I have some things that I am going to read to you. First of all, I’m going to read a statement, so brace yourself. Fasten your seat belt.
If you receive a Word and do not persist in it, you will seek in frustration for another Word. And then you will seek for another Word, and then another Word to bolster your faith, because you didn’t persist in the first Word. Eventually, you will be tested, and in your frustration you might abandon the Word altogether. Get a Word from the Lord and pursue it persistently. One Word is enough to move an age.
You don’t have to read the Bible through twice a year. You could actually change the world if you would just believe one promise. After all, the idea is not some kind of religious exercise, or we might as well be saying “Hail Mary’s”. We might as well be doing something like that if we are just going to read the Word and quote a lot of Scriptures, and tomorrow morning find that we need another one.
Have you ever heard of a “Precious Promise Box”; it was a little box filled with cards which were printed with Scriptures. We could pull them out at random. But really, they were like fortune cookies. You just said, “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,” and you picked one out; and that was supposed to give you the little verse or promise that you would go on that day. Have you ever seen them? By the end of the day you were ready to come back and draw out another one. It’s like the story about the old fellow who was shanghaied on the ship. And the old captain told him how to steer: “You stand here at the wheel, and you keep your eye on that constellation of stars up there. You see that one star? You just keep following that!” And the captain went to sleep. Soon the guy was knocking at his cabin door, saying, “Captain, Captain, wake up!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, I’ve already passed that star. It’s way back there now.”
Do you see what he had done? He didn’t follow the star, and soon he had to have another one. And if you don’t persist in the Word God gives you, soon you have to have another Word. You are getting what I’m saying. You are beginning to realize: If we have a Word from the Lord it may be very, very simple, but let’s persist in it. Let’s persist in it; let’s stay right with it.
Go back and read the stories of all the prophets and the prophetesses. You can read about Anna and Simeon, waiting for the coming of the Lord. They had just one Word: “You’re going to see Him.” And they believed it. They didn’t do anything else but continually abide in the temple (Luke 2:25–38).
Look at Psalm 34, verses 1–4: I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; the humble shall hear it and rejoice. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.
You see that continual thing; it is all tied together. People have fears; but you might as well have sweet dreams as nightmares. Isn’t that right? You might as well just open your heart and say, “We’re going to believe the Lord.” How do you do it? Just get one Word and continually praise the Lord; continually rejoice. Pray without ceasing (I Thessalonians 5:16–17). I Thessalonians 5 is a chapter for the last days, or the beginning of the new day, because it says that we are not children of the night—they are perishing—but we are children of the day, and we rejoice (verses 3–5, 16). This means that there is an overlapping. Do you know what time it is? It is midnight, and it is six o’clock in the morning—at the same time. Which are you practicing? Are you practicing the midnight, or are you practicing the dawn?
Do you see this persistent thing of just believing? “I got a Word.” Then keep speaking the Word, because we are going to get it working—totally. But what happens is that you get so close to the answer, but then it’s as if I would come up and swing within an inch of a person—nothing happens. That doesn’t hurt him a bit. I might as well be one of the stunt men of Hollywood, because they don’t hurt anybody either. But what makes it count is what Paul said in I Corinthians 9:24–27: “I don’t run uncertainly. I’m not on a zigzag course. I don’t fight as one that beats the air. I’m making this thing count. I’m disciplining my body and I’m staying right with it, because I’m going to see the thing done. I’m going to be a winner.” He said, “Many run, but only one is going to win.” That doesn’t mean among us; there are a lot of people out there in the world who are all running for something. But we are the ones who are going to win, because we are going to be more than conquerors (Romans 8:37). We’ve got to believe!
Just take a promise—not out of the box, where you have to take another one. Just get one Word and stand on it.
When you stand on that Word, then in time God will give you more confirmation. I know that He is faithful to do that, because He confirms His Word. He makes you know that He is speaking to you a Living Word from the Lord, and that you can change; you can believe.
