It is difficult to understand why God allows certain things to happen. Why is it that so many times you are led into a blind alley, even when you are being led by the Spirit of the Lord? From the time that I began to preach, I felt definitely that the Lord would lead me. And I can remember Him leading me to do certain things, to be involved with certain contacts and denominations. Each time I thought, “Now, this is the group that God wants me to work with.”
By all appearances, I was continually being led into something, only to fail in it. I was always a square peg in a round hole. I didn’t fit. As I prayed and sought the Lord, I could see what was right and what was wrong. I could see the machinery of the politics in the churches and denominations and how far removed it was from being led by the Spirit of the Lord.
This has been the pattern of a lifetime. When the Walk with God came, I knew exactly what we were not going to be. God had led me in and allowed me to look it all over. Consequently, there isn’t anyone who has come to hate Babylon more than I do, and to love the people who are in it, and to weep over them. The word that God gives me is the purest teaching that He has brought forth, and for only one reason: for years I was faithful to be a failure in the sight of men. I was led into one thing after another, yet none of it was what the Lord wanted.
In the wonderful chapter on the Lord’s Supper, Paul writes, For there must also be factions among you (King James says “heresies”), in order that those who are approved may have become evident among you. I Corinthians 11:19. God sees to it that the false presents itself so that you will know what is wrong. When the brothers do something wrong, then the principles of the order God is restoring can come out and be manifested, and this brings the purity. Sometimes God allows us to make mistakes, and out of these mistakes He manifests the true pattern.
The divine order of the New Testament church was never really established until after Ananias and Sapphira had dropped dead. After that, no one dared join himself to them. Yet people were continually being added to the church. Great signs and wonders took place. Something had to be done wrong so that the people could see, “This is what we do not do,” and they would open their hearts to do the right thing. The Lord did this with His disciples too. He let them make mistakes so that He could show them what they should do.
In the Walk we get vaccinated that way. We get a mild case of the disease in order that we can build an immunity against the real disaster that could happen. God is trying to teach us things right now in the Walk. We’ve been praying, “O God, lead us.” And all of a sudden He is showing us how He has led us. In the next step, we’re going to find the prophecies fulfilled, “The gold is Mine and the silver is Mine. The glory of the latter house will be greater than the glory of the former. And in this house will I give peace,” saith the Lord of hosts (Haggai 2:8, 9). Daniel prophesies (chapter 7): “For a little while the saints will be overcome. The prince of the north prevails over them for a little while. Then judgment is given to the saints of the Most High and they possess the Kingdom.” We say with David, “Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads” (Psalm 66:12).
Joseph didn’t learn what it is to be a savior of the world until he had been lied about and put in a dungeon and forgotten. Regardless of the prophecies, many things had to go wrong first. What happened to him seemed to be all wrong by human judgment. His brothers hated him and sold him as a slave. Potiphar’s wife lied about him and had him put in prison. Then no matter what he did in bringing revelation, there was no reciprocation at all; he was completely forgotten. That was good. He became a faithful man. Until the day that the Word of the Lord came to pass over Joseph, until it had its fulfillment, the Word of the Lord tried him; that word was a trial to him (Psalm 105:19). It was like going through a furnace. It tested his spirit. It drove him into a corner. That’s what God was doing in all of these things.
If something is prophesied over a man, and he is having an easy time of it, you cannot consider that word as being of the Lord. It has been consistently true in my life, that when prophecies were spoken over me, everything seemed to be going in reverse, and I was further from the fulfillment of them than I had been before. But God knows what He is doing. Sometimes He has to lead us into what appears to be failure and what appears to be wrong in order that the truth can be manifested. There must be the differences and seeming factions so that the true can be manifested and come out. You watch it. This year, more than at any other time, the churches in the Body will have a clear idea of what God is expecting. This will be a year of clarification. We will find out who we are, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. It won’t be by accident or by beating the air, but God will show us exactly where we are going.
