Let us hear again the first things that we heard when our hearts were stirred with hunger. May the Lord renew that Word in our hearts and in our minds.
Acts 3:19–26 is as important to our understanding of the restoration as the passage in the preceding chapter of Acts where Peter quoted from the book of Joel (Acts 2:16–21; Joel 2:28–32).
The first sermon was given to explain the phenomenon of the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1–16).
The second sermon was occasioned by the lame man being healed by Peter and John as they went up to the Temple to pray (Acts 3:1–8). If you remember, both sermons resulted in a great harvest of people coming into the Lord.
Thousands were saved on the day of Pentecost; and thousands more accepted Christ Jesus the Lord as their Savior on the day of the second sermon. That sermon was an occasion which preempted everything else in the protocol of that day, and because of it, Peter and John wound up in jail.
Acts 3:19–21: “Repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.”
We are much concerned today about this present period of restoration, which God has spoken of by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.
Peter went on to quote Moses (verses 22–23), and then he said: “And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. It is you who are the sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ For you first, God raised up His Servant, and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.” Acts 3:24–26.
This may seem to be a strange text for a message titled, “Why Do People Change Churches?” Why are people changing churches? It used to be that if your family belonged to a particular political party, you belonged to that party too, because your father was a member before you and his father before him.
Likewise, it used to be that if you were born into a certain traditional church, you were part of it all your life.
It is good to stop and ask, “Why are people changing churches, and is it really necessary?” I will answer that right now—it is not necessary.
But as we get into this, we will see that there is a great deal in this text which demands our attention—and not only our attention, but it demands the attention of every church and every Christian movement all over the world.
They have to listen to this, because as Peter was pointing out in this passage (and he was speaking to Jews who were hungry for God), “It’s time you understand that heaven is going to retain Jesus until the time or the period of restoration.” He said, “All the prophets spoke of this time,” and he especially pointed out Moses. Then he said, “Likewise, from Samuel on, every prophet spoke of it” (Acts 3:21–24).
It would be interesting to study the prophets, from Moses and Samuel on, and note the instances in their prophecies where the great period of restoration was prophesied.
As Christians, we have a tendency not to look to the Old Testament as much as we should. If we studied the Old Testament we would find that the Old Testament prophets foresaw the time that we are in now a great deal more clearly than they saw the Church Age.
The Church Age occurs in a hidden valley of which they do not seem as perceptive. We do not find too many prophecies about the Church in the Old Testament prophets, but we do find a great many prophecies about the Kingdom that was to come.
And as we stand in this day looking for the return of Christ, it would be good for us to review again the prophecies about the Kingdom which came forth from all the prophets who spoke of this time of the restoration.
We are in the time of the restoring of all things which the prophets spoke of. All of His holy prophets from ancient time spoke of this era. At the very beginning of God’s revelation, He was speaking of the day in which we live, on the threshold of God’s Kingdom on earth. Or, to put it another way if you can’t accept it that way, on the threshold of the time when Jesus Christ will return. “God will send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom the heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things.”
Acts 3:20–21: “and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.”
That word “restoration” seems to mean that something will be brought back which was once here and then was lost. It is interesting that in the second chapter of the book of Acts, Peter quoted from Joel chapter 2, where the restoration was prophesied.
In Joel 2:25, God promised, “I will restore to you all the years that have been lost to you. All the years that the locust, the caterpillar, the palmerworm, and the cankerworm have eaten will be restored.” So this does appear to be the restoration of things which existed before, except for the fact that the word used in Acts 3:21 means more than restoration. It means the establishment of things that were spoken.
Some things that were prophesied had never been seen at the time the prophets spoke them, and have in fact never yet been seen in the history of the world; but they will be established at this time. That’s a good thing to know. While some people are believing that the day of miracles has passed, we are believing that the day of miracles is just beginning.
In the day that the sons of God come forth there will be greater works. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father.” John 14:12.
