The man who makes it, according to the parable teaching of the Lord in the Scriptures, is the one who takes his talent and uses it. He anticipates that he is going to have more, but he uses the talent he has today. The faithfulness with which he approaches God with what he has, determines what he will have. If you are faithful in a few things, He will make you ruler over many (Matthew 25:21–23).
Your faith is best exhibited when you believe what God has said and provided for you. You look realistically upon what you have, and you are not self-conscious. You don’t withdraw; you walk as fully in what you can have as you are able today. But you are not satisfied with that; you reach in so that tomorrow you can appropriate more. You are ever expanding your capacities and ability to walk with God. I want to build your faith, so faith will not be an abstract term, so that you will believe for a real walk with God with a faith that is aggressive to walk in everything that you have.
We are to walk aggressively in what we have, constantly appropriating more. There can be such a thing as a person living in the future, until he is constantly anticipating, “Tomorrow I shall be blessed. Next week I shall be delivered. Next month I’m really going to settle down and have a ministry.” No, that’s not the way to put it: say, “Today I am blessed, and I shall walk as fully and completely in the blessing of today as I can. But that doesn’t mean I shall be satisfied with today’s blessing; I shall be appropriating more and reaching in for more tomorrow.” The greatest trick the devil has is to keep people living in the future. When you are not living in the future, you are living in the present. The only way that God would be pleased that you embrace the future, is that you have the faith that the men of God had to reach in and bring the future into your present. You can do it! Bring the future into your present!
There are men who have done that. Do you remember that Enoch walked with God? And the book of Jude tells us that God gave him quite a picture of what was to come, and he prophesied about how the Lord would come with ten thousands of His hosts to execute judgment upon all the ungodly. This was what he saw. We don’t know all that he saw, but evidently he saw enough, that standing as the seventh from Adam in the whole chronology of the human race, he saw the end. And he decided he didn’t like where he was living; he would rather have something of the future. We are told, By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death … Hebrews 11:15. How did he ever get that idea of translation in the first place? Because he had seen it in vision, and he decided he would rather look into that. Abraham did the same thing. Jesus said about Abraham, “You thought he lived back there about 1900 years ago? I tell you he lived in any age he pleased to live in.” Jesus told the Jews, “Before Abraham was, I am. Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it.” Then the Jews said, “You aren’t even fifty years old; you couldn’t possibly have seen Abraham.” (John 8:56–58). But do you know what Abraham did? He lived in the day of Christ—by faith he had reached in, anticipating. You just can’t put him back under the law; he was before the law. He lived under promise and with such faith in God that he actually lived in something else completely.
I am wondering if God is not doing that in a very special way at this hour. He is telling you that even though you are living in the last days, yet through the visitation of God and the grace of God you are living in the new day. A lot of people get all confused in what they are talking about. Some Christians say, “Oh, these are the last days!” Others say, “This is a new day.” Read I Thessalonians, the fifth chapter, if you want to really be confused. There are people who are asleep in the night and there are other people who are not even of the night at all; they are of the day. They are walking in pure daylight. You see, they are walking in a deliverance, in a victory. They are walking in something that is yet to come; they have borrowed from the future, and they are living in it. That ought not to be new to the American people. We have been borrowing money—borrowing from our future indebtedness. But it is a little different when you come to spiritual things because the treasuries of the Lord are unlimited. He says, “Reach in and borrow it; bring it into your present.”
You can live in the last days if you want to, and simply pray that you will hold out to the end, or you can have the faith to begin to walk in God’s new day, in the things that belong to the Kingdom, tasting the powers of the age to come. It may be the end time, but in actual spiritual reality you have walked into another day. That is the best way. God has a beautiful time machine, doesn’t He? It operates with the lever of faith, enabling people who believe God to walk in things that are unbelievable.
For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth. Isaiah 62:1. We are satisfied with the most aggressive dissatisfaction that ever satisfied a mortal soul. Have you ever noticed that those who are really happy are not people who are insanely ambitious, but those who have a good and healthy desire to move ahead? A person who is vegetating, not interested in advance at all, not even interested in walking in what he has, is already dead—dead from the neck up.
But God puts this upon His people, that they will not rest until they see the fulfillment of God’s promises, that they will not rest until their eyes behold it. Some people are like Anna and Simeon in the Bible; absolutely determined. They didn’t care how long it took, they were not going to die until they saw the Lord Jesus Christ born, and they saw him.