The Lord is going to take the valley of Achor and make it a door of hope (Hosea 2:15). Achan and his family, the gold and the pieces of silver, and the Babylonish garment that he had stolen were all taken to the valley of Achor. There he and his family were stoned and burned and covered with a pile of rocks. God says, “I will make that place a door of hope.” Instead of God exposing with the idea of judging us, He exposes now with the idea of correcting us.
We had better repent because God is getting ready to judge. Judgments are coming, and they are beginning at the house of the Lord, but I think God is giving a revelation of what the judgments are. There is an exposure with the idea of correcting and disciplining. Sometimes God allows the thing that is in you to run its course so that it will come out and be exposed. At this particular point it can be punitive.
If your heart is unrepentant, God can deal with it drastically and that will be the end. But if your heart is open and repentant, then God will deal with it with the idea of removing the thing from you. You walk in the light as He is in the light. You open your heart, then the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and you have that fellowship with each other.
The best thing that can happen to any church is that they go through the times of mutual exposure, until brokenness comes forth and God deals with the problem. Read Psalm 51 again and again and again. God is looking for a broken and a contrite heart. The Lord is rebuking the iniquity, the things within our nature. He is making us partakers of His nature, and we will see the manifestation of the sons of God. But first He has to deal with the immature, carnal nature within us. How can He deal with it when we don’t even recognize its existence? He exposes it to us and then He deals with it and judges it.
The cross is primarily a judgment. It is not some sweet little thing where you get off in a corner and the Lord deals with you. The Word says, “Cursed is everyone who hangeth on a tree” (Galatians 3:13). The Lord was made a curse for us. And the work of the cross means the cursing of the old nature for which Christ died, and bringing it to an end. When you expose it to the Lord, you believe God to deal with it. If you defend it, then you identify yourself with the thing that has to die, and you may have to die. But if you expose it to the Lord, He takes care of it, and the work of the cross is the path to real life. When you lose your life for His sake, then you find it. It is in that manifestation of judgment in our lives that we will come forth to be the kings and priests of the Lord. First we pass through this hour of judgment.
The Old Testament shows how God had to bring out the wickedness. I know that the sin of Korah and the earth swallowing him up had to happen, because God had no way of taking Moses, who was meek above every man on the face of the earth, and establishing him as the leader, until those ignorant ex-slaves got it through their heads that he was God’s man to lead them. Did Moses make mistakes? I suppose he did. His own sister Miriam criticized him because he had married an Ethiopian woman. In other words, we assume that she was black. And his sister didn’t like that. The Lord said, “Aaron and Miriam and Moses gather together in the tabernacle.” The cloud came down, and when the cloud lifted, Miriam was eaten up with leprosy.
Why did God bring such disaster? He was saying, in effect, “Listen sister, some day you have to understand that Moses isn’t your little brother; he’s the man of God. When are you going to get that through your head?” Miriam said, “Pray for me, pray for me.” Moses prayed for her and God said, “All right. Heal her. But put her out of the camp for seven days of purification.” They all waited while Miriam sat out there on a rock, probably crying and repenting, but thankful that God had healed her. You never hear Miriam murmuring again. There were many people who heard about it, and after this happened, they also were a little slow to murmur and complain and criticize.
God has His own way of giving us a liberty in the spirit and a restraint to the flesh. All of us ought to be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath. That’s what the Word says (James 1:19). Let the Lord put that attitude in your spirit, so there is an openness and a willingness, but a restraint upon you. Don’t criticize. The awareness is developing within us. Do you find that divine order means more to you right now? Is there a little more of the fear of the Lord? We haven’t really started to learn that yet. But the Lord bring it; the Lord establish it!
Submission is not going to be some vague idea that every man defines for himself. There will be a good understanding of what submission means. I can see the Captain of our salvation standing before this beautiful army of the Lord. They jump and are in the air as they all ask, “How high, Lord?” They are quick to respond. Oh, the Lord bring forth that kind of submission and obedience in us! Do you ever find that sometimes the Lord nudges you in a sermon or during a service and says, “This is what you are supposed to do.” You say, “Yes, Lord,” but you go away and forget it. You are a hearer of the Word, but not a doer. Several weeks later you are in trouble and you think back, “Oh boy, the Lord spoke to me to do that, and I didn’t do it.” Then you learn that when He begins to speak to you in that still small voice, you must be quick to respond, “Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir.” You’re quick to do it.