There will be a release of the whole of creation from futility. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the repealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. Romans 8:19–23. This we look forward to with all our heart.
In light of this, we ask this question: “Why are people changing churches? And is it really necessary?” It is not necessary for people to change churches—at least it should not be—but let us understand why it happens.
As the restoration progresses, it finds a lot of people locked into the traditional churches of the past, both in their doctrines and in their experiences. These fences are all man-made, because the limitation in denominational doctrines and creeds is never by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit came to lead us into all the truth. Jesus said to His disciples, “I have many things to tell you, but you are not able to bear them now. But when the Spirit is come, He will lead you into all truth” (John 16:12–13).
Throughout the Scriptures we find this principle. There is a deeper level of truth—and the Holy Spirit will lead us into more than we can understand now, more than we are even able to receive now.
Paul said the same thing. He wrote, “I can’t give you the meat now, because you are not able to bear it. I’m still giving you the milk” (I Corinthians 3:2). “At a time when you ought to be teachers of others, you still have to go back to the milk” (Hebrews 5:12). This would indicate that the truth can be received at a certain level, but there is more to come beyond that. If you can reach on in your dedication, in your openness, and in your hunger for God, there are many more things that God will reveal to you down the line.
It is a tragedy that people get locked into one level and say, “There are only certain experiences that we can have and certain truths that we can believe, because that’s all our church teaches.” But how old is that church? It may be two or three hundred, or even four or five hundred years old, and yet still be teaching only those truths which were restored at its beginning.
Every denomination, every traditional church tends to get locked into its own creeds and experiences and to accept nothing more.
That puts a fence around churches, and people jump over those fences because the fences were never of God in the first place. To take what God was doing in the earth at the time that the movement came forth and to say that He will never do anything more is a sad thing.
People lock themselves into the idea that revelation ceased at the beginning of a movement. We can look back and see that miracles occurred at the beginning of almost every denomination; just about every time God moved, miracles came forth. Wonderful! We love that! But then why do they cease?
If God was speaking by a prophet then, why can’t another prophet come along in the same movement to lead the people on a step further?
These great leaders in church history would be the first ones to protest against the vacuum that is being created in the churches which bear their names. They would object strenuously.
Each one of them took a step forward out of the traditional church they were in, in order to lead the people on into more of God—they had to do it. And yet that departure should not have been necessary, because the New Testament Church structure, if it is followed in a local church, should be flexible enough and open enough that the people could all go forward in God, from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord (II Corinthians 3:18). Growth and restoration, the establishment of the Kingdom, should not split up churches. Instead, the churches should be flexible enough to move on into the Kingdom.
Any of the New Testament restoration churches should not split up other churches or pull people out of churches; that should not be necessary. And it will not be necessary if the churches can be a strength and an encouragement, especially to the shepherds, so that they will be willing to lead their sheep on.
It is generally up to the leaders to be first partakers of the new step that God is bringing forth. And if they are, they will find many of their people ready to go forward with them. (Of course, they may find a few who are dragging their feet, too; there are always some.)
Nevertheless, few churches at the present time are flexible enough to embrace a present truth that God is restoring. By tradition, they have become conditioned to accept the limits of a certain level.
The Inspirationists are an example of this. They had prophets who led them out of the persecutions they faced in Europe and who showed them where to go. Eventually they bought great sections of land in Iowa and settled there. They had meetings in which the prophets would speak to them, and they recorded what the prophets had spoken. But for a long time now that has just been a tradition. In each service they go back and read from what their prophets said, over one hundred years ago. But why don’t they have a prophet today who speaks a Word from God? Why do they read what came in the past and yet say, “Now we don’t believe in prophets anymore”?