God has put us in the beginning of a new day, and there ought to be something driving us to see this thing through, until we can’t wait to see what God is bringing forth in the earth. I’m persuaded that it is bigger than any of us could ever have anticipated. We will learn things we have never learned before. I know God has opened up a fountain of wisdom and knowledge. What God is bringing forth is like an endless fountain, but I want to see how it is going to turn out. We are walking in things today that we didn’t even anticipate at the beginning of this walk. We had only little hints and glimpses, yet we are walking in things now that are unbelievable. And not only that, but it is expanding so rapidly. We won’t rest, though, until we see the whole fulfillment!
And the nations shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory; and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. Thou shalt also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah (Hephzibah means “my delight is in her”), and thy land Beulah (Beulah means “married”); for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee; and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee. Isaiah 62:2–5.
These are promises of the spiritual Zion, a great thing to come forth. And the old prophet was saying, “I’m not going to rest till I see this thing come to pass, till I see the glory of the Lord come forth.” When God uses terms like this and says that you are going to be termed a people of God whom God has married, it is speaking of closeness, of fruitfulness, of the delight that God can take in you. It would mean that you had reached that spiritual state where God is receiving from you what He has been working for all these centuries to obtain. This is a delightful day in which to live.
The heart of the message begins in verse 6 and changes from addressing God to God addressing people. This, in my opinion, is one of the real keys of faith in the Bible: I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, take ye no rest, and give him no rest … The Hebrew word for rest is silence. “Give Him no silence.” You are to have no silence and you are not to give Him any silence. In other words, it doesn’t mean that you stir God up until He has no rest, but it means that God never hears silence from you. He is continually hearing you pester Him.… give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Isaiah 62:6, 7.
Do you fully grasp what the Lord is trying to say? To be one of the Lord’s remembrancers is very important. They remember what God has said, they remember who they are, and they continually remind God. “O God, this is what You said about us. O Lord, this is what you prophesied about us.” I believe in prophets; I think that we should have many good prophets moving at any given moment. However, prophets can come forth in a church, and that church can yet fail to move ahead. For every prophet let’s have remembrancers: “Lord, this is what You spoke to us. We remember it. We are reminding You, Lord; this is what You said.” God is pleased with that. He is pleased with it, not because His memory is bad, but because He knows how bad yours is. And He knows that only by repetition are you going to hold it before your own mind and heart until you have released the power of God that is in that promise. The most significant thing God is doing right now is turning these prophecies loose on people. And yet, that can almost become the biggest reproach of all—prophecy coming and no one doing anything with it: “Oh, I’ve got a prophecy,” and then sitting down and waiting for the prophecy to come to pass.
Give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give thy grain to be food for thine enemies. Isaiah 62:7, 8.
To be at ease in Zion is deadly. Passivity is more dangerous than most of the aggressive sins that men and women commit. There are sins committed in anger, lust, and greed which are greatly condemned, but who understands the religious sin of passivity? Who understands how abhorrent it is to God? Who can understand that the one point in the message to the church at Laodicea, one of the seven churches in the book of Revelation was, “I know you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold.” It is an interesting figure of speech that has long since lost its meaning, but He said, “I’ll spew you out of My mouth” (meaning a place). In other words, God says “I hate the taste of My people when they are lukewarm. Out they go. I don’t want them! I can’t stand their passivity!” Oh, the nauseousness of that passive state in God. God made us to be energetic, wholehearted creatures, and anything that is less than that is sick.
The one healthy state is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart, with all of thy soul, with all of thy mind, with all of thy strength” (Deuteronomy 6:12; Matthew 22:37). That is the first commandment. There are a lot of people who love God, but not with a whole heart, not with all their strength, not with all their spirit, not with all their mind. They do not love Him like that, and yet the one basic commandment is that. We must live in protest until we see done what God says. There is a real satisfaction in this walk in the Spirit, but passivity is deadly. It is dangerous to be lukewarm, to come to the place where you do not really care; you are not really pressing in. God hates that.
What people call reverence in some churches is synonymous with deadness. We ought to be reverent and so in awe before God that we could weep before Him, but that doesn’t mean that we have to be passive. It doesn’t mean that we are any less energetic. I would like to see something that is wholehearted with everything within us, yet reverent, bowing before God with aggressive faith, really worshiping God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, with intensity that God deserves out of His people.
“Really! When I think about it, I shudder! I’d be making a fool out of myself!”
That is a passive attitude.
“I want to be merely one of the cows in the herd. I just want to be another one of the sheep. When they jump, I want to jump. I don’t want to be different; I don’t want to attract any attention.”