Hebrews 5:8 tells us of our blessed Lord: “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.” You say, “Was He disobedient?” We’re not talking about being disobedient. He was learning the obedience of a Son as a human being, just as we learn it—not negatively, but in a positive way. Your spirit must acquire the positive obedience to the Lord. We learn obedience through the things we suffer. That is why the Lord chastens every son whom He receives.
No one comes into this Walk and has great prophecies spoken over him without going through a great many things. I have grieved and mourned in my spirit over the problems that have befallen certain projects. But I’ve stopped doing it, because I think it took just that to put some of the people through the fire and refine them. I hold it to be good and I invoke the Scripture, “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose,” believing that God is going to work out more and more of those things. You may say, “But it has been so expensive. I have grieved because it seems as if I’ve just been marking time.” I know. But that is an illusion.
Joseph was not losing time in the dungeon. Every day he was being prepared (in one hundred easy lessons) to sit next to Pharaoh. God was doing it. And when he finally received his diploma, the Lord projected him out of the prison right up on the throne. In one day’s time—there he was! Then he probably had to adjust to that.
What would you think if the Lord brought the end of your trials immediately, and everything was blossoming out before you, so that you couldn’t miss, you could not lose. That would be a trial to some of you too. You would be so keyed up and excited that you would have to be quieted down. The Lord knows what He is doing. Let us give Him praise and thanksgiving. He has been God for such a long time, and He has become very efficient at it.
It is always good to go some place and have the Lord tell you, “Now, this is where you’ve been, and this is where you are.” Then He tells you, “This is where you are going,” and takes all the joy out of it. The trip is so pleasant after it is finished. We are traveling, and sometimes the trials of each day seem to be so difficult. But the floods are good for you, just like the floods that come in Egypt when the Nile River overflows its banks. Muddy, dirty water spreads out for miles and miles, and when it recedes, it leaves a nice layer of some of the finest top soil, gathered from that entire section of Africa. Some of the wheat that was raised there centuries ago has been preserved in King Tut’s tomb. It is six times the size of our wheat today and is still alive, and can be planted.
If you want the fruitfulness, you will have to take the floods. The Lord purges the vine that it may bring forth more fruit. He brings the purging and pruning and cutting back, and after a while we come into bountiful fruitfulness. God is doing that for the church now. He is doing it to your life. He is trying to get rid of the things that are just cluttering it up with your self-centeredness, with your selfish interests and selfish ambitions, with your own selfish emotions and reactions, bringing you to the place where you are going to serve Him and walk with Him. Believe me, He is very clever at being God, and He is very clever at working over His sons too. As a spiritual father, I wish I could be, in just a small way, like the Heavenly Father. He beats you, but all the time He is doing it He smiles and tells you He loves you. He scourges every son whom He receives. Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.
When we prophesy judgment, it will not be with vindictiveness. We are going to prophesy the exposure. We are going to prophesy until the Lord rips off the lid. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the Word is like a sharp two-edged sword, and all things are laid open before Him with whom we have to deal. He is the discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart, and He cuts right down to the joints and marrow, right down to the motivation. That is what the Lord is dealing with now. Does it hurt?
Would you like to get at some of the problems that remain covered, even to your own understanding? You say, “I wish I knew what was the matter with me.” Prophesy that the Lord will cut it open and expose it. When there is a spiritual cancer in you, do you want it to kill you? or do you want to get rid of it? If the seed of future failure is in your heart, don’t you want to get it out? If there is any pending disaster that could overtake you five years from now, wouldn’t you rather the Lord deal with the thing now than have it lie under the cover nurtured by the old flesh until one day it erupts and the whole thing is lost. We can not have that!
