It’s human nature to drift into a rut and become passive and withdrawn. Frequently people need someone to jar them because they tend to live in some other world rather than in the present world where God wants to meet their life. As people grow older, they tend to live in the past; when they’re somewhat younger, they like to live in the future. Very few people can relax and live their lives now. Young families especially, look forward to the time when the husband has finished school and has a good position, when the finances and other situations will no longer be a problem. They say longingly, “In a few more years we can start living.” They should realize that they are living their lives now. Regardless of your circumstances, live every day with a faith in God and an awareness of the Lord. Each day walk with God, Who wants to meet you in the present.
Continually you need to be jarred into the kind of teaching that makes you aware of the Lord right now. In our present situation we constantly struggle to appropriate God and believe for Him to meet us. This is why I continually caution people against becoming addicted to dispensational teaching, whose advocates claim that the moving of God stopped after the Old Testament or at the time of Jesus. A little transition period followed with a few miracles sprinkled in to flavor things up a bit; then there was nothing. “The day of miracles is past,” they say. What Scripture says so? There are more miracles taking place and more real prophets of God in the world right now than there have been in any generation since the dawn of history.
God has something for us now, and yet the historical churches preach about Jesus, the great I Was, saying “He was a great character, a marvelous teacher. We emulate the Lord Jesus Christ.” That isn’t good enough. Jesus said, Before Abraham was, I Am. He didn’t say, “Before Abraham was I will be,” or “I was.” John 8:58. He’s the God Who continually deals with people in the present. True, the past contributes and the future will unfold what God begins today, but essentially we must be people who are living with God now, walking with Him today.
There is nothing as hopeless and dead as an individual who has given up and is not expecting anything to happen. He’s just existing through every day. Each day should be lived with expectancy. You should get up in the morning and look around to see if the Kingdom has come. You ought to be living with such an expectation and faith in your spirit that when you walk down the street you’re excited about what is going to happen next. A person may say, “Tomorrow I’m going to pray.” Why not pray a little right now? The key of overcoming procrastination is taking a little step now. Whatever you decide to do, take a step and a little action now.
A famous writer was asked to give a lecture on creative writing to a large class of university students. He was known for his vicious temper and on this occasion he was especially angry because he had been coerced into giving the lecture against his will. He came into the lecture hall, walked to the platform, and looked around. Then he scowled at everyone as he paced back and forth. Finally he said, “How many of you here want to be writers?” All raised their hands. “Then why aren’t you home writing?” he shouted as he walked off the platform and left.
This was probably one of the greatest lectures on writing that has ever been given. You only learn to write by writing; you only learn to do anything by doing. Don’t say, “Some day I’ll preach a sermon,” or “one of these days I’ll write a book.” Why aren’t you doing it now? Live in the present. Don’t make plans way off in the future. Every time I work out a schedule and say, “This is the way I’m going to live my life and work out my schedule for the coming months,” it never works. It’s true, some general plan and discipline is necessary; yet every day must be an individual challenge. You must get up and say, “Today I’m going to walk with the Lord. Today I will accomplish these specific things. Maybe I won’t complete them all, but I can sort out those which are most important for me to do today in the will of God. When the sun goes down I will know that today I have done my very best in accomplishing the most important things pertaining to God’s will for my life.” This kind of attitude makes a walk with God.
O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the earth; the peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it; and His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Psalm 95:1–7a. What a beautiful call to worship.
I have always felt that this Psalm must have originally been two psalms, because the thought expressed in the second half (beginning with the end of the seventh verse, “Today, if you would hear His voice,”) is entirely different than the first half. The first seven verses speak of a call to worship, an exalting of the Lord, an awareness of His presence, the singing and joyfulness that is to be given to the Lord. Then the thought changes abruptly to a devastating warning against unbelief.