That is missing the whole meaning. Lose your self-consciousness. Every member of the “self” family is deadly when it comes to walking with God. If you are self-conceited, self-assertive, and self is moving in any direction, it is deadly. Pride and arrogance are wrong before the Lord; being self-conscious or withdrawing is another term of self and is another cloak for pride. You are afraid you will make a fool out of yourself, afraid you won’t be accepted. Face it for what it is; it is self, and you should draw away from that.
Get with it and say, “I’m not going to be passive; I’m going to be one of the Lord’s remembrancers. I’m going to know what God has said for me, what He has said for this church. I know what He has done in my life, I know what He has done in this church, and I will not be passive about it. If there is something to be fulfilled, the Lord is going to have a remembrancer, right here! I shall remember it before the Lord, ‘Lord, I remember Thy word. I remember Thy promise.’ ” Sing it unto the Lord. Cry out to the Lord, “Lord, I remember what Thou hast spoken. I remember Thy covenants. I remember the prophecies.”
We need about a dozen real prophets speaking the word of the Lord continually, but we also need another dozen who will take the prophecies when they are printed and stand before the Lord by the hour remembering before God what He has said, remembering what those prophecies were. To be a remembrancer, in my opinion, is as good as being a prophet. The prophet speaks the word, but the remembrancer brings it up before the Lord, so that word is continually activated, and others’ faith in it is continually renewed. The remembrancers give God no rest, and they take no rest themselves until they see the fulfillment of what God has spoken. Oh, to be a remembrancer of the Lord, to come forth with faith—simply through the power of that persistent faith. It is the process by which the truth comes forth.
When we pray in faith, everything is changed, and that is the key: God’s remembrancers start hanging onto His promises. We have been defensive most of the time because the offense of Satan was so great, but I have often heard that the best defense is an offense. Let’s stop praying “O God, defend us from the work of the enemy,” and pray for that aggressive faith to believe for Satan to be spoiled and bound in this generation. Continually pray for his defeat. Don’t take it for granted that everything will happen sovereignly; pray for it. Believe for it. Anticipate that it will happen.
When we remember the promises of the Lord, we activate them. The promises of God are potential energy. There is a potential energy and a kinetic energy. Potential energy is like a tank of gasoline—it is potentially full of energy. But when it is in action it is kinetic energy. The Word of God is a potential energy, and few people understand the nature of it. In certain atom structures you also have a potential energy, but it is necessary to get that energy into action. The promises of God are so great that if any one of them was properly utilized you would find there was an energy that exceeded all other energies. The Bible is full of potential energy; the promises of God are literally infused with the power of God. He indwells His very words. His words are not like man’s words, but they contain within them all of the divine energy for fulfillment, so much so that they have a force in them that will outlive all matter and all forms of energy as we know it.
Jesus said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Matthew 24:35. There is power wherever a word of God is established in heaven. The Word of God is different than the word of man because God has inbreathed His own self into His words, and they are quick and living and powerful. God hovers over His Word to fulfill it; it will never return void. When you get a word from God, you have a potential energy that is fantastic. No one yet has been able to see even scientifically or theologically the great potential of one promise from God. They don’t understand it. The Word of God was not made for a plaque on the wall, to comfort old ladies, or to help you grin and bear it. The Word of God was made for young and old alike to see the changes, the fantastic things that God’s will can bring about in a person’s life.
The potential of one promise from God is tremendous, and you’ve a Book full of them. One time I reviewed 2600 promises in the Bible. Any one of them was enough to set this whole age on fire, so when you get hold of a promise, start claiming it. Has there been a prophecy over you lately? Has God given you a word? Has God said anything to your heart? Has anything been quickened to you out of the Scriptures? Has the Holy Spirit been trying to make something alive to you? Oh, don’t be passive. Activate that promise.
How do we activate it? How do we detonate it until it releases its glory and its grace to us? Only stand there and remember before the Lord. Rehearse before the Lord His promises. That is what you do at the Communion Table. You are saying, “I believe that all that God has ever done for me is made valid and real for me right this moment in an act of faith.” Faith without works is dead, and faith is what it takes to bring those promises into fulfillment. Stand there and believe it.
Be one of His remembrancers. Loose the power of God in your life in an unbelievable way. We shall be known as the people of God. Remind yourself what you are, of what God has said about you, of what God wants to do for you. Remember, hold the thing alive in your mind and then you come into that one little simple ingredient of faith, which is continual awareness of God and His word in the situation. That is all it takes.