You see, we are all changing; but we could jump off the conveyer belt before the job is finished, and there would still be some parts missing. We don’t want anything lacking. We don’t want anything missing. We don’t want to fall short of anything, because it could be disastrous to us in some of the things that God wants to do. Oh, we are going to win, and God is going to bring forth His will in the earth; but we have to be sure that we are among those faithful stewards who inherit the Kingdom (Matthew 25:34). So get the Word. It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom (Luke 12:32). Believe it! Push in, and just keep going after it. It’s so easy along the way to feel that something bad has happened; and you say, “Well, I’m a little discouraged. This is not working out, and that’s not working out. I have friends who are working away at me, and I’m discouraged and depressed.”
Did you have a Word?
“Yes.”
What about the Word?
“Well, it was a Word.”
Then stay with the Word. Stay with the Word. Don’t draw back. Don’t be moved. David said, I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Psalm 16:8, KJV. That’s it! Just set your heart on that Word.
“But a lot of things have happened since I got that Word.”
What did you expect? Until the day that it came to pass, the Psalms say about Joseph, the Word of the Lord tried him (Psalm 105:19).
You are going to be tried by that Word. God will let you make your decision: Are you going to go by that Word, or are you going to be moved by your fears? Take your stand on the Word.
Every one of you has promises. Do you say, “Nobody ever prophesied over me”? Well, where have you been? These Words that have been coming for the last couple of years have been prophetic. They have been the greatest level of prophecy over a people that has ever been.
You have a destiny to fulfill. You have a Word! You are His people. You can do it. You can be it. You don’t have to be convinced: “Well, that was a pretty good Word. It encouraged me; but I’m discouraged now. Give me another Word. Give me another star. Give me something else to follow.” You don’t need any more Words.
We may say “I don’t want any more Words. I just want the ones that I have already received to work.” We don’t need a lot of promises. You don’t need to go around and use prophecy as a kind of shot in the arm, a pill that will give you a high. All you need is a Word to sustain you. The Word of the Lord will sustain you. Believe it.
“But there are a lot of problems.” Do you remember what Paul said to the Corinthians, at the end of his first epistle to them? For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries. I Corinthians 16:9, KJV. I like the choice of this conjunction. He didn’t say, “But there are a lot of adversaries.” He said, “And there are many adversaries,” as though God sets an open door, and there are going to be people there to try to stop it. No man has ever tried to walk in a Word from God yet who hasn’t been hindered. You have to decide how much you believe that Word, because that is the thing that delights the Lord.
How are you going to please the Lord? Without faith it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6). You can struggle around and look for a dozen different stars to follow, but the thing that is going to please Him is when He gives you a Word and you believe it. That is what will bring it forth. That is what He really wants. Get that Word, and don’t waver on it.
We don’t want any of that thing in our spirit that blows hot and cold at a change of the wind. We want to do the will of the Lord. When we get a burden, we want to stay with it. I need that. Every one of you needs it. You really do. Stop putting yourself down. You are a king if you have gotten a Word. You belong to the kings and priests. Don’t put yourself down. Get a Word. You don’t have to be on an ego trip, but you have to believe that Word.
It seems we are far enough along that all of us have had a Word. And when I say “a Word,” there are so many different kinds of Words. There are Words over our life. Words of direction, and Words of commission. I’m putting it all together; and I want you to define that. You take the whole thing and you say, “There’s a Word over my life.” Or you can say, “There’s ‘the Word’ over my life.” And it can involve a lot of things.
MARILYN STEVENS: What you are saying is a good definition of classification, or whatever. But the thing that makes me drive to what God is doing right now is this: What Word does a person have to believe more than any other Word? All of you have believed that you are prophets or prophetesses, because you can walk in that to some extent now. You can prophesy; we have all come to that amount of maturity. But you see, here is the thing I think the Lord is emphasizing, at least in this period of time of maturity: I do not think you are realizing that when you speak a Word, you had better believe it. And you had better walk in it. This does not mean that you walk in the Word that you are giving to somebody else; but you had better back it until you see it manifest.
You see, having faith in the Word means the Word that you speak under an anointing. It isn’t so important that you can bring a Word which the Lord gives under the anointing; the highest form of ministry is when the battle comes in behind that Word to block or to test you to even believe for yourself.
