And let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Galatians 6:9. This fainting doesn’t mean literally passing out.
Isaiah 40:28–31 says, Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding. These are qualifications of our God. He giveth power to the faint; for remember He doesn’t faint; and to him that hath no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait for Jehovah shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and here it is again, and not faint.
Because I went through a period in which I was ready to faint, it has become a burden of my heart to preach to you the things that I think God wants to say to you now.
There is a new dedication not to reveal what I know of a person when it will prevent the decisive crisis that God is working in their lives.
Some things are spoiled by the fact that we interfere. I am quite concerned to minister everything that God will let me minister and to listen more carefully to the checks of the Lord when God is veiling what He is doing, so that I’ll not uncover it and spoil it.
Few are really alert to what God is now doing. You go through it and still do not understand it, and I don’t think that you should have that understanding enlightened, because it’s a testing of your faith that you have to face. There comes a time in which you must go through certain things on your own.
In Luke 22:31, 32 there is more about this. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, establish thy brethren. King James says, When you’ve been converted. It gives the idea that he lost his salvation, but it doesn’t mean that.
When he got his bearings again, then he was to strengthen his brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, with thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death. And He said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, until thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. Luke 22:33, 34.
He told Peter and the other disciples. Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Matthew 26:41.
Now Peter was in the position in which God was making a disciple out of him; and the mark of a dedicated disciple is that he comes to this place of sifting and comes through it for God.
You could never dream of the ways that people are shaken by God in that action of allowing them to be sifted. When you become a disciple, something happens.
As a beginner in Christ, you come into a place of dependence upon the ones that minister to you and help you. As you go along that dependence is shifted more and more upon the Lord.
It is like a new baby that is very dependent upon its mother. As it goes along, it needs its mother, but the total dependence upon its mother is not as great, though it needs its mother very much for other things.
Blessed are the mother and child that can go through that shifting, adjusting relationship while the child is growing up. Finally the child becomes quite mature, taking on responsibilities of its own, and then we see another situation.
If the mother then continues that relationship, trying to make the child dependent on her self-importance, that child has to learn as an adult to cut loose from the oppressiveness of the prolonged, protracted dependency, which has long since been outgrown.
That is something we have to learn in this walk with God too. There is a struggle for every member of the Body to find their own identity.
Sometimes we stand back watching the people grow, more and more committing them to the Lord, for that is what the foundational ministries are for, that you be no more babes tossed to and fro. But speaking truth in love, you grow up into Him in all things. (Ephesians 4:14–15).
Now there is nothing that irritates a congregation more than watching a few people insist upon extra special relationships as babes, when they should be adults, when they should grow up; and it doesn’t help the individuals who are receiving such attention.
So when the time comes in your struggle to find your identity as a disciple, a member of the Body, and as an individual in which the ministries that have been for your protection must ease off and you have to find your own, that’s a rough time and that’s when you go through it, as when it was said to Peter, “Satan desires to sift you like wheat,” and that’s the time people sometimes make their biggest mistakes.
But it is very necessary, otherwise the ministries that are given to guide and help you will finally become the ones that restrain and suppress you, because you are completely dependent upon them. This does not mean that there is not to be submission, or order, or a oneness.
In the dealings of the Lord, He begins to put His disciples through it when they’re coming into a walk with God. You say, “I want to walk with God.” That’s good! It will then mean a walk with God, not anything short of it, and when you want that walk with God, you begin to go through certain things.
One Scripture that I’ve stood on, from the time I came into this walk with God, until this hour, is Psalm 27:13. I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, not in the “sweet by and by,” but “in the land of the living.”
When you are being sifted, you don’t remember the prophecies or the personal conviction of your place and ministry very well. All of the values and relationships seem to fade in your mind. You say, “I have had a prophecy over me, I’ll never let that prophecy go.” But when you’re sifted you suddenly say, “Well, I don’t know if it’s true or not.”
When you’re being tested and you’re right at the crisis of your life, you don’t know whether you’re putting confidence in the elders or not. As for the pastor, you’re not so sure either. That’s what happens when you’re being sifted.
Hebrews 6:1 speaks of: not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God—it is just a believing belief in God, a faith in Him. You can’t find any specifics at that time. So let go of all the individual things and you come to one basic thing and say, “I had fainted, unless I had believed for one thing: to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I will believe in the goodness of God and He will manifest His goodness to me.