What is unbelief? Unawareness of God. No believer could have any unbelief if he is aware of God. What is fear? Unawareness of God. You are aware of the circumstance, aware of the problem—but you are not aware of God, so you are afraid of the circumstance. You are afraid of the thing that is facing you. What is mistrust? Not being aware of His promises. And so you see all the other things, and you fear them. You fear; you don’t believe.
One of the greatest cures for unbelief is to stand and sing to the Lord the promises of God. Rehearse them. “Lord, I remember the prophecies. I remember what You have said.” Do like Timothy—war a good warfare by the prophecies that have gone before you (I Timothy 1:18). Lay hold on the thing that God has for you. Don’t be content to hear from the Lord, then tuck it away in your heart and go your merry way. That isn’t what it was for. If God hands you a promise, do not use it merely to bring mental comfort. Detonate those powerful bombs of promise. Open up a new life. Be the Lord’s remembrancer.
A promise of God is like a perpetual check—you spend it and you still have it, and the more you spend it, the more it’s worth. Things of spirit are amazing. All things are possible to him that believeth. Mark 9:23. So you believe and you have a little thing happen to you, wonderful! Try again. Try something bigger. The promise will fit that. It is big enough to move heaven and earth. All things are possible… The more you use the promise, the more you realize that the promissory check written by God has all the resources of heaven and earth answered through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you have the power of attorney to use His name and to cash it. All the things are going for you—and what should you say? “Lord, I’m going to use it!” Faith is to be exercised. Promises are to be claimed. God is to be a reality in your life, not a vagueness.
If the Word of God is really understood, and you have a word from the Lord that is established to your heart, and you put your faith in it, that faith is the lever which turns a promise from God into action, when the Holy Spirit has led you into it, whether you read it out of the Scriptures or whether it is confirmed to you in prophecy. This is why God’s remembrancers are so important right now. God has opened up a new day for you to walk in. He has opened up a whole new life, a new age.
“Well, big deal! I’ll wait for it to happen!”
It won’t happen that way—not for you. It happens for the people who accept that word and believe it. Everyone who has ever seen a turn of dispensations, a change of age, has been someone who had faith in it.
For instance, God was saying to Abraham, “Go west, young man, go west, and grow up with the country.” He was the Horace Greeley of his day. He started out under the word of God, and he traveled where God told him to go. He believed what God told him. He started a whole new line of promise. You can go back to Noah, seemingly an idiot, way up on top of a mountain hammering together a great big ship, everyone laughing at him, asking how he was ever going to get that thing down off the mountain to the water. “You don’t build a boat on top of a mountain!” It is exactly what he did. And the day came when that ark floated off, because he believed what God said. He worked on it a hundred and twenty years, preaching righteousness, knowing that God had ordained him. Moved by godly fear he saved a whole generation. I am wondering how many people hear the word of the Lord, and when they hear it they stand on it, they remember it, they believe it. Ages have turned on the pivot of the faith of men who believed the Word of God.
In this day God is speaking again to us, and He is telling us, “I’ve set watchmen on your gates. They are going to cry unto the Lord. They are not going to rest day or night. They are going to remember what God has said. They are the Lord’s remembrancers. Not only will they not be at rest themselves, but they are not going to give God any rest. In that sense they are going to trouble Him, for the word “rest” implies the same as the word “silence”. They are not going to give God any silence.
We have seen only the beginning, and I am anxious to see what could happen. It could happen fast. Don’t think that it has to take forever when the Lord will do a quick work in the earth. It only takes a few people who are going to get at this thing of believing God and seeing it all turned loose. Are we believing? Yes, we are. Yet there is this faith that presses in, the kind of faith that is to be lacking in the last days. There is to be a great drought for this kind of faith we are talking about here.
Jesus spoke of the end time coming: And he spoke a parable unto them to the end that they ought always to pray and not to faint. Luke 18:1. Jesus told about the widow, robbed of her inheritance, who went to the judge and said, “Avenge me of my adversaries.” He would not. She kept coming, you see, because she was a remembrancer. She kept reviewing it, renewing it. Finally the judge said, “I don’t fear God or man, but this woman is going to wear me out; I’d better do something about her and get her out of my hair, fast” (verses 2–5). Then Jesus said, Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? Verses 7, 8.
Passive faith—yes, there is more passive faith than ever. So many people have so much passive faith. They believe in vitamins—six months after buying them the bottles are standing full on the shelves. They believe in the Bible—to prove it, they buy the best money can buy, which gather dust on their shelves. They believe in this walk, in the end-time company—yet how much are they walking in it; how much are they believing for? Unless you apply it, it doesn’t work. If you have a prescription that is going to make you well, take it. Get the medicine out and take a spoonful in a hurry. If you have had the teaching, follow it; walk in it.
