Young people, as well as those in their middle years, are always looking forward to tomorrow, while old people live in yesterdays of the past. Can’t anyone ever live in the present?
Paul said of David, “By the will of God he served his generation and slept with his fathers” (Acts 13:36). In other words, he made the most of his life. He gave most of the prophecies about the Messiah. He was an outstanding architect, who not only received by divine revelation the blueprint of the temple, but also accumulated all the gold and precious metals necessary to build it. He controlled the vast area between the Nile and the Euphrates Rivers. He fought a troop and leaped a wall. With an intensity of spirit he sang his psalms. He made many mistakes in his relationships: with Bath-sheba, with Uriah, with Absalom, with Joab, but he also received tremendous words from the Lord. One such word is Psalm 95:7: For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, oh that ye would hear his voice!
The writer of Hebrews expounds that verse: Wherefore, even as the Holy Spirit saith, Today if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, like as in the day of the trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried me by proving me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was displeased with this generation, and said, They do always err in their hearts: but they did not know my ways; as I sware in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest. Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God: but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called Today; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin: for we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm until the end: while it is said, Today if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. Hebrews 3:7–15.
When a man walks in a certain principle, he will receive a word from the Lord to strengthen and reassure him in it. A man who is walking in love will hear God speaking to him about love. A man who is walking in faith will find that God speaks to him about faith. David’s word from the Lord emphasized the importance of living in the present tense. That is what I want to do.
I have had enough of this living in the future. I want to take today by the throat and shake it violently and say, “Give me what you have from God for me today! now!” Any other recourse will lead us into a deadly deception. People build dispensational doctrines when they believe they have to wait for another time to be blessed. I hate to walk into a restaurant and have the waitress say, “Sorry, the lunch hour is over. You just missed it by five minutes.” That is exactly what dispensational teaching tries to tell you doctrinally: “There are no gifts, no ministries, nothing. It was all used up in the early Church; but maybe by and by it will come to pass again.” That is a lie. The measure of reality is the blessing people are walking in now, not what they are embracing for the future or audaciously believing concerning the past as it is revealed in the Scriptures.
The fundamentalist insists, “I believe the Bible from cover to cover.” But if you suggest, “Then let us believe for something right now; how about praying for my headache,” he replies, “I’m sorry, but the day of miracles has past. It says so right here in this Scofield Bible, and that’s anointed.” Forget that! In some way we must update the Scriptures to claim, not only the promises for the Kingdom or what has come in the past, but the blessings, real and valid, that are available to us at this present time.
Every day I intend to try and change things. When the sun goes down I will protest the fact that I did not accomplish more that day. The world will not be changed by people who complacently say, “This is the peace of God that passeth all understanding, that I be resigned to the stronghold Satan has on the economic, moral, spiritual, financial, and physical realms.” Do not be resigned to that! The time has come that we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done,” not in a little timid voice; but we scream for it! We yell for it: “Let the Kingdom come forth in my heart today! Let something happen now!” You are going to miss it if you only have dreams and visions, if you slump back into wishful thinking and daydreaming. Every day seek to walk in something real from God! Make it real now! Right now!
They call this the “now generation”; but ask them to mow the lawn and they procrastinate, “I will do it tomorrow.” Do what you have to do now! Serve the best way you can now! Today we will work in the various branches of service that God has opened to us in the restoration. We will not wait for some golden opportunity to be a prima donna in the Kingdom. We will work now, scrubbing floors if necessary.
Young mothers, enjoy your little children today. You are living your life today, not tomorrow or yesterday. The way you train your children today, what you teach them today, is the only thing that counts. Married people, too, should live every day as though there were no tomorrow, but also as though tomorrow will be everything. Tomorrow in its fullness only happens to those who live today in its fullness. Young girls dream of their Prince Charming riding over the hill, thinking he will be so wonderful, so well-disciplined and trained, so educated and efficient. In the meantime, these undisciplined little sad sacks mope around, without even the ability to boil water. They do not know one end of the stove from another, but they believe some Prince Charming will suddenly appear and sweep them off their feet and life will be wonderful. Tomorrow will only have in it what you put into it today.
A young man dreams, “Tomorrow I will be a prophet. How wonderful! I will be prophesying to the nations and bringing them down with the name of the Lord.” So he opens a comic book instead of the Bible and reads about Superman. The prophets of tomorrow are taking advantage of every hour of today, reading the Word, seeking the Lord. They are not turned aside by the battle, for they recognize it as the preparation for the big battles that are coming tomorrow.
