God has brought each one of us into the Body to accomplish a particular function. Our lives are not our own; therefore, nothing could be more arrogant in our thinking than to be in this walk and think of self-destruction. It is an arrogant presumption, a usurping of God’s place. God is the one Who determines whether we live or die. We don’t belong to ourselves; we have turned the title over to Him.
The minute you begin to think that you want to quit and do something else, it is self coming forth. Your delight must be: “I come to do Thy will, O Lord, and to live the life You have given me to live, to be that witness.” Then self gets off the throne and the Lord sits on it. What you do for the Lord is not the issue; it is how completely you acknowledge that He is the Lord and are given completely into His hands. Bow before Him: wherever He wants to send you, whatever He wants to put you through, whatever you are facing in yourself, open your heart to live for the Lord. Don’t ever enter into self-pity or go into a shell or desire to die, none of those things.
The extent to which we can wield authority over devil power, disease and circumstances depends upon our submission to the Lord. Jesus told how everything had been laid in His hand and said to the Father, “Thank You that You hid it from the wise and prudent and revealed it to babes.” Then He said, “I have all authority: now come and learn of Me. I am meek and lowly in heart (Matthew 11:25–29). The key is that meekness of Christ, His lowliness, His complete submission to the Father.
With humility and meekness, with absolute submission to the Lord you can cope with anything; that will be the channel through which God can send authority. When we seek authority, God begins to bring us down to lowliness under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. When we pray for patience, we get tribulation. We are dedicated to what we want God to do, but we must also be dedicated to the means that God will use to bring it. It is easy to be dedicated to the end result; but we must seek the Lord to be dedicated to the means by which it comes.
Here is one of the key Scriptures to illustrate this principle: Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials: knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:2. How can we be “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing?” Through endurance. What brings the endurance? The testing of your faith. And how should we look at this whole process? Count it all joy when your faith is being tested, when the Lord puts you in the path where it takes real endurance and steadfastness, and you have to go on when you want to give up. A thousand times you want to quit but you can’t; that is just the first lap. When that endurance runs its full course, you will be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Things are changing rapidly; but there may be certain conditions in your life that are not changing. If you are looking for a release from the pressure, you are not going to get it, for it is producing the perfection God wants. We are to be perfect, complete, lacking in nothing: a church without spot or wrinkle, so it has to go on and on, relentlessly; the Lord tempers you in the fires of testings and trials.
“But I wasn’t expecting that in this walk.”
You want the results; but you don’t want the means to the results. The end is not accomplished without a means. God always has a means to accomplish that which He is working in your life. One young brother came to me with a problem which you may go through. He was ready to quit: “All this pressure, all this struggle—there must be another way of life than this. Maybe I should get out and work with my hands in the soil like God intended, or the sea.”
That is a good way out—sort of a nirvana that has been worked out by the human race. We don’t want to have to think. The battles are going on in the city, not in the country. The New Testament churches were started in the biggest cities they could find. Riots took place, persecutions. In Ephesus there was rioting by the hour until they had to sneak Paul out of town. Where the battle is, that’s where the victory is. God said He would build His New Testament church without spot or wrinkle in midst of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Of course, we will have to have farms because of what our people in the city will have to eat, but these farms are not an escape. Anyone who wants to run away and go to the farm to get away from it all, is not the one we will send, and is going against the will of God. Escape is not the thing.
“But I want peace.”
You want peace? The order of the day is that those walking with God will have Romans 8 fulfilled: groaning within themselves continually until God looses them into the glorious liberty of the sons of God to loose all creation. You may want to dig in the dirt, but how many farmers have you ever seen that are spiritual men? How many of them ever broke through to be real prophets? The percentage is as small or smaller, than any. How many fishermen do you find who are naturally spiritual men? How many sailors just naturally call on God because they see God in storms and in the waves? They are just about on a par with the iniquity in anyone else. Why? Because there is a curse on creation. We will have to get some farms, and then loose them from the curse. We have to loose our businesses and everything from the curse.
Don’t expect peace in this walk, because in it is a groaning within yourself, a travail of God bringing forth His sons. The pressure that is on you isn’t going to stop, so become dedicated to it because it is the means to the end God has in mind for its completion. Sometimes you will wish you were out of it and would like to run away. Of course! Who wouldn’t? You can’t do it, though.
“I know God has changed many things, but I am never happy with the change. I want more.”
It is that hunger after God that keeps Him putting the pressure on you. You think what you want is just the walk with God and the sweet communion, so you come, hungering after Him, and He puts the prod to you! But that produces what you want: the dedication to the means that accomplishes the end that God put in your heart to yearn after, while you learn to be perfect, complete, lacking nothing! So, count it all joy when you fall in divers trials. There isn’t any other way: this is what God is doing.
People stand in line for ministry and say, “Pray for me! I’m going through something. Pray for God to bind these circumstances, this problem, etc. I want an end to this struggle I’m in.” There are certain kinds of deep-rooted problems about which nothing should be done because it is in that pressure that we appropriate the righteousness which takes care of the need.
There isn’t any answer in running away. Sometimes hippies come here and, on the surface, this appears to be just what they’ve been looking for; but it is the opposite. They have wanted to resign and withdraw from the establishment and find some peace by being withdrawn. The first thing God does is deal with that withdrawing spirit! Then they get involved and, little by little, begin to loosen up until God has set them in that army which will deal with the establishment and all the corruptions in the world. Withdrawal doesn’t solve it. God has a better answer: “I will whip you into shape until you are an instrument in My hand. I will take a worm and, when I’m through with it, thresh a mountain” (Isaiah 41:14, 15). That is what God says He will do and He proceeds to do it. That means you are confronted with it continually: you can’t withdraw from it nor can you adjust to it. You live in a continuous protest, a continuous striving. All the time that you are going against it, struggle after struggle, God is doing a work in your heart. That is the way you come into it. The viewpoint you have is important, so count it all joy when you are going through divers trials. That is the way you are going to prevail.
Conflict is not being given for us to pray for God to cause it to evaporate or vanish; it is being given so that we can find an answer in the Lord. There is some way that we must grow up in God a little better.
The Lord is working something in us and when He finishes we will be more that Body of people God wants in unity with real defenses. The promise is that we won’t thrust one another through, we won’t break ranks; discipline of spirit will be worked in us. So whatever is coming, count it all joy; rejoice in it and press in.