When we bring forth the Word; the reason we can walk in it is because when I speak it, then I believe it. Every time, I go into a battle on a new Word; and maintained the word in my heart and conquer something, then others can also walk in it. And this applies to everyone of us in the same respect, if we are going to be the vessels of the highest level Living Word.
One of my breakthroughs is realizing that when I speak a Word, I have to back it up every day, maintaining it daily until I see it manifested—because I see that it will not come to pass until I create it through the words of my mouth, the thoughts of my heart and the corresponding action that accompanies it. If God gives you a Word, then you create it. It isn’t that you just speak it and go on your way, but you create that Word. You see, I speak the Word and I create it in you, I maintain it over you until it comes to pass in the natural realm. This is what being a true covering over people is all about, and then Christ is birthed in you in that word. I do not sit back and say, “Why don’t you people walk in this?” I take those dry bones and prophesy them into being. Ezekiel 37:1–14.
And in the same respect, when the mature sons come forth, they are going to recreate something for me that they have a stewardship over.
Tonight I am deep into repentance. When God has showed me a Word, I have done pretty well to walk in my Words; but how much have I walked in the Words which the Lord showed me that are going to have to be created to come to pass? This is one of the most important Word that has ever come. But let’s apply it to where we are failing. There are areas that we don’t believe about ourselves, but we have not really seen the truth of our creative force and our responsibility in speaking a Word.
If we have not seen a Word manifested, then we must create that Word. And if it’s right to pray for something, it’s wrong to stop until we see it manifest.
Everybody gets focused on me, and it’s a delight under the anointing. But it is not a delight under the warfare. It is not only not a delight; it is almost impossible, and that is where we are tested. But that is where we must succeed, and we must gain the victory in the warfare. And that is where the warfare really focuses in on us.
You know, I’m exhorting everybody, but I’m with you guys. I’m not putting you down. I’m just saying that this is our responsibility. But I think we can go back in a split second and say, “One repentance—this is where I didn’t make it and this is where I stand.” And even if you don’t hear all those Words, you can take them by faith and say, “Lord, bring them back to mind. And every time I see them I’m going to hit it again and hit it again, and hit it until I see it come forth.” That is how we are going to create the release on this natural level, and on every level, it is by standing to create it by faith.
Peter in his epistles refers to the people being “established in the present truth” (II Peter 1:12). I have heard people get up and say, “We’re preaching the Word. This is the Word.” But there is always a present truth. When we received a Word, it is a present Word. It is something that is pertinent to right now. And this is what we are getting right here in these days—a Word that is so important for us to get ahold of to be established in the present Word that God is bringing.
There is something that you are going to claim right now. You see, every man or woman who moved in faith in the Bible had a Word that they moved in. Noah prepared an ark (Genesis 6:13–22). Gideon got ready with his trumpets and his pitchers and lamps, ready to fight (Judges 7:15–18). Everybody who had the Word for then, for that present generation, served it. In the Book of Acts, in one of the sermons, Paul said, “David, by the will of God, served his generation” (Acts 13:36).
We have to face the fact that we are going to serve this age of the Kingdom. We have a Word to do it, and we have to take it very seriously. You say, “Well, nobody else was ever worried about the Kingdom in generations past.” Yes, but you are living in the time when the Word is coming. This is the present truth.
There is a Word that you have to follow now. “What do I have to do?” Just believe it. Continually persist in it. We have gone too long misinterpreting our hope to be faith, our anticipation to be appropriation. We’ve got to get to the place where we get ahold of it. In the name of the Lord, get ahold of it! Say, “This is a Word from the Lord that is over me. I don’t dare do anything else.” You can’t let anything back you down—no fear, no intimidation, no unbelief. You are going to believe. You have a Word and you persist in it.