Verses 7b–11: Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness; when your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said, they are a people who err in their heart. And they do not know My ways. Therefore I swore in My anger, truly they shall not enter into My rest. These last verses seem completely unrelated to the first portion. Yet they are not, for you can’t obey the first seven verses regarding worship unless you know what the Psalmist means when he says, Today, if you would hear His voice. The last part of this Psalm is quoted in Hebrews 3:7–11. The book of Exodus also speaks about entering into His rest. But every generation became rebellious when God said to them, “Today.” They wouldn’t walk before the Lord as they should.
God is indicating something very important here. Even if your great-grandfather was the archbishop of Canterbury, that doesn’t help you one bit. You have to walk with God yourself. It doesn’t matter what you’re believing for the Lord to do tomorrow—it’s today that you’re responsible for. Live for God in the present, with a present awareness because He’s a “right-now” God.
When God met Moses in the wilderness in the burning bush, Moses said, “I’m willing to do all this, God, but when I go down, they’re going to ask, “What’s His name?” God said, “Tell them that Jehovah—I Am That I Am—has sent you” (Exodus 3:14). Jehovah has been translated “The Eternal One” and “The Ever-Present One.” The word “hallelujah” means “praise ye Jehovah.” “Jah”—the contraction for “Jehovah” in Hebrew—was often used by the Jews, instead of the complete name because of their great reverence for God. “Jehovah” was a name so honored by the Jews that the scribes used a new pen every time they wrote it. They loved God very much and they worshiped Him, but still they fell into the same error. They forgot who Jehovah was. In the days of Jesus, people were talking about the days of Moses. They couldn’t hear what Jesus was saying because they were too busy talking about Moses, yet Moses was dead.
God admonished Joshua for thinking back to the time of Moses and his greatness. He said, “Moses, My servant is dead.” (It had taken Joshua a while to realize that.) “Now I’ll be with you as I was with Moses; I’ll make your way prosperous. Go into the promised land.” You can adore and reverence the past so much that that is all you have. You must contend for something yourself in the present.
If we had seen those early disciples, I doubt whether we would have been much impressed with them after the flesh. We build up some idea and image of them in our mind, because we see them at their best, moving in God. But when we read the gospels, we see the disciples at their worst. Sometimes they weren’t very spiritual. They were so close to wonderful experiences and events, and yet, shortly before Jesus was to die on the cross they were arguing about who would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:1). You wonder if they knew what it was all about. They didn’t seem to perceive what was happening. They had to learn their lessons for they were ordinary people just like we are.
Elijah, too, was a man of like passions as we are (James 5:17), but he prayed earnestly and it didn’t rain for three and a half years. He prayed again and the heavens gave the rain. We read in James 5:16, The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Note the present tense. God will answer prayer right now. Forget the idea of having too much reverence for the past. Instead, have a little more reverence for the present time and what God wants to do with it.
I’m not saying that this is the greatest age of all time; but it is the greatest time that has come forth so far since the dawn of the world. I would rather be living in the days of the return of Jesus than to have lived in the days of His first coming or before. The hour of the restoration and the Kingdom is upon us. What a tremendous time to walk with God! If you waste one day or one hour in which you could be walking with God, you’re very foolish. These are tremendous times. I want to gear every ounce of energy and every moment of time, to live as fully and completely in this fantastic hour of walking with God as I possibly can. Don’t be so foolish and blind that you fail to see the day and the hour of the Lord’s visitation. Don’t spend your time on trivial interests.
The generation today won’t see that God has something for the present. They didn’t see it when Jesus was here. He stood on the top of the hill overlooking Jerusalem and wept as He cried, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen doth her brood, but you would not! You have not known the day of your visitation, and now your house has been left to you desolate” (Matthew 23:37–38). This is one of the two times that the Bible records Jesus weeping. Down in the city of Jerusalem could be heard the bleating of the sheep being prepared for the Passover. The people were unaware that this was the time of their visitation. The weekend of the Passover, in the midst of all the activities, they were having some beautiful meetings in the synagogue discussing the days of Moses, Hezekiah, and Ezra, and the traditions and the restoration of the Passover. The various rabbis were carrying on learned discussions for they had delved into all the records. Not one of them knew that the Son of God was walking in their midst. Beware of being so close to a momentous day and yet missing it.