It is interesting the way people try to lock themselves into a truth or a teaching or a revelation or an experience and say, “That’s all there is. If you profess that you’re going to get any more, you will be thrown out.” The ninth chapter of John gives a very interesting account of this attitude. It tells that the Jews had already decided that if anyone came professing to be the Christ, he would be thrown out of the synagogue, as would anyone who believed with him (verse 22). Christ the Messiah came and healed a man who had been born blind; and then, because that man believed in Him, the Jews threw him out of the synagogue (John 9:1–34). They met every Sabbath day to read the prophets who said the Messiah was coming; yet they had already decided, “If anybody says he’s the Christ, we’ll throw him out.” That is the almost unbelievable history of orthodox religion.
It is so unreasonable for us to become so restrained, so hidebound, so inflexible that we cannot listen to what God is saying now. Right now God is not saying, “Go join a church.” What He is trying to do is to get the churches to move on. Read the last of the messages to the churches in the book of Revelation. Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” (This means that He is somewhere outside of the churches, if we listen to it.) “If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him” (Revelation 3:20). It has to be by invitation, that we say, “Yes, Lord.” We will not sit back and say as Laodicea did, “We are rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing” (Revelation 3:17), and fail to be aware of the desolate place that we are in spiritually, when God wants us very much enriched, very much anointed. He wants us to experience that which will thrust us on into the next step.
A great vacuum is being created in many hearts today. People are hungry, but their need is not always being met by their leaders who should be very aggressive to declare, “The experience that God restored a hundred years ago may not be all that we need today.” The prophets always speak of this time coming and refer to it as a time of double portion. Maybe we need a double portion. Maybe we need twice as much as we have now. Instead of believing less of the Scriptures, we ought to be believing more of them. Instead of limiting our experiences, we ought to be asking God to meet us again and again. All over the world, this is beginning to happen. However, it is natural for people to be afraid. The fear of the unfamiliar leads them to draw back from anything that is a little unusual. That is why people tend to reject something new.
It was among those of the Free Methodist background that people first began to receive the Holy Spirit and speak with tongues.
Now the Charismatic movement is pretty widely accepted everywhere, but in the early days people who spoke in tongues were called “Holy Rollers.”
The Free Methodists determined to get down and seek for God to sanctify them and fill them with the Holy Spirit. But if it so happened that someone spoke in tongues, they would often throw him out of the church. It is such an amazing thing that they created the hunger, led the people up to the experience, and then rejected them because they actually did get what they were seeking.
Almost all of the Pentecostal churches were originally more or less of a Methodist church structure, because they came out of the Methodist movement. God’s people have come out of other movements also; people are always coming out. But I do not think God necessarily intended that churches be split up. Do not think that all the denominations springing forth in order for the restoration to take place was in the mind of God. The walls which were created were not of God in the first place; and therefore, in the second place, we should reexamine any division in our own thinking—any feeling that we have to proselytize and bring people into our movement. The attitude “We are the people and wisdom will die with us” is the thinking of the Pharisees, and it has to go. It is born of the religious nature which is a part of the old Adamic nature. It is not in the new nature. God wants us to recognize our oneness and be of mutual assistance to one another.
We have one point of focus. We not only believe what God has already revealed and restored, but we also prepare our hearts to believe the truths that are still hidden, ready to be revealed in the Word. We want to go on with God. I reject the thought that I could never have another, deeper experience with God, or that I would never be able to read the Word and find something fresh and new in it, something alive to feed me for each day. I would feel that something in me had died if my capacity for growth and expansion in God was curtailed, or curtailed by my own thinking.
The fear of disapproval is strong within us. People strive to be accepted. They like the dignity of having their religion accepted. And yet, if we look back to what has happened in the past, we can better understand the day we are in now. Some of the people who are persecuting the new levels God is bringing forth now were themselves just a generation ago persecuted for teaching “false doctrine.” Some are reluctant to accept this idea of the restoration and of what God wants to do in bringing forth again the foundational ministries of apostles and prophets all through the world (Ephesians 4:11). They are slow to accept the fact that God is bringing forth a whole new emphasis. Yet back in their history there was the time when they were very much persecuted because they took a step forward in God.