You say, “Well, I don’t know whether I have that much faith.” What is faith? Faith is just a determined decision to believe God. Anybody can decide that he is going to believe Him. “Well, I have doubts and fears.” So what? Just determine that you are going to be a believer. What about the fiery darts of the enemy, as Paul describes them? Your faith quenches them (Ephesians 6:16). Or do you just sit there and say, “Hit me again”? No; what you say is, “I’ve got a Word. I have faith in that Word. I throw this thing off; I’m not going to have it. I refuse it. I am determined to be a believer. I am determined to believe the Word that is coming over this Body. I am determined to believe the Word that is coming over everyone in it. I am determined to believe the Word of God that is coming over me. I am determined to believe the Word of God that is coming over any of us who are in this apostolic struggle.” We just say, “We’re determined. We made a decision. We are going to believe.”
You could say, “But it isn’t logical.” Who said anything about logic? “But it isn’t reasonable.” Who said anything about reason? There are a lot of instances where they cannot find one reasonable thing that Jesus demanded of the sick. How about making mud and sticking it on a blind man’s eyes, and saying, “Go wash in the city reservoir”? (John 9:1–7.) They wouldn’t let you do it now. The pool of Siloam, Solomon’s pool, was made for reserves of water. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? You see a man lying there who hasn’t walked for years and you say, “Get up; take up your pallet and walk” (John 5:5–9). If he could have done that he would have done it already. It’s demanding the impossible; it’s a Word that you act on, a Word that you believe, a Word that you say, “I don’t care what the symptoms are. I don’t care what the circumstances are. I don’t care what my abilities or anybody else’s are. I’m believing the Word of the Lord. I have decided that; I’m going to believe. I have made my decision.” I have made that decision about you; I have believed for you. You are going to make it. You are there.
You can say a lot of things: “Well, I’m rejected; I’m this; I’m that.” Forget it. What God says and the Word that you follow—that is it. Believe it. You say, “Well, it doesn’t look like anything can work out.” It doesn’t make any difference. What things look like doesn’t make any difference. What God says makes all the difference.
I’m going to read the statement I read at the beginning to you again. I think it will make you very serious-minded: If you receive a Word from the Lord and you do not persist in it, you will seek in frustration for another Word, and then for another Word, and then for another Word to bolster your faith. Eventually, you may abandon the Word altogether in futility. Get a Word and pursue it persistently. One Word from the Lord is enough to move an age (Hebrews 11:3). One Word, and we are going to believe it.
I love you all so much. You’re just a big family. We have a Word over us—let’s just believe. Let’s go into this Communion so tenderly, so concerned, so reverently, worshiping the Lord, just reaching out in the Spirit and touching one another, and say that we all have this Word together. It’s like a security that we feel in our love for each other and our faith in the Word. We have such a faith coming up, and all we have to do is just stick with it, just persist in it.
I have read the descriptions of the Upper Room where the Lord gave the Passover, and the approximation of the sizes of rooms such as that. The largest rooms might have been eight or ten feet wide, and maybe twelve or fifteen feet long. And it was into that little room that the twelve disciples and the Lord were crowded. It could very likely have been a smaller room, because the houses were not like they are now; they were much smaller. In those times, you see, everything was different. You walked to the place where you were going to go. There was no transportation, no freeways; there was no running water. They carried their water in a pitcher. Their favorite expression about the devil was “Beelzebub,” which means “the lord of flies.” In a day of no sewers and no sanitation, you can understand how many flies there were; what a plague they were to people. The lowliest servant washed all of the corruption from the ground off their feet when they came into the house.
It was such a scene where Jesus washed the disciples’ feet (John 13:3–11). They had to be defiled by that, so He washed their feet and made it a cleansing portion to them. And He said, “Take, eat; this is My body, and this is My blood” (Matthew 26:26–28). It was a little dingy room—no electric lights, of course, just little olive oil lamps with a wick burning in them, and a sort of an acid smoke in the air—and they sat there and they talked. When you read the Scriptures, you realize that many of them did not realize what the Lord was doing, because only the one who was sitting next to Him could really see well enough or discern well enough what was happening. All of that happened in that one little dingy room, and a world was changed. And we are doing what He commanded when we take the Communion together. What we have may be very humble. You say, “Well, we’re just a little church. Does this really count?” The buildings we have are far grander than any building in which Christ ministered. It isn’t the size of the building; the quality of it is that we believe the Word, and we partake together.
