If He is not my rear guard, then the jackals and other predators of this hostile place will sneak up behind me and kill me. Righteous Lot was compelled to leave the city of comforts behind him and take up his dwelling place in a cave. This was too much for his wife whose heart belonged to the city where her comforts lay. How many of us would not look back when compelled to leave all that we know behind as our world descends into wickedness.
You see brothers and sisters, there is nothing attractive about the desert. It is not an alluring place, in fact quite the opposite. Now although Abraham did not dwell in a desert but I believe the choice that His nephew made is a good example of the choices that God is calling His people today to make. Lot chose the well watered places and planes of Sodom in which to dwell. Yes it was near a wicked city, but it was plentiful and life was easy there. Yet at what cost? Does the choices that we make have consequences? We may not lose our souls in the process but can it be that we would lose our walk , our intimate walk with Jesus because the cares of the world , the cares that inevitably come by living in proximity to Sodom, or being caught up in the systems of Babylon or remaining within a denomination or a church that has embraced the wickedness of the world that is was sent to seek and to save.
Now when we think about Moses and his forty years in the desert prior to the burning bush or indeed the children of Israels forty years in the desert or John the Baptist’s time in the wilderness and indeed Jesus’s symbolic forty days in the desert we begin to see a pattern. It defies the flesh to go into the desert to find life. Can there be life in the desert? Would we willingly choose to enter into a place where all flesh dies but for the Lord? Can we be drawn into a place where unless we encounter God Himself as we are stripped of all of our resources then we would surely die? God is raising up such a generation that will find abundant life in the desert. Who will find that water flows from Rock at the hand of God. That God Himself can make rivers in the desert. He can make a highway that leads to life.
Will you journey there? To journey anywhere you have to leave somewhere behind. What do you have to leave behind? Is there a desire in you to find God in such a deep way that He is life itself to you and that without Him you would surely die and have no desire to live? Can I encourage you today saints? God has made such glorious and mighty promises to those who hunger and thirst after Him with their “whole hearts.” God has made glorious promises to those who will seek Him with their whole hearts. Desert places? Yes. Yet a burning bush and some sand can and will be transformed into Holy ground, for where the Lord is, that is Holy. He is not to be found within the structures of man but He is found deep in the heart of the longing sacrificing heart. There are sacrifices to be made to come into this place. Do you desire to make such sacrifices to come into this place, for this is the place where vessels are filled with oil.
There is a generation of desert dwellers being raised, a generation of wilderness dwellers ready to rise up and come forth. A generation of saints who have counted the cost. A generation whose only desire is to seek Him with their whole hearts and His righteousness. A generation that shall be hated by the whole world. They will see the glory of their God. They will behold His glory and His majesty. And they will make declarations from that place. They will, like John the Baptist declare to the world ” Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.” Yet, this generation also gets to declare “Behold the lion of Judah that rides on a white horse with a two-edged sword in His hand. He is coming, the King is coming! Lift up ye gates ye ancient cities and lift up ye doors for the King is coming and He is coming soon.”
This is the purpose of God’s remnant saints. We will make such a glorious noise of worship in the desert to our King. We will sing hallelujahs to His glory. Paul and Silas sang such praises in the midnight hour. Despite their scourges and stocks, despite their location in the depths of a dungeon they sang out the praises of their God. As they did, all of the prisoners listened in awe that men who should be most miserable were in fact encountering the glories of God. And suddenly the power of God fell to such an extent the whole building shook upon its foundations. Now imagine the whole world shaking upon its foundations saints! Shaking because the praises of the persecuted saints have caused the heaven to be rended, the skies to split open and the power and the glory and the presence of God to come down. The anointing of the anointed one will be upon us and the world will look into the desert, the prisons, the wilderness and hear a strange and glorious noise, a noise such as they have never heard before and a light that shines out of a place where no light and no life should exist, and they will be perplexed and be confounded.