We are in a day when there are many cults; and of course, the doctrines of devils were prophesied for the end time (I Timothy 4:1). So, not only is it a period when attention will be given to the cults, but also to any group which starts to move out in God; there will be persecution against them because they have dared to take another step in the Lord.
This has always been true in the past. The Thirty Years War in Europe was fought over this same issue of religious freedom. America was founded by people who fled out of the intolerable situation in Europe where they could not worship God as they chose. The Pentecostal branch of the Armenians did the same. They had prophets who told them when to leave Armenia before the great massacre occurred, in which hundreds of thousands of Armenians were slain. They were filled with the Spirit, they listened, and they came to this country. And thank God, many of them still believe that God can speak to His people. God has led His people from time to time. In the history of the Church, there were many people, such as the Mennonites, the Amish, and the Inspirationists, who were led. They fled many times, motivated by the freedom that God promised them here in this land; and they left the oppressions of their former lands which they had had to endure.
As groups of believers, we need to have more understanding of each other. The differences between us may not be all bad. There is a great deal that we can learn from one another. For instance, I recently began to try to get the people who are believing in the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit to go back and pick up one thing from the Pentecostal movement. The Pentecostal movement originally did a great deal of heart-searching; that was their Free Methodist heritage. And so, when the Holy Spirit fell so mightily in Topeka, Kansas, it was at a Holiness church. When we look at what happened at the barn-like building on Azusa Street where the Spirit of the Lord fell in Los Angeles, we see an amazing picture of people who sought God. The emptying out took place—the heart-searching, the seeking, the tarrying before the Lord. In the Bible people simply received the Holy Spirit by the hearing of faith (Galatians 3:2; Acts 10:44), by having hands laid on them (Acts 8:17; 19:6); and we have followed that. But then the Lord began to emphasize the fact that there was a missing ingredient. It is true that a person can receive an experience by faith, but some of the experiences which are more valid, more real, and longer-lasting are those which are received with the preparation of heart first. So I am encouraging people to go back and listen again to what God said in the days when He moved on His people to believe in sanctification and holiness. We must listen to those words, because the free grace of God will abound only in channels that are cleansed and purified and made ready for its exercise.
I Thessalonians 5:21–24: But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.
II Corinthians 7:1: Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
II Timothy 2:19, 21: Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal, “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Let every one who names the name of the Lord abstain from wickedness.” Therefore, if a man cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.
As we come into more of the restoration, we must be careful that we have not lost something good from what came before. For instance, one of these days we will pick up again the mystery of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is probably the most abused ordinance that we follow. There was a protest against the Roman Catholic tradition of transubstantiation. Some of the Protestants said, “Well, it symbolizes something.” But at the very beginnings of the Church, Communion was probably the most efficient method that was known in the early Church by which people could receive ministry. Do you protest, “Oh, we’ve passed that. We’re going on into the next thing. We won’t go back to the ritual of Communion.” We ought to study again what Communion was all about, what baptism was all about.
We ought to study the basic things, because it is so easy in the experience of a church to “have the form of godliness but deny the power thereof” (II Timothy 3:5). You don’t have to be a Modernist to do that. Get into a rut or a ritual and follow it long enough, and soon you will be going through the motions without the real valid power of the experience in your life.
This could easily happen to any of us. We have often sung a song so many times that we know it by heart; then we write new songs because we are tired of being in a rut. But the new songs can soon become a rut too. It does not take long, because the human nature tends to do that. Human nature tends to make everything a habit that you don’t want to consciously think about. For example, when you get on the highway to go somewhere you go often, you do not give too much thought to it. You know where the stop signs are and where you have to turn. In fact, you get to the place where you do not even think about the highway numbers. When you drive to a certain address, you do not think of the street name or the house number. You know where those people live and you drive there. You do not have to give it a thought; it has become a habit. In the same way, we can get to the place where our service to God becomes a habit, and we fail to have a conscious application, a focus upon the truth and the reality that ought to be vivid in every one of our minds. We should never just go through the motions in any worship service; we should always develop a consciousness of the Lord being right there, a focus upon the presence of the Lord in that service.