The beautiful “pie-in-the-sky” doctrine of the former generation will not work for us today. Many of the sermons preached a generation ago were tear-jerkers, “Tell Mother I’ll be there, in answer to her prayer.” That is not the goal we are looking for. Don’t you want to rise up and be the one who stomps on the head of the serpent? Don’t you want to see conditions changed? Heaven can wait, but the will of God for your life today cannot wait. The will of God is a day-by-day experience, the sum total of many days lived in faith and obedience, with all your heart and soul, with all your mind and strength.
We will make it if we are completely engrossed with the present, knowing that it is the only hope for the future. When we bog down in a lot of wishful thinking, we are no better than the dispensationalist who is always looking forward to some blessing in the future instead of striving to receive it now. He says, “Pray for me that I will hold out to the end.” The end of what? I say, “Pray for me that I will light a match and start a new beginning! Pray for me that today I can do something that belongs to tomorrow, that today I can light the fire Satan will spend a century trying to put out. God help me today to trouble the enemy, to smite him and bring him down!” The prayers that count are the prayers today. The prophecies that count are the prophecies today. The prophecies of yesterday are already in force. Our actions today are setting in motion tomorrow and the day after that and the century to come.
Some of you are having a hard time just keeping body and soul together. I know it is often very difficult. We read in Hebrews that men wandered around in sheepskins and goatskins; they lived in caves—those of whom the world was not worthy (Hebrews 11:37,38). But they lived with faith. Some of them said, “If there isn’t enough from God turned loose today, we’ll take tomorrow and yank it up by the roots and bring it into today. We’ll dare to believe that we don’t have to wait for the Kingdom in order to walk in the Kingdom blessings.” The sixth chapter of Hebrews speaks about those who walk in the powers of the age to come. They borrow it.
When Jesus told the Jews, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day; he saw it and was glad,” they sneered, “You are not yet fifty years old and you saw Abraham?” Jesus told them, “Before Abraham was, I am.” They had no idea what He was talking about and proceeded to throw stones at Him (John 8:56–59). When you do not understand what someone is talking about, the easiest reaction is to get mad and throw something. It is also very stupid. The world is still doing just that. They fear anything beyond their scope of knowledge. But I will not let their ignorance, no matter how vast it is, discredit my knowledge, no matter how infinitesimal it is. I will walk in the revelation I have from the Lord. In spite of the ignorance of those without a revelation, I will walk in the truths God shows me and what He is saying—and I will walk in it today!
The world is not ready for it? That is their problem. Some might say, “We have to be careful to maintain the status quo.” Who said so? “Many of God’s good people are in Babylon. Shouldn’t we form a Babylon confederation to teach them and minister to them?” I don’t think so.
I have paid the price to have a free pulpit, to speak the truth God is revealing to my heart. Year after year, time and time and time again, God spoke a word which I gave to the people, only to see some turn away. Do not wait for future revelations. God is speaking things now, and your attitude about walking unreservedly in what God has now, determines what you will be tomorrow. If tomorrow the tree withers, if its leaves drop off, if its fruit miscarries and falls to the ground, it is because the axe was laid to the root of that tree today. If you draw back from God, it may not appear for a little while and you may think you are doing fine. But unless you are wholly surrendered to the Lord today, tomorrow will be fruitless and barren. It does not happen immediately. Today you plant the seed. Today you cultivate it, with expectation. He who regards the clouds, afraid that it might rain, will not sow. Tomorrow you will be blessed if you open your heart today.
I despise the process of aging because of what it does to people’s thinking. It is so easy for a person to shove his life somewhere out in the future; and when middle age arrives he suddenly wakes up and sees that all his dreams have burst like balloons. Then he settles down and begins reacting to everything that happens to him. Let’s act—not react. Strive to be a Joshua or a Caleb, wholly following the Lord. The best things are yet to be.
We must live continually with a violent protest against Babylon and in absolute submission to God. We must exist down here as God’s transplant from heaven. We are His sons of the Kingdom now. God has made an infiltration into the old order of things, and we are the little leaven that leavens the whole lump. But we will not do it by being passive and drawing back, always wishing and hoping. Instead of a wishbone, have a faithbone. Believe for something wonderful!