A little exercise is so important with every word you receive—acting upon it—some corresponding action based upon your faith. Weymouth’s translation expresses it: faith without a corresponding action is dead. It is true. Mental assent to a truth is not enough, because the devils have that. You say you believe? The devils also believe and tremble. You are not even trembling, but they believe and they tremble. Mental assent to a truth is not faith. Faith is something that stands and affirms: “I believe it, Lord; I believe,” and the whole of your being is geared toward it. Don’t forget that this takes all of the concentration and focus of the whole being. You can’t sidestep this. You have to give your whole self to it. God is saying, “Worship Me with your whole soul, your body, your mind, your strength, everything within you.” This is the way you love Him. This is the way you serve Him. In being the Lord’s remembrancers you go on to the great promises of God.
Notice how that chapter in Isaiah ends: Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up an ensign for the peoples. Behold the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. And they shall call them The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord; and thou shalt be called Sought out, A city not forsaken. Isaiah 62:10–12.
“What are you getting this highway ready for? Is this a way so everyone can get saved?”
That isn’t what it’s talking about. Thy salvation cometh, his reward is with him, his recompense before him. What you are doing is clearing the deck for God to move. Faith paves a highway for God; faith sets the thing in motion. Faith starts in by saying, “We’re going to be God’s remembrancers. I remember what You said, Lord, and I’m getting ready for the move of God’s Spirit upon my heart; I’m believing for it.” Don’t wait for it to happen sovereignly; prepare yourself for it. Throughout the Word of God, we see over and over again that there were people who believed God and were not influenced by their circumstances, but they went ahead and made ready. Abraham was not affected by the day in which he lived; he believed God. It is difficult for people to have that kind of faith.
Let me give you mothers who start to bog down a beautiful illustration you will never forget. A tired mother complains, “Oh, I’m so harassed. The baby doesn’t sleep nights; I’m a nervous wreck. This little son of mine is giving me so much trouble. I wish I could get away because I feel like a guilty mother all the time. I’m so resentful of being so tied down. I love him, but …”
Imagine how we could encourage that mother if we could say, “Here’s a little book we borrowed out of the future. It is a biography. What is your son’s name? John Henry Timothy Brush? Why, that’s the name of the man in this book: ‘John Henry Timothy Brush.’ He’s going to grow up to be a senator; he’s going to write books; he’s going to help the nation in many ways. Yes, we borrowed it out of the future, it’s right here, this is what it says. As sure as anything, that’s what your boy is going to do; that’s the destiny he’s going to fill.” Ahhh—that mother goes back and changes dirty diapers with a little more heart. She ministers to his crying. She is a little more careful how she teaches him and trains him. Why? Because she had a word about the boy, and believed it. That made all her actions filled with faith right now because with all her heart she can hold before the Lord what she remembers, what she knows God wants to do for that lad.
One of the greatest mothers who ever lived heard the same thing, heard prophecies even of a sword piercing her own heart. And the Scripture says that Mary pondered all these things in her heart—way down deep—because she had faith that this little baby at her breast was going to be the Savior.
Sometimes we don’t remember what God said about our young people and our sons and daughters. We don’t remember what He said about our husbands and wives. We don’t remember the prophecies that came over the church, and it bogs down into a humdrum routine. Those prophecies were really borrowing out of the future. Read them again, and remember them before the Lord. Set out with all your heart to walk with God today.
You are living out this ministry now, in a phase of it. By living now with all your heart and your soul and your strength, and walking aggressively today with faith in the promises God has given you, the future will be richly endowed, and you will go on from glory to glory. There is no question about it; that’s the way it comes. And it won’t wait. Now is the time to do it.
There is a story about an old fellow who had a long list of prayer requests, so he wrote all his prayers out on a white window shade which he hung up at the ceiling. At night when he went to bed, he didn’t want to waste all that time praying so he’d reach up and pull down the shade, “There it is Lord,” and let it snap back up. He considered he’d prayed his prayers for the day.
It won’t work quite that simple. But when it comes to mind and it is deep and sincere as you continually hold it before the Lord, it is like the incense which the priests of the Old Testament offered up, representing the prayers and the praises of the people. It is also depicted like that in Revelation 8:4.
“Something is coming up? What is it?”
It is actually those prayers coming up from the earth—it is beautiful. The one thing that pleases God no end in your worship and your prayers is that you remember His word. Remind Him!