We are asking why people change churches. Is it really necessary? It may not always be necessary, but the hungry sheep will gravitate toward the next level, even if it means jumping a fence. They will do it. People will break out if they have been fenced in and they are hungry. They will jump a fence in order to get to the place where they can be fed.
There is a warning coming even to the best of shepherds: Lead the sheep on or you will lose them. The best thing at the present time is for every man of God all over the country to search his heart and ask himself a serious question: “Am I walking in all God gave me in the first place? Is there more from God that I should be seeking? What kind of shepherd am I? Am I one who is leading the people by green pastures? (Psalm 23:2.) Or have I kept them fenced in until they have eaten right down to the roots of the grass, until they have gotten down to the dirt and rocks and there is no more food for them?” Hungry sheep will jump a fence. I have jumped a few fences in my time, but always regretfully.
All of us like the security we feel from being a part of a traditional church. Shepherds often unscripturally hold the sheep into their own fold. They can assert that they hold authority by virtue of apostolic succession. This leads to the error of locking the sheep into the traditional mold of that church, with its reactionary response to new steps and levels in the restoration. But I do not believe in the dogma of apostolic succession, because it means the succession of denominational position and rank. Apostolic succession deals with position.
People can reach the place where they are in as much of a bondage to the doctrine of apostolic succession as the Jews are to their teaching about Jewish succession. The Jews began to look back and say, “If you can’t trace your mother’s history, you are not a Jew.” They do that in Israel even now. They have made the ruling that Jewish succession comes only through the mother. A person’s father can be a Jew of Jews, and it does not make any difference; he is not considered a Jew if his mother is not a Jew.
We might as well forget this idea of succession, because the Lord is able to appear and recommission apostles in any generation. He is not limited. Remember what John the Baptist began to preach when the Jews began to say, “We have Abraham to our father.” He opened up a whole new era when he said, “God is able from these stones to raise up the seed of Abraham. God doesn’t have to conform to your traditions at all; He can take of these rocks and raise up the seed of Abraham to carry on the will of God” (Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8). We must get away from the traditional bondages that are invalid. Catholicism and Protestantism are bound in them. We need to have a fresh visitation from heaven in which God will come to us and restore. As it says in Malachi: He will send one who will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers, lest He come and smite the earth with a curse (Malachi 4:6).
There is a real need for us to pull together and cohere in the hunger and the desire for God—even if it is for a blessing that we are unfamiliar with and we would tend to be fearful of it. We owe it to ourselves and to the God who leads us that we should search for the scriptural accuracy of the thing that is being preached—that we should search the Scriptures to see whether these things are so (Acts 17:11).
We are not to be gullible or naive; we are not to be quick to grab on to something until we have weighed it carefully. But when it becomes a revelation to our heart, we are sinning against our Lord if we do not follow on to know the Lord (Hosea 6:3), if we do not follow on in everything that He sets before us.
Here is an answer for the problem of people changing churches: Let the shepherds, pastors, elders, and other ministries seek out what is true, partake of it first, and then lead their flock into it. People should never have to leave their church in order to get more from God.
The saddest commentary about us all is the reactionary nature that comes over us in time. I confess that we all are a little guilty of it. If someone came to me and said, “God is doing a new thing in the earth here,” I could say, “So tell me about it. If you think you’ve got something more, tell me about it.” Isn’t that typical of human nature?
But instead of that, I pray that I would be humble enough to say, “If God has spoken to you, I’ll listen to what you have to say. I’ll search the Word to see if it is so and to see if the Holy Spirit will give me a witness; and if so, fine. If it is something more from God, I want it.”