God says, “Today, if you hear My voice, don’t harden your heart. I am Jehovah. I am that I am. I’m the God who manifests Himself eternally in the present.” He manifests Himself to you “right now.” Tomorrow He’ll be manifesting Himself “right now” to your children and your grandchildren. Way back at the time of the prophets He was manifesting Himself “right now” also. He’s the “right-now” God. Don’t live in the past—He has something in the present for you to live for. He has something for you to be now. You’re living your life today. Now is the time to walk with God. Today is the day to enter into this walk with all your heart and without any hesitation. God speaks to us in so many ways, yet we back off and withdraw. “For forty years,” He said, “I loathed that generation.” What was wrong with them? They couldn’t understand what God was doing and so they murmured and complained.
People are doing the same thing today. They grumble about their circumstances and problems. They want to give up. In looking back they remember that all the trials began when they were prophesied over and ministered to. God is saying to them too, “I swear to you—you’ll never get into the things I promised you.” It isn’t enough to receive a promise. The Israelites had a promise, but because they hardened their heart God loathed that generation and swore they would never enter into His rest. I don’t want God to reverse His attitude toward me. I want to walk with Him.
We’re living in a day of softness—a day of soft people. To endure hardness, to walk with God through the end of one age and into the dawn of another, to be in this transition of ages, is the most fantastic experience in the world. What an amazing time to be alive, to walk with God and to be alert to His moving. Today, in this sophisticated age, there are more miracles taking place than ever before, but there is also more devil worship, more people openly worshiping Satan and practicing witchcraft in the United States than in any former generation any place in the whole world. There are more prophets of God, but also more of the devil’s kingdom on the scene.
We now have New Testament churches scattered over a larger area than the Apostle Paul did in the early century. They are being established from Alaska down to Mexico and on to Brazil. The events related in the book of Acts took place in a small area. Palestine was just a little place about one-sixth the size of Iowa, and one-fifteenth the area of California. When you’ve traveled several hundred miles today, you’ve gone the equivalent of the most distant cities mentioned in the bulk of the Bible world, with the exception of Paul’s missionary journeys. Paul, of course, walked most of those miles, while we’re living in the day of jet travel. In the Bible, “a sabbath day’s journey” was the distance a person was allowed to walk on the sabbath day. This is a fantastic day. You can board a plane in the morning and arrive on the midwest, some twenty-five hundred miles away, in time to preach that evening. What a day to be alive. God is speaking to His people in the New Testament churches which are springing up in strategic places throughout many parts of the country. It is an amazing thing to receive a word in one locality and then phone someone long distance and discover God gave him the same word. Wake up to what God is doing in the earth today.
People have a tendency to put off doing things until some time in the distant future. They often say, “Someday I’ll do this”, and when they finally do it they regret not having done it much sooner.
Live now the life that God has for you to live. You have the prophecies. You can have the walk with God because the promises are here. This walk with God will only be yours if you make it happen. God is moving in the earth. He’s doing a startling thing, but only you can make it happen to you. Others who come and go will miss it. When the battle is great they’ll withdraw or passively fail to enter in. Luke-warmness will enter their heart. The sin of this generation is that no one wants to be involved. Become involved with God and with this walk. Now is the hour. “Today if you hear His voice.” Or would you rather have God say “For forty years I loathed them. They’re a people who err in their heart and they do not know My ways. Therefore I swear in My anger, ‘Truly they shall not enter into My rest’.”
The “right-now” people with a “right-now” God say in their hearts O Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Worship can only come from a people who cultivate that awareness of God in their present life. They do not use God as a crutch for the future, or a tranquilizer to make the memory of the past endurable. Instead, they use every word of God now, living with all their soul and heart, mind, and strength. A true worshiper of the Lord must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.