There is a chorus from a hymn called Christ is mine forevermore that says …………
Come rejoice now oh my soul, for His love is my reward, fear is gone and hope is sure, Christ is mine forevermore. As a writer, it is one of those lines I would have loved to have written. So much said in those couple of lines. Come rejoice now oh my soul, for His love is my reward. I rejoiced this morning, with tears as I thought about how His love is my reward. His love is Calvary and my reward is eternity. How is it that the Lord suffered and died on the cross for one such as I, so unworthy, yet this was His love. And not only am I forgiven because of what He did on that cross, I am then rewarded with eternity. His love becomes my reward and yet He did it all and i was a mere sinner, how can my soul not rejoice! And so, what the Lord has cleansed you shall not call common. We have been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb and that which was common is now found to be worthy in the sight of our Father in heaven. Now saints, please take a moment today and ponder this, His love, Calvary, became your reward, eternity. Eternity saints, no matter what you are going through today or in this season of your life, will you come now and rejoice oh your soul, let your spirit rise up to the heavens and come before the throne with thanksgiving in your hearts that His love has become your reward. Get down on your knees and lift your hands to the glory of God and you will arise and not be weary, you will run and not faint and you will rise up with the wings of the eagle and soar in the heavens of His presence.
In Scotland we have a phrase ” He’s not worth tuppence.” Tuppence meaning two penny’s. It does not get cheaper than that. Maybe my American friends would say “I wouldn’t give you a dime for him.” Whatever phrase you know or use, the meaning is clear, somebody or something is worthless. For a Christian to use this phrase about anyone would be horrible. To believe yourself or someone else to be worthless is to not understand the most basic principle of Christianity which is Joh 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” If you are known personally by God, If He knows every hair of your head, then how is it that you could ever imagine yourself insignificant? Is that not a lie from the pits of hell? How much evil and mischief has the enemy of your soul been able to achieve by simply convincing you that you have no worth and are insignificant?
How many arguments between a man and wife have occurred because of the tyranny of perceived insignificance and one does not feel “worth,” within the marriage? How many men and woman have committed adultery because of this? Sibling rivalry that can last a lifetime because one feels less worth than the other. And the ultimate tragedy, how many suicides have occurred because of this feeling , this lie,this lack of worth? What is the answer to this problem that goes deep into the heart of the psyche? How does one overcome the tragedy of insecurity and lack of worth? Of course there are tens of thousands of books on this subject and it keeps psycho analysts in full-time employment around the world. Yet there is no cure in the natural world. It is the realm of the supernatural that we find our answer. Calvary. You see, God so loved you that He gave His only Son for you. Can you grasp it? I am going to suggest that it cannot be grasped by the natural mind. It has to be accepted, but more than that it has to be experienced. The knowledge of Calvary, and I use that word in the Biblical sense of “knowing,” is what transforms us. Joseph did not “know,” Mary until after Jesus was born. The word in that sense means an intimate physical encounter, intercourse. To “know,” God is something so much deeper than any relationship we could ever have with another human being and it comes by revelation and Inspiration by the Holy Spirit.
You can read the Gospel accounts of Calvary a thousand times and you may understand it in your head. Yet, if it never gets into your heart, the place of damage, you will remain babes in Christ and your road to wholeness and understanding of who you are in Christ will be blocked. Cry out to the Lord to give you a divine revelation of Calvary, of what it cost Jesus, of what it cost your heavenly Father, and then when you ” see” it you will know that you have worth, not based on humanism or self-esteem, but based on “Christ in you, the hope and glory.” Your worth comes from the fact that He knows you and that He loves you and that He died for you, it comes from nothing else. If you make this the foundation of your life, then you can begin to build something that will stand. He loves you and you are the apple of His eye, you must learn this, experience this and embrace this. When you do, you will begin to break the chains that bind you and become Christ like. It will affect every area of your life, every person in your life and you will begin to change the world around you. Do not let the tyranny of insignificance chain you down, you are a child of the Living God and He loves His children equally. You are more than a conqueror in Christ, you are mighty men and women of valor. You may not see it right now, but God sees it.
The beauty of knowing Jesus is that when we keep our eyes on Him we take our eyes of our earthly situations. When we consider what He suffered it puts our own lives into context. When we have the joy of “knowing Him,” we realize that every thing we lack in this world we find in Jesus. We find love and joy and grace and consideration, we find that He loves us unconditionally and that He is faithful to us. The great error for many is that they look for satisfaction in another when all the time we fail to realize that we have everything that we need right there in the heart of our Father. Those who willingly suffer loss for His sake, for the sake of loving Him, for the sake of being obedient to Him and to His word, great is their reward in the world to come and great is the comfort found in this present world.
I have written several times in the past about the tactics of the Nazis in shutting down free speech through violence and intimidation. Anyone who did not toe the party line was targeted for assassination and that included communists and socialists, trade unions, Christians and of course Jews. Unless you walked in lockstep with their ideology you were outed and shamed then targeted for violence.
