If your dedication to the Lord is constantly increasing, this can be very difficult for others to live with on the human level. Dedication presents many difficulties at the time, but out of it comes something very worthwhile in the Kingdom of God.
Never put anyone down because they have not elected to be as dedicated to the will of God as you. At any time any one of us could say to the Lord, “This is as far as I go! Stop the world! I want to get off!” This is the privilege of limited discipleship. Sometimes this choice results in a hostility that comes back on the ones who want to go on in their dedication to the Lord.
Those with a limited dedication can become very critical and say, “You should put your family ahead of the ministry.” But that is not scriptural. The Scriptures tell us, “Seek first the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33).
No matter what God gives you or lays in your hand, you still must be prepared to put a knife in the heart of your Isaac, if that is what God wants. It is one thing to preach dedication, another to really live it, and quite another for people to coexist with it.
The dedication of a minister of God is certainly not to be God to you. He is not God, though he may have His nature coming forth. Though he may speak a Living Word from God, he is still an earthen vessel. It is God who works through him. Therefore, do not expect a man of God to make decisions based on a personal feeling. If you do not walk with God and seek in vain for answers from Him, how can you get them from someone else? A man cannot give you what God will not give you. Do not look to man for security, thinking that you have to be secure for having served God. Peter said to the Lord Jesus, “We have forsaken all and followed You. Now what will we have, therefore?” (Matthew 19:27.) If you say that, it is as if you are saying, “Did I pay too big a price?” Consider what you are buying. If you are leaving all to follow Him, then you must ask yourself, “Is God enough for me?”
When you reach the limits of your dedication, then you serve in a legalistic bondage sense, like the children of Israel had to serve the taskmasters. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). When the work of the Lord is difficult, and you become discouraged, you may count the cost as being too much. True bond servants are not looking for a reward on the human level.
When God wants to give a person a revelation, He gives them a choice. Do you really want God to meet you with a revelation of who you are, where you are going, and what He wants you to do? Would you like a revelation of what your life is all about, not out of an ambitious sense, but to walk with Him? Would you like Him to reveal exactly what He wants you to do?
If God is going to give you a revelation, your dedication must be attached to that revelation. It is a leapfrog principle. If you have a measure of dedication, you get a revelation. Then that revelation demands that your dedication be increased, etc.
Because you had some dedication, you received a revelation; and you started moving. Then your dedication had to increase, so that your revelation could increase. Your dedication must always increase, so that your revelation can increase. To coin a new term which could describe this would be dedication-revelation. It means revelation that comes when you are dedicated, and dedication that comes when you receive revelation.
If the revelation comes first and it is a little more than your dedication, then God gives you a choice. You can choose either to be more dedicated, so that you will measure up to the revelation, or do nothing and enter into a period of deception. Deception is easier to submit to than the cross that involves dedication.
If you are going to be dedicated, it involves a cross that you bear. If you are dedicated, you die on the cross of your dedication.
You might get a Word like Joseph. The Scriptures tell us, Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him. Psalm 105:19. It was a cross to him. You can talk about the crosses that people bear, but the significant cross that you encounter is when you get a Word from God and you die on it. You die on it, but you will be resurrected also by that Word. That Word is your life.
There are a lot of things in our flesh that have to die. We have to die before we can live. Until dedication motivates us and we die out to things, deception will be easier to submit to than the cross involved with dedication-revelation. Actually, we do not even have to make a choice. If we do not walk in the dedication-revelation, deception will overtake us.
Whenever people draw back from the dedication and the revelation they had, deception overtakes them to some degree. This is what makes walking with God very difficult. Some people could be brought off the street and into a dedicated walk with God quicker than someone who has wavered in dedication and is moving backward. When people draw back, things begin to overwhelm them. Suddenly they have no true revelation of today’s moving of God.
We read about the beginning breakthrough to discipleship where the Lord asked the disciples, “Whom do men say that I am?” (Mark 8:27.) There could be a lot of opinions about that question, but the important question to the disciples was “Whom do you say?” (Verse 29.) Your personal viewpoint must not be based upon what anyone else says. It must be based upon a revelation to your own heart.
You drift into deception the minute that you do not accept the revelation of the person whom God is bringing forth, because accepting it means you will have to be dedicated to their dedication.
If we find a person who has a Living Word from God, we need to obey that word.
If you have a revelation of restored apostles, prophets, etc., what is your dedication in relationship to these ministries? Revelation should lead to some kind of dedication. If revelation has not led to dedication, it will lead to withdrawal. And inevitably there will be the problem of deception. You must realize that throughout your walk with God lies the leapfrog principle of dedication and revelation. As God reveals, then God demands. The demands of dedication say, “Take up your cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). Every revelation Word will be a cross you will die on in your dedication. God ordained it to be that way.
What happens if you draw back? Then deception overtakes you to some degree. You become bitter and critical, and you misevaluate things. But in reality, you will not critically judge things and you will walk on with God if you do not draw back from your dedication to the Lord, or if you have adequate revelation of Him.