These denominational split-offs need never have happened in the first place. The shepherds must lead the people on; or God will lead them out; or they will become dropouts, casualties. That is the bottom line of this message. It is not trying to get anyone to leave a church. To the contrary, it is saying, “Let’s examine where we are and what we can do, and let God begin to move.”“Well we can’t do that, because you can’t put new wine in old wineskins” (Matthew 9:17).
That is true; but there ought to be a way that we could get some kind of oil and rub those old wineskins, and get them a little more flexible. Everyone tends to become set in his ways. Every year as you get a little older, you can become a little less tolerant. But oh, to keep ourselves young in spirit! To be open to the things of the Lord, and to be able to lead someone else on into those things is the great desire of my heart. It may be that one day one of the young prophets who has come up in Shiloh will come to me and say, “The Lord has given me a great revelation. I want you to hear it.” I will listen to it; and if it is of the Lord, I will follow it.
“But you could get off in that. There could be a lot of fanaticism.”
Yes, I know. I can remember how difficult it was for my father to accept the fact that God can heal. In fact, I almost died and was healed in answer to prayer before he could begin to open up to the fact that there was something more from God which he could get. But as he opened up his heart to it and listened to it, it became a real, living thing to our family. Of course, then there was no more difficulty. But we could not get our pastor to understand it. He was so persuaded of the teachings that he had, and so locked into them, that he could not see that there was anything more.
Some of the finest things that you learn, you do not learn from someone who is highly reverenced and esteemed, because usually those people are conservative and cautious. Instead, you find someone who is so hungry for God that he opens the door to you. It happened that way in the early Church.
We find in the book of Acts that the Jews marveled at the disciples, that they were all ignorant and unlearned men, but they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). This was the only distinctive mark they had. They were not religious leaders. They were not well established in the system of religion in that day. Not one of them had come out of the priestly ranks. They had no religious prestige. They had no tradition behind them. They had nothing going for them religion-wise. Rather, the Pharisees scorned them. But these upstarts—ex-fishermen and tax collectors—came along and began to lead the people into a new age.
Let’s be careful that when God moves, we move with Him. Let’s be open to listen to what God has to say. God is moving on each local church, and they are changing. Some will say, “I want the old bombastic services back.” I don’t particularly care for them back. I know that there has to be a time when we blast the stones out of the quarry; but when we begin to put the Temple together, we find that not even the sound of a hammer is heard (I Kings 6:7). There must be the time when we are blasted loose. But then there must be the time when the Spirit of God just causes us to flow together. I am more concerned right now about our hearts being open toward the Lord and toward the next step than about anything else. Constantly God is saying that He will be doing something new: “Behold, the former things have come to pass, now I declare new things; before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.” Isaiah 42:9. And I am concerned that we do not build a fence which will either close us in or shut our brother out—or which will limit us to the past experiences and teachings we have had, and shut out the future revelations that God would give. This is not just a message for people in denominations; this is a message for the people of every church. We all have the same tendency to get locked in at some level. We ought to continually pray for more from the Lord. There ought to be within us the most dissatisfied feeling for what we have not yet attained. We should be thoroughly satisfied with what God has done, but dissatisfied with our appropriation of His great provision. We should be reaching for more. It is paradoxical—the more you eat of His fullness, the hungrier you get. You can eat of natural foods; and when you are finished, you are not hungry anymore. But when you begin to eat of the heavenly manna which the Lord provides, then the more you eat, the more you want; and the more you reach for. That’s the way it should be.
The best thing for us to do is to pray in our hearts, “Lord, have I become smug?” The Old Testament says that the people of Israel “settled on their lees” (Zephaniah 1:12; Jeremiah 48:11). Have you ever wondered what that means? It has to do with the process of making wine. In this process, the sediment settles to the bottom, and then the wine is poured off. The finest wine is wine which has been poured off many times and has become so clear that it is almost as transparent and as pure as water. But if it is not poured off and is left to settle on the lees, or the dregs, it can become very strong and bitter. For a person to be settled on his lees means that there has been no attempt to take the pure thing which is developing and pour it off and separate it from the corruption. God is always wanting to separate the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 3:12; Luke 3:17), and to settle the pure wine of the Spirit from the lees. If you get settled on your lees, it means that it is time that you be separated from the things that you will have to discard.