“In Berlin, under the leadership of Goebbels, so-called Rollkommandos were organized for the purpose of disrupting political meetings of all non-Nazi groups. These Roll kommandos were charged with interrupting, making noise, and unnerving the speaker. Finally the Nazis broke up meetings by Rollkommando raids. In many cases, fights resulted, during which furniture was destroyed and a number of persons hurt. The Nazis armed themselves with blackjacks, brass knuckles, rubber truncheons, walking sticks, and beer bottles.” (https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DOCNAC8.htm)
You can see how the tactics of interrupting meetings with crowds and noise in an effort to intimidate the speaker was a mainstay of the Brown-shirts of the Nazi party. In an intolerant society that is heading towards totalitarianism, all opposition, any voice that does not hold to the group-think view must be silenced. The very first step in the march towards the breakdown of civilization as we know it is to end civil discourse . There can be no quarter given to any opposing views and those holding any opposing views must be demonized. Demonization is the first step on the road to dehumanization. It has been the favored tactics of terror down through the ages.
I would like to suggest that we have entered into the beginnings of such a time once again. We have, it seems, learned nothing from the past. Free speech is the cornerstone of Democracy and a free and civil society. A free and neutral press is another cornerstone. It is not good enough to a free press, that is only one side of the coin. Unless the press is neutral then we may see a thousand little Goebbels running cover for their political overlords.
“Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth is unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.”
Goebbels here is making the argument that sentiment and emotion are much more powerful than truth and of course he is correct. If you can brand someone a racist or an Islamaphobe or bigot and a hater, it matters not whether they are any of these things or not, just launch these words into the hot air of emotion and psychology and watch them take flight.
“This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.” (Goebbels)
I would like to suggest to you that there is an immersing going on today.If one is to be immersed there must be deep waters or a flood. Today’s society in the west has been flooded by an extreme ideology. Those who do not conform to the ideals of this ideology will be publicly shamed, they will be “outed,” shouted down, intimidated, fired from their jobs, ridiculed and ruined such is the hatred that fills our atmosphere. A woman was questioned for a documentary on the rise of the Third Reich. She was asked how she managed to fall for and be so passionate about something so hateful and destructive. Her answer has stuck with me for decades and it haunts me. “There was something in the atmosphere and we all breathed it in.”
I would like to suggest that there is a poison in the atmosphere and the world at large is breathing it in. It is deliberately breathed in because it connects to the primal hatred that there is beating in the heart of man. A desire for revenge, a desire to see those we disagree with destroyed an inability to hear views that we disagree with. Each step of the downward spiral is volitional. We deliberately take each step as we descend slowly but surely ever deeper down to the gates of hell. And when we collectively arrive there, the gates are open and hell rushes forward and we are consumed.
Eleven years ago was my 25th wedding anniversary. My wife and I had decided to go to the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia and use that as our headquarters and travel for 16 days through-out the region. Shortly before leaving for the trip the Holy Spirit spoke to me. He told me I was going to have a significant encounter and that it would change everything. I assumed I was going to meet someone. We rented a house that was actually attached to the walled city, it was part of the stone drawbridge and had a magnificent stone terrace that overlooked the enchanting harbor of the city.
As I stood there one day, basking in a warm sun that was rising majestically from behind ancient mountains, a glorious and indescribable presence enveloped me. I had experienced the manifest presence of God many times before but nothing like this. It seemed to permeate my very DNA. Every part of me was alive and captivated, from my head right down to my toes and all around me and then suddenly I was in another place. The strange thing was that I was consciously aware that my body was still standing there but my spirit was “standing,” in this vision.
I was looking at some amalgam of the old testament Tabernacle and Solomon’s temple. In a grand square there was a great number of people. I asked who they were and was told they were the vast majority of people who called themselves Christians.They were standing in what I was told was the court of the gentiles. A great sadness came over me as I witnessed a tremendous amount of activity going on in the court. I wondered why they were not passing through a low door that was in a wall that led to the inner sanctuary. I was told that they would not bow down which would enable them to pass through the door. I could see what was behind the door in the wall, it was the inner sanctuary.
There was first a brazen altar. It was a foul-smelling place but deeply loved by God. The few who came though the door brought sacrifices of sin it seemed to me. They were coming forward not to get something but to give up foul-smelling sins that had so easily beset them. It took great humility to come before this place and acknowledge these secrets of their heart but they were readily burned up in a fire that continually burned. People sacrificed rags and were clothed in fine white linen. People sacrificed perversions and were given purity. Lies were sacrificed and truth was given. All manner of sin was replaced by holiness and purity.