What happens when a person gets bitter? Bitterness is the dregs of revelation that has turned sour. It is sickly. You cannot go back and feed upon it. But dedication keeps revelation like fresh manna. Revelation, when it is fresh, is invigorating. It keeps you alive and bubbling over. When revelation is not alive and bubbling, you become discouraged. Weariness overtakes you! Bitterness overtakes you! Criticism overtakes you! Casualties are not wrapped around what the outside world says, but around this which the Lord asks, “Whom do you say I am?” It is around your revelation of the Lord. It is around your dedication to Him. You stand or fall as an individual on these two related points: dedication-revelation. Remember this phrase, and think about it often.
You walk with God because you are dedicated to Him. When your dedication reaches its final limit, you will say, “I will be dedicated to this point—after that, no more!” Sometimes young people have said, “I have gone as far as I can go. I want to get out of humble discipleship here and get a good job. I want to get some nice clothes and get married. I want a husband or wife and kids. I am tired of being this dedicated. I want something else.” Sometimes the Lord opens the door for His dedicated servants to have a beautiful marriage. But when our desire for these things exceeds the desire to “seek first the Kingdom of God,” something goes wrong within us.
Deception leads to some kind of death, but not the death of the cross. Never forget this. If you become deceived and you draw back, it will lead to some kind of death. You will not be able to experience the vigorous life that you want to live in God.
However, dedication leads to a special kind of death in Christ. Deception leads to death, and so does dedication. You will not get out alive, one way or the other. You will perish by the wayside, or you will die on the cross and come into resurrection life with the Lord. You must choose the kind of death you want to die. This is where the crux of your walk with God is found.
Here is a problem: While the Lord helps you with your relationship to Him, you become tested in your relationship to others. Every relationship that God gives you, including the one to Himself, is a cross. You cannot get a revelation from the Lord that does not involve relationships with others. If you could get a revelation from the Lord and go off somewhere alone and be dedicated, would you be fulfilling the will of God?
The Lord lays upon us the dedication to serve. The Lord gives us a handful of people to serve. our dedication to the Lord is closely linked with our dedication to that handful of people.
The Lord sees to it that we are dedicated to serve in an area He dictated.
There is no limit to the dedication that God desires of us. Every time we grow in God, we must go a little bit lower. For Him to increase in us, we must decrease (John 3:30). There seems to be no end to this process. There is no end to what God demands us to become.
Hebrews 11:13–14 speaks about the great heroes of faith: All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. Those people had faith. You are not always required now to have that same faith, but eventually you will be.
The living word is the first segment of the “gospel of the Kingdom that will be preached in all the world for a witness” (Matthew 24:14). This Word is part of that world-witness. Those who labor in this Word cannot labor in anything more important. We need to labor in the Living Word.
The man of faith says, “I have a Word from God, and I will have a Word from God.” He anticipates this. He embraces the promises that will come to him. He knows there will be more promises given. God will meet him again and again.
As soon as people have no more revelation, their dedication stops and the price is too great. At that moment they reject the cross. Would you like to know what to do, in order to endure the cross? How did Jesus endure His cross? Hebrews 12:2 says that for the joy set before Him (He) endured the cross, despising the shame … This present process is no price at all compared to what God will unfold. The Kingdom is coming! If you are not seeking the Kingdom with all your heart, crying, “Thy Kingdom come!” the price of preparation today is too great for you. If you do not see the Kingdom coming, what you have to pay now is too great a price.
The price was not too great for these great men and women of faith: All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. Now here is the heart of the message: And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. Hebrews 11:13–15.
If you want a way out, you will find one. If you would like to settle on some lesser level along the way, you should never be criticized, because no one should add to the problem you will face. “If you put your hand to the plow and look back, you are not fit for the Kingdom” (Luke 9:62). But who will put you down? Every man determines the boundaries of his dedication to the Lord. You, alone, are the one who can say, “I have determined how far I will see, how far I will go.”
When Moses was 120 years old, he died; but his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. Deuteronomy 34:7b. Remember the men who walked with God and “died in faith.” They never came to the place where they could not see clearly into the Kingdom. They saw the spiritual things as well as the physical. Because they had a clear vision, they were always prepared to believe God and move on, in spite of anything that was set before them. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them. Hebrews 11:15–16.
Discouragement comes when your eye grows dim. Disappointments in others can discourage you greatly. You may expect others to be something to you, and you have a rude awakening when you realize that they have no capacity to be what you have expected.
In many young marriages, each expects the other to be everything, instead of expecting to be everything to the other. Suddenly they may find their emotions very much restricted; they do not have the capacity to be to each other what they had first anticipated.
As you walk with God, this same thing happens. You really walk rightly the day that you recognize the authority of the ministries who are over you—being submissive to them—and yet recognizing their individual human limitations and also the limitations which God has imposed. God never ordained that there be any substitute for Himself. He never ordained that we should play God to one another. He enables us to do a great many things, but He always requires that we minister to one another, so that we rise in faith. We cannot exalt man without doing it to our own harm.
This message will open the door of your heart to walk with God. Because it is a walk with God, the scene constantly changes. While you pass new milestones, new landmarks, new demands, you may be thinking, “This is a nice walk.” As you skip along, suddenly you come to a hill that you have to climb or a mountain you have to move or a river you have to cross. God specializes in all these problems which seem impossible to overcome.
Be prepared. While God does the impossible, you must be dedicated to pass through your problems and on into the promise which He sets before you. Sometimes that price is very great. As you face various problems, be aware that physically, financially, materially, and spiritually you face a very personal matter of a dedication-revelation in your own heart.