How will this prophecy and all the other things work out? Well, I’m being swamped and I don’t know. All I know is that I will believe that God is good and that He loves me.” If you can hang on to that, you’ll come through. You’ll soon begin to pick up the prophecies again, and the elders won’t seem afar off, but you’ll find that they’re a very present help; you’ll discover the pastor again and things will begin to look wonderful to you once more.
For when you go through your testing and your trial, you can feel so neglected and all alone. You can withdraw, you can be rebellious, hate yourself, sit down and scrape your boils like Job and say, “I abhor myself,” and you do.
We were made an heritage of God. Imagine, we being made an heritage of God! God tells us how we’re chosen of Him, beloved of Him, and how much He sets His heart upon us, and yet we don’t always believe that we will be the heritage of the Lord. Ephesians 1:11, 12 says, In whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will; to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory—God has something in view. Now suppose you make a mistake. Will it be deadly? It could upset the balance of many things. But suppose you make a big mistake and then repent. Will everything be the way it would have been? No, it will not. You can repent and everything will be changed, but it will not be the same. But as you go along, you can have confidence in this, for example, that if you dynamite a river out of its course it will keep flowing, but in another course. The church today is following a different course than it would have followed, but I think it’s a better course. With all of its mistakes, relationships and everything can change, but one thing is sure, God will continue working everything after the counsel of His own will, so that His will is done. There’s a lot of leeway there; a young couple can decide they will or will not have a baby, and five years later they have a baby. Will everything be the same as it would have been? No, because Junior will be five years younger than he would have been otherwise, and that will mean that many other factors have been changing. We have much leeway in making our choices. We can blow it and rob ourselves of things on a personal and collective level that we would have had otherwise. But it is good to know that He will still work everything after the counsel of His own will.
When someone is going through the dealings of the Lord, the first impression is: “Oh, this is the devil.” “It isn’t the devil, it’s my husband.” “It isn’t my husband, it’s the children.” “No, it isn’t the children, it’s those people in the church.” Have you ever heard that? Then, after a while, “Oh, it isn’t the people in the church, it’s the Lord.” Behind this is the fact that we are slow to recognize the hand of God when God is dealing with us, but we’re quick to recognize the hand of the devil. A man that is perfect in his ways before the Lord will be like Job: He will look at the hand of the devil coming at him and say, Jehovah gave, and Jehovah hath taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah. Job 1:21b. He sees behind it the hand of God; and behind everything that is taking place in his life, he sees God working in his life, although he may not like the way God is doing it. A general exhortation to help you in the moments of your testing and trials, is from Hebrews 12:3–11, For consider him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against himself, that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin: and ye have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you as with sons, My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, Nor faint when thou art reproved of him; (when we are fainting and brought utterly to the end of ourselves, we should say, “Is this the Lord?”) For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, (and people are always forgetting that, because they’re still saying in their heart, “The Lord doesn’t love me, because look what’s happening to me”) And scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. It is for chastening that ye endure; God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not? But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. A bastard is one whose father will never even acknowledge that he is his father. He lives disowned. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; (whenever you are going through a trial, you grieve under it, it’s like a mourning) yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.
When you want a change to be righteous, to really be spiritual and walk with God, then the next thing you know you’re lower than you’ve ever been before, fainting; it’s grievous. The prophecies and the promises that God was going to do so much for you, you’re ready to abandon and say “They’re not so. I can’t believe them. Look what’s happening to me.” That’s the way it comes. If you want God to show you that He loves you, then He’ll scourge you. For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, And scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Hebrews 12:6. Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees; and make straight paths for your feet… Hebrews 12:12, 13a. It’s not a time to get discouraged. In moments like this, God lets us decide the spiritual level on which we’re going to live and walk in this walk. If you say, “I want a higher spiritual level; I want to change; Lord, I want a higher walk with You.” Fine, He puts you on that and the first thing that opens up are the testings and trials. You don’t feel as if you’re on a higher level; you feel as if you’ve lost everything. You’re flying blind, and if you stick with the guns and show your faith on that level, not your feelings, then you’ll remain and walk on that level and the testings will pass. If you back off, you’ll go back to the level you were on, or even one lower.