Then they moved forward to the laver bowl where they washed themselves before moving on to be fed by shewbread which filled them in a way that they would never again hunger. Then they stood in the light of the lampstands, no longer ashamed but washed clean and made pure and able to stand in the light of God for He had cleansed them. Lastly their prayers began to rise up and come before the throne of God Himself. I looked again at the vast crowd outside of the manifest presence of God, engaged in much activity in the court of the gentiles and I was amazed that they would not enter. So close to entering in, but so unwilling to give up the things of this world, too proud to bow down and enter through the door, too ashamed to give up their innermost foul-smelling sin.
Suddenly I was back standing on the terrace. I looked out over a motionless sea where it met a cloudless sky and the rising sun warmed me with such a fierce intensity. In this fire of His presence I was alive with a life I knew would never end. This was my encounter with my glorious indescribable Jesus. When I returned home I was given a word from the Lord by a dear saint who knew nothing about this. I was to “write to the nations.” It seemed such a grandiose word, “write to the nations.” Nevertheless I was obedient to the Word. I started a website and began to lay bare my heart with what the Lord had taught me.
I was to speak to the remnant. I was not to try to convince anyone of anything but simply speak to those in the courtyard and encourage them who had ears to hear, to bow down low and enter through the low door and into the inner sanctuary. Just over ten years later I have written over one thousand articles,more than 300 poems, two books and many hymns that have been recorded. and the inspiration for all of that flowed from that encounter. Amazingly I have reached over five hundred thousand people from over 160 nations. God is faithful to those He calls, may we be faithful to His calling.
I want to be honest. Shortly after I had a second vision. It was somehow connected to the first. I was standing in church one Sunday morning and suddenly I found myself plunged under a fast flowing river on a bed of smooth stones. It took my breath away and I immediately began to struggle and panic. I was going to drown. The Holy Spirit held me gently but firm and spoke to me ” breathe Frank.” That was all He said. I fearfully opened my mouth and found that I could breathe. Then I somehow “knew,” what this was about. The waters that were rushing over me were troubled waters. The Lord wanted the troubled waters of this life to remove my hard edges, I was not to fight it. The following ten years were the most troubled years of all of my Christianity. Trial after trial. Despair. Wretchedness. Loss, like an incoming tide, came to me over and over again. Sleepless nights pacing the floor, sometimes on the floor crying out to God. And I thought often of the time I had cried out to God with somewhat naive optimism saying “whatever it takes Lord to make me useful in your Kingdom.”
All of this brothers and sisters I have found along the narrow path that we sojourn together. Like all the pilgrim saints , the long narrow way home is often a lonely, weary and exhausting road. But we have glimpsed something glorious have we not? We have in our mind and soul and spirit saw something of our eternal destination. It is high and lifted up. He is high and lifted up. The Lord Jesus is not only our companion along the way He is our destination. Don’t ask me to explain that. He is behind me and He hedges me around about, He goes before me and He dwells within me. Yet my destination is the unadulterated presence of the living God where the flesh is no longer a barrier that limits the glory. A place where this world is no longer a distraction nor competes for my attention. To finally dwell in a high and lofty place where I know as I am known. Oh to know as I am known, tis another world indeed, it is our world, it our home, it is our destination and every step we take is another step closer. Keep on walking saints though the road seem hard and lonely, keep on walking and lift up your head and see the glory. It is closer than you think.
The truly spiritual man is something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Savior glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation for being dull or overly serious so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces( see psalm 45:8) and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.
It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God………Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier than thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone ( Tozer-The Radical Cross)
Can you see what Tozer is saying? There is so often a lonely path for those who have chosen the narrow way. And the days in which we live only intensify that all too common reality that has been with us down through the ages. Truly, if one is to follow hard after God one has to come to the place where he no longer considers the opinions of men. This has been the hardest lesson for myself to learn in my 25 years of following Jesus. Fear of man is a major obstacle in the life of the saint. To walk the path of conviction is to walk a lonely narrow path.
Don’t get me wrong, there is much wisdom in seeking the council of Godly men and women whom you know and Godly men of the past in their writings. Yet in every age, God speaks to His children and we must have an ear to His voice and His leadings. He is an ever present help in time of need. In every age He leads His children and feeds them with the fresh manna of revelation and inspiration. And it must be so if we are to rely ultimately on Jesus for directing us in our walk and how we walk in this present generation.