Above everything else, believe God to help you want to be delivered. There are sins that you want to be rid of very badly. But there are others that you would like to hang on to if you could get away with it—little feelings and emotions that you would like to keep. Come on, let’s get rid of it all! To give God something you want to get rid of is one thing, but to give the Lord that which He demands and you don’t want to be rid of—that is the greater thing. Give Him, out of your heart, everything, everything, everything.
The strength of the Lord is with you that you should prevail over all of your weakness. It is not an hour that you are being led to forsake your brother or let him down; but it is an hour that the Lord has given you a strength to embrace your brother, to hold fast to him and believe the Lord. Don’t be quick to jump to a conclusion. Follow it through at the throne of God until you come to the ultimate of victory, into the release that the Lord wants you to have. Don’t ride it short.
The Lord would give you the word that you just open your heart and begin to pray for one another and believe for one another. The School of Prophets begins with the purging and the purifying of the vessels. It is not an art that we acquire: that we learn how to prophesy, that we learn how to foretell. God is not working His will in the mechanics of our lives; rather, we are literally becoming the will of God, the expression of all that He has to say and feel and all that He wants to be to the earth. That we are becoming as His Body in the name of the Lord.
Let us take another step up, and begin to bind the principalities and powers that are warring against the church, and believe for the whole will of the Lord to come forth. We believe for the Lord to help us prevail in what we are to be, what we are to do. As the members of the Body become more and more developed, every member seems to have more of a psychic and spiritual force. Their very thoughts, their very prayers that are out of the will of the Lord, may not be fulfilled, but they have a psychic force that hits you. We should prophesy until there is a release from this, so that those who are prone to judge you and beam things at you will find it circling back on their own heads.
The human spirit is very arrogant and does not learn easily. We might compare it to a little boy starting to school. At home he is the cock of the walk. He struts around, he pulls his sister’s hair and makes her cry. He does a lot of things in his arrogance. Then he goes to school and if he acts cocky there, he comes home with his nose bleeding. He learns that his own emotions come back on him.
Many a young man in the service has learned this too. I remember one fellow in the Navy who had always been so arrogant, so cocky. When he got out of boot camp, I talked to him and was amazed to hear how politely he answered, “Yes, sir. No, sir.” He had developed some real manners, and I had a feeling that it was done the hard way.
The Lord is trying to teach us that when things are beamed at us, it is not being vicious when we expect a man to suffer the venom of his own spirit. When he arrogantly comes against anyone in the Body with a bad spirit, with that which is wrong, let’s just “duck” and let it circle back and hit him full force and level him. I have done that many a time and as a consequence that person went to bed, sick. I didn’t pray anything against him; I just said, “I refuse this in the name of the Lord. Let it return on the head of the sender.” That’s the best, most effective way. Sometimes a person has to learn not to be arrogant. Something has to bring the mutual submission one to another and that love for one another. We ought to prophesy and loose the Body from every psychic assault and let it return on the head of the one who sends it.
You cannot speak love for a person without believing that he must be disciplined by his own wrong spirit. It is not being unkind to send it back on his own head. The quicker he learns, the better. In the meantime, however, don’t let your own spirit get in the way or that will come back on you too. You don’t want that. Keep your spirit tuned in with the love of God. Keep yourself free.
These principles that we are learning take away any feeling that we have to judge something in the flesh. They show us exactly how to bind things over to the will of the Lord.
This word should humble us and bring us to a place of repentance and crying out to the Lord, not only for our own sins, but also for the sins of our brothers. This is based upon a principle. When one member suffers, they all suffer with him. When one member rejoices, they all rejoice. We’re willing enough to share the blessing that another brother may win from the Lord by his faith, but are we willing also to share in the repentance for the brother when he has fallen into disobedience? And are we willing even to let the Lord expose our own need to us? This is where the repentance enters in. Yet, with our repentance, we will experience a joyfulness. This will bring a release for the whole Body.
Stevens, John Robert: This Week, Volume VI (1975). North Hollywood, CA. : Living Word Publications, 1983, S. 104