This thing of persisting in the Word is so important. We must not neglect the things that we have heard, “Lest at any time we should seem to drift from them,” as Hebrews says (Hebrews 2:1). We don’t dare. How shall we escape if we neglect it? (Hebrews 2:3.) We can’t drift from it. Just hang in there. We have to do it. You see, we’ve got the Word. Let’s be consistent. Let’s get at that Word. Let’s hang onto it. Didn’t Jesus say, “My Words shall judge you at the last day”? (John 12:48.) How much more shall His Words in your mouth judge you.
Every time we reach for it, it is going to be that much closer—unless we decide, “We don’t want to go around this again; it’s going to be this time. We spoke it once before, and this time we’re going to see it happen.”
I am saying that, because I am believing that the Lord is washing our feet. It is like all of us have failed, or it would have worked. But I am also saying that this time around, we are going to do it right. We are givers and receivers, because it’s a flow in the Body; all of us have to receive the help of one another when we need it. And that is where my repentance is tonight, because I feel that the Lord is just washing off our feet and saying, “Do it again.”
I am saying that tonight, He has washed my feet, and He is setting again the atmosphere where it will work. And so this time we go ahead with a greater faith. This time we can do it, because we have been in His presence, and in His presence we are changing.
“The violence against us is so strong; the Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, but the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). But it is a sustained thing in our spirit. It almost has to be a drive. You can’t say, “Well, I think I’ll believe.” You determine to believe. You determine that you are going to press in. I am sick of seeing half-blessings, half-fulfilled promises, a token. I am sick of seeing where God gave a Word, but you get a token when there could have been a flood. Aren’t you sick of that, too? What are we moving into? We are moving into such creative things that if we just had the sense to see it, we would persevere and press in. Christ said, “The Law and the prophets were until John. Since that time, the Kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it” (Luke 16:16). It has to be that thing that you just press into it. Be more than just convinced mentally; get to the place where you say, “I don’t care now what anybody says or what happens; I am determined—this Word was a revelation to me and I’m going to walk in it.” And of course, you will have to do that, because the opinions of the world and the persecutions are moving in to destroy, and we must move into resurrection life.
In the past, it was fantastic the flow that came from me. The Lord has reversed that, and now the flow is from you to me. The Lord is creating me by your hand to enter into a new level into which I am going to bring you, because I have refused to enter into it without you. So your ministry to me becomes very important because your own future level in the spirit depends upon it too.
God has given you a Word; and He is requiring that you walk in the thing, and that you produce the thing for us, as we produced the thing for you in the past. And we still are, in a sense. But you become the essential ones to know that the major thing is that you sense that there must be a flow from you.
I want to repent for not saying more of what I have held in my heart. There have been many times when I have come to service and I have had Words that God has spoken to me, and I have sat back and then gone home with those Words. I know I need to go back over the Words that I have spoken, but I also repent for the times that I have kept quiet, because that stopped the whole flow. That held back the blessing, the release that needed to be released to you and Marilyn. We know we stand liable for the Word that we speak, and we live in such fear that we could almost say, “Well, I don’t want to speak that Word, because I won’t be able to stand guard over it to see it through.” I repent for that. I repent for my “not enough faith”—not enough faith to see it come forth.
Paul talked about the great joy and rejoicing and blessing he received when he heard that the churches were moving (Ephesians 1:15–16; Colossians 2:5). They were his crown of rejoicing (I Thessalonians 2:19). John wrote in his epistles that they were his glory, that they were an occasion of joy (III John 4). When you move out, that is our release even if you don’t even mention our names. When you flourish, we flourish. You are either going to be the thrust of a rocket behind us, or you are going to be a drag holding back. And I say that from now on, you are a rocket thrust.
Back in the days just before the Maccabees, when the pagan Greeks came and they entered into the temple, they thought they were going to find a great treasure of idols. Of course the ark was gone. But they found a room with curtains of gold and a dirt floor. Does this make sense to you? The thing has to be simple. God is here in earthen vessels (II Corinthians 4:7). He loves us. This is the way He is going to manifest—He is going to do it through you. He is going to do it to you. You are going to see the Lord. “Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3, KJV).