Consider chapter six of the Gospel of John. The greater the revelation of who Jesus is, the smaller the crowd got until there was only His twelve Disciples left and He asks ” will you leave me too?” The deeper into the Father’s heart you journey, the smaller and narrower the crowd around you will become. The more ungodly the world and the church becomes and the more you are convicted and determined to follow hard after God, the more unpopular you will become even within your own ranks.
Yet, if your life has been radically changed by Jesus and you follow hard after Him, you too will be left with this thought ” where else could we go Lord for you have the words of life.” Where else can you go saint? Where else? There is no where for you to go but to follow after your Lord. You cannot go back to the world from which you were delivered for you know that is but mere death. You cannot follow the religious crowd who seem so eager to appease and compromise with the world for a mixture is even more nauseating than the deadness of the world.
In the Tozer quote above he stated that two things remain to be said. Here is the second thing ” The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the brokenhearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world he is all the more able to help it.”
We must be aware of the condition of our hearts. It requires a diligence and an abiding in the Lord. If we are not diligent and if we are not abiding in the Lord and in His word then we are in danger of drifting away from a nearness to His heart. As we drift away, our own hearts will grow cold and distant and powerless. And when that happens, we are vulnerable to temptation in a way we never were when we remained close to Him. It is a vital act to understand the condition of your heart and make the condition of your heart the priority of your life.
And so brothers and sisters, no matter how bad the world becomes or how compromised the church becomes we saints must follow hard after the Lord with a soft heart towards all but a fearless heart when it comes to men. Fearing God rather than fearing men may lead to a lonelier walk but those of us who know Jesus personally will understand that He is life itself and in Him we find our life and our joy and our peace. We are fulfilled in Him and He is our constant companion is He not?
Better to walk an intimate life and relationship with Jesus than to be popular with men.So brothers and sisters, stand fast in the power of His might. He who has begin a good work in you is faithful to complete it. He is our ever present help in time of need. And that time of need will never be more felt than in the coming days, yet to those who stay close to Him He will empower them to endure and to overcome. Stand fast brothers and sisters in the beauty of His Holiness……………….bro Frank
The most important crisis facing the Body of Christ is the Sunday morning service. It really helps to know a little bit about the history of the early church and what it looked like. For the most part it would be in houses or for special occasions if there was more than one house gathering in a town or city, they would come together in an open field, especially if someone like Paul was coming. The gathering was just that, and there was a meal. Breaking bread meant just that, it did not mean a communion wafer and a ritualized affair. People were actually together, hanging out, singing hymns, sharing, giving testimony, asking for prayer. This thing called “the church service,” is something that morphed out of that. Bottom line, it really was not that complicated, the most important aspect of the gathering was that the Holy Spirit was there, Jesus was preeminent.
Can this be changed? Not in any meaningful way. I do believe however that the time is coming soon when the enemy will tear down every religious building in the world that will not bow down to him, only then I believe will the Body of Christ return to its roots, by necessity. If we were to take the pastor out of the average church in America, the congregation would be at a total loss. For centuries they have taken on the role of spectator and not participant and this has rendered them, for the most part, impotent and reliant upon “the guy at the front,” and not the Holy Spirit.
Oh how I would love the problem that the Corinthian church had in their midst and Paul had to correct. Everybody had a tongue or a word or a spiritual song or a prophecy. Paul wrote and told them to limit it to two or three of this and two or three of that and let there be order in all of it. You can take a wild man, full of life, and tone down his behavior, but what can you do with a dead man? What would your church service look like if there were two or three tongues and then interpretations. Then two or three prophecies, then two or three songs initiated not by a “worship leader,” as part of a practiced program but by the Holy Spirit Himself through the vessels of His choice. I think I am safe in assuming it may not look like anything you have ever seen, but there it is, laid out, in the Scriptures, directions from God how to conduct our Sunday gatherings.
Part of the problem is that the vast majority of churches not only do not practice the gifts but do not even believe in them, so there would be no chance of a reverting to 1 Cor 14. The very service itself for the most part, has a design that would make it impossible for most congregations to gather in a Biblical fashion ( 1 Cor 14) even if they wanted to. So we are talking about something very radical here, very primitive, something that would counter endless centuries of the traditions of man. It now seems like if we were to return to the order of worship that was first laid down for us, it would take a revolution to bring it to pass.