Now, how do you show faith and how do you show unbelief? You show faith by your actions; your feelings are generally a soulish reaction to your circumstances and God’s dealings. Whenever God puts you through it, you cry, get angry, you have self-pity and all the feelings well up. They are not an expression of faith; they are an expression of your soul reacting to what you are going through. But your spirit responds in actions. If your feelings overwhelm you, then your spirit sets about to act, and in actions it expresses unbelief. But, if your faith is going to overcome your feelings and you are going to walk by faith, then your reactions to your circumstances are manifested by showing faith and acting upon it. That sounds technical but it is practical.
Suppose you’re going through something, you’re ready to give up, and you feel terrible. That’s too bad! Here you are discouraged and depressed and no one loves you, no one cares for you; then what do you do? How do you react? What actions would show faith? Faith is an activity; it isn’t a feeling; you never feel faith. You feel encouragement, etc.—but faith is an action. That’s why faith without works is dead, abiding alone. (James 2:20). The necessary ingredient of faith is the action that you take. I believe; I don’t feel. My feelings are terrible, but my action is going to be right, so I worship the Lord. I don’t feel like worshiping, but I worship Him. I don’t feel like the Word, but I read it. I don’t feel like anything, but I walk on with God.
It’s like a baby being weaned. It misses its mother’s breast. It cries; its feelings are resentment, withdrawal and hopeless self-pity when mama sticks the bottle in its mouth. It will be on the bottle for a while now. It doesn’t like it; it’s not the same quality and there’s not the same love coming forth from that old bottle that there was from mama, but it is just that time when mama says, “This is the way it will be, you may not like it, but soon you’ll be having beef steak and many other things that you’ll be eating along in life.” It’s all part of faith.
We come to the things that wipe us out in our emotions and feelings, and when we do, it isn’t our feelings that count. They don’t matter one way or the other. If you realize that, you can go off in a corner and stomp and yell and scream and say, “Lord, I’m getting rid of my feelings about this matter.” When you’re all through, say, “Lord, I feel better. The feelings I’ve dumped, but my faith still stands toward you.” Feelings, get rid of them, but hang on to that faith, act upon it and walk in it. Everyone has feelings, and you have to let them blow in some way to get rid of them. But be careful that you don’t sin against the Lord in what you do. You must recognize the difference between feelings and faith, and say, “Just because I feel a certain way doesn’t mean I don’t have any faith. I do have faith. Faith is an action, I’m not going to go to the right hand or the left. I know God has something for my life and that’s what I will have. It doesn’t make any difference how I feel today, or how I feel tomorrow, I know how it will be. It will be the way God wants.” This is a good message to help you in the days to come.
What will happen if you decide that you’ve had it? Well, the Lord will be good to you in that too. Hebrews 11:13–15 speaks of the many people of faith, These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. To anyone who starts out by faith and then says, “I don’t want to go any further;” the Lord says, “I’ll give you a special escort and you can go back.” The problem in this walk is that people sometimes get to the place where they don’t want to pay the price to go on, but they’re cured of the old and don’t want to go back to the other level either, and a terrible vacuum is created in their lives. If you sit in a church like this for a year, you’ll never be happy any place again. If you go back, there’s nothing for you, it’s emptiness. If you really want to go back, God will give you that opportunity. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; Isaiah 40:31. Do you want to go on? “Yes.” Do you feel like going on? “No, not necessarily.” What should you do when sometimes you’re very much encouraged and sometimes not? Make a distinction between feeling and faith. Your feelings can be a reaction to circumstances or a reaction to the chastening of the Lord, but your faith can lead you on.
Always remember this: in this walk with God a strain in relationships is often caused by differences in the rate of change between the individuals involved. One person refuses to change, doesn’t want to move on in the Lord, and another who is moving on in the Lord is reaching, but can’t quite reach them. The scene changes when one person is moving on, and another person is stationary. Sometimes people that have been close together previously come into the church together and think it’s wonderful, but soon you find those that have been closest are drifting apart. One family is changing and the other isn’t. Soon they think of one another as strangers, they are so far apart. The scene is always changing when one person is moving.
It’s not likely that you encounter those again who have chosen not to pay the price that you’ve chosen to pay. If you think about this, it will help you with those things that happen to you. It isn’t that you don’t love them; you love them. It isn’t that you don’t wonder where they are; you remember the level in which you left them. You will not pass that way again.