In our faith, in our experience, in our churches, in this great walk with God on earth today, we must constantly be concerned about eliminating the corrupt human element out of our service to the Lord. We must say, “Lord, when You come we want to be the Bride of Christ without spot or wrinkle, in all of its purity, with everything separated from our lives that has to go.” Christ gave Himself up for the Church that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless. Ephesians 5:26–27. That process must take place. Don’t just say, “Well, I thank God for the new wine of the Kingdom.” Go on a little further and see that it is perfected.
Is there another step to be taken in God in your life? The first thing to do is to walk in what you do understand, and then pray about what you do not understand. Are you walking in what your church teaches you right now? Are you walking in the revelation and experiences of the Word that your church taught in the past? Doing that would shake up any traditional church. If you ask the Methodists, “Are you walking in what they had in the early Methodist revivals?” many of them would say, “No, we don’t even believe that anymore.” They drifted away from it. But if we could get everyone to go back to the basic hunger which caused them to break through to God in the first place, then it would be easy for them to break through to God in what He has for them now, too. New steps could be taken without it being disastrous and splitting churches. That always results in a few people being hurt. There are always some casualties along the way—people who do not know which way to turn. They are being deprived, their hunger turns into a desperation, and they get discouraged and drop out. That should not be. No one should ever be lost from a church because he became hungry and his hunger was not satisfied, and then he got discouraged and dropped out. For us to let that happen in the church is one of the arch crimes against the great Shepherd of the sheep.
Let the shepherds always preach to the people and exhort them and give them the Word as strong and as pure as they can. Some people will become prophets of God, while others may fail when they face the dealings of God. Sometimes they complain, “I’m confused”; but confusion is just a wrong focus. Keep your eyes on the Lord and you will not be confused.
There are always enough things to be confused about. If you want to focus on circumstances and problems, you could find a lot of things to be confused about in every church. If you look for them, you can find them. In some churches they are out in the open, and in other churches they sweep them under the carpet; but if you look for them, they are there. You can find reasons to get discouraged if you want to see the frailties of man, because the frailties of man will always discourage you. But if you say, “I’m going to keep my eye on the Lord and upon the Word that He has given,” then you will not walk in confusion because you have a fixed focus upon God; your heart is crying out. That is what made David a man after God’s own heart (I Samuel 13:14). He hungered and thirsted after the Lord, like the hart pants after the water brooks (Psalm 42:1). He said, “My heart is fixed, O God. My heart is fixed on You” (Psalm 57:7). A man like that does not stumble; he does not walk in confusion. He moves on from glory to glory (II Corinthians 3:18). He possesses the promises and he fulfills the destiny that God has for him.
Do you remember the story of Apollos? He was fervent in spirit to preach the Word of the Lord, but he had not been instructed in the full details of the Gospel; he was acquainted only with the baptism of John. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and began to talk to him about the things that God was doing then. He immediately embraced it and received it, and later on we find Apollos a strong apostolic ministry (Acts 18:24–28). Up to that time, he knew only the baptism of John, but how diligent he was to preach it!
There are a lot of diligent people out there, if we could just flow together. There are a lot of hungry hearts. We do not have to make them disciples of ourselves. We do not have to say as the disciples did, “Lord, this man over here was preaching You; but he didn’t follow us, so we forbade him.” Jesus rebuked that. He said, “He who is not against Me is for Me” (Mark 9:38–40). Much of this denominational spirit could be broken in our minds. We do not care what name is on the church; what we are concerned about is that we get back to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the teaching and the bringing forth of what God is doing. We are getting ready for the greatest outpouring of the Spirit that has ever been. No one will have a corner on it. It is going to spring forth, and a lot of people will be blessed in the name of the Lord. God bless this hunger that is in our hearts.