But lets suppose we do have a willing congregation. What would that look like? Well, some of us may remember the different kinds of professors at college. Some were great teachers and many were not. They all had qualifications, but clearly there were teachers that you could tell were called to their profession. The best professors always included the whole class. They elicited questions on whatever the subject at hand was and through those questions and the response of the class, we were taught. These classes were always invigorating and these teachers had a great skill at keeping the class on topic because in every class there were always left fielders who would ask unrelated questions. To me, this would be the gifting of an elder or teacher in a 1 Cor 14 setting, gifted by the Holy Spirit to do what secular institutions do all the time.
We have fleshed this out. We had a series of meetings in Missouri a few years ago. People came from all over the country. There were many pastors there. We had three days of meetings without any agenda at all. We would start around 8 or 9am, gathered around in a large circle and someone would open with a prayer and a Scripture. 12 hours later we would finish. Throughout the course of a day there would be singing, praying, sharing, testimony, laying on of hands and none of it was scheduled, the Holy Spirit was our leader. Now, if a group of men and woman from varying backgrounds, mostly pastors ( who can be the most difficult to deal with because they are used to being in charge) can yield and follow the leading of the Lord through His Holy Spirit for 12 hours, how easy would it be to have this kind of service on a Sunday morning for a few hours or however long it lasted? Not difficult. It is not about the degree of difficulty, it is about yielding and surrendering to the Holy Spirit and having Jesus preeminent in the meeting. Ultimately it is about obedience. Scripture is out touchstone, it is from Scripture that we stand or fall. How does your Sunday morning service compare to 1 Cor 14. Not at all? Why not?
I wrote these lyrics a few weeks ago and my dear sister in the Lord, Mary Greig in Scotland recorded it in the studio and she and her family created this video to go along with it. It is shot above my home town of Greenock in Scotland. Please feel free to share this, it is a declaration of who God is and who He will ever be!
Lord of sky and sea (sung to the tune of Highland Cathedral)
Heavenly Father Lord of sky and sea
Forever you shall reign throughout eternity
The skies may fall and the seas run dry
We who are yours, we shall never die
Omnipotent Father, Love that knows no end
You are our Master, Saviour Lord and friend
We bow before you and we raise our hands
Your throne in heaven it forever stands
We magnify our glorious King
Listen closely hear the angels sing
Of who you are and you’ll ever be
And now we are forever free
Chorus
Now I shout it from the mountains high
I belong to you this is my hearts cry
Let no one ever doubt your sovereignty
I am yours for all eternity
Excerpt from an upcoming book……”My highest for His glory.”
October week 4
Act 17:28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being
If we are passionate worshipers of Jesus, then everything else is secondary. If Jesus is the primary object of our passions, then everything else becomes the by-product. If we ever get that wrong, we cease to be effective. If soul winning is our primary object, we cease to be effective soul winners. If faith is our primary object then we cannot be faithful. If Holiness is our primary object than we cannot be holy. If revival is our primary object then we will never see revival. Outside of Jesus being the primary object of our lives then we immediately begin to lose ground in every aspect of our walk, whether we are pastors or teachers or whatever role we have in the Body.
I would argue that the saints who have rocked this world for Jesus are the saints who have walked in intimate communion with Him. He is the source of all love and majesty and glory and power. Only by abiding in Him ( Him being our primary object) can we walk in forgiveness and mercy and grace.Out of the abundance of the passion that we experience as we walk with Jesus as our grand obsession comes the overflow that changes those around us and brings light into a dark world. Are you being ineffective in your walk? Have you wondered why? Is Jesus the primary object of your life? Is there joy in you life? Is there glory in your life? Are you an over-comer? Do you have a thankful spirit?
Listen saints, if Jesus is truly the primary object of your life then what flows from that is love, joy, peace, faithfulness,thankfulness, forgiveness and so on. How often have I heard a saint say, on any one of the aforementioned issues ” I need to work on that.” That is quite exactly wrong. No amount of “work,” can muster up joy nor thankfulness nor love nor any of the issues of the heart. He must be our all in all. In Him we live and move and have our being. Jesus Himself is the answer to any problem you are having, any problem. The answer lies in Him alone, the answer lies before the throne.
Whatever you seek to achieve in the Kingdom of God comes directly from the depths of your relationship with Him. Find a man who is passionate about sports and he will bore your pants off speaking about it. Find a man who is passionate about politics and he will rip your shirt of telling you all about the latest policies and issues and the state of the world. Find a man who is truly passionate about Jesus and you will find a man who is changing the world. Out of the abundance of our passion flows the power of God.
A Call To The Remnant 