Our focus is very much on the Lord, but because we are moving into days of restoration, many pressures are coming against the people of the Lord. For our survival, we have had to learn to deal with them and cope with them.
We cannot judge anything on a human level. We cannot condemn anyone, for we do not know the spirit behind his actions, the oppressions coming against him, or why they are present. Because Satan will try to stop what we do, everything God sets before us will be hampered.
Before we can help anyone, there must be a hunger for God and a desire in his heart to walk with God. Otherwise, we may become sympathetic with his rejection of Christ. We must love him, but we cannot be sympathetic with his decision. There is a difference.
If a brother who has a hunger for the Lord sins against you, how many times do you forgive him? Seventy times seven; there is no limitation to the grace of God. On the other hand, God is also bringing a great deal of discipline to the church. Recognize it and acknowledge that God is doing it. The only answer is to deepen your dedication to the Lord.
Quickly rid yourself of any area of weakness, because the enemy will come in like a flood and use it to bring oppression against you or through you. This may not mean much to you now, but along the way you will really begin to understand it.
When you were first drawn to the Lord, you were nurtured and blessed. Then when you were strong enough, you were subjected to pressure and real discipline to bring you into what God wanted you to be. Do not expect soft, easy treatment. You are going to walk with God and be a part of the army of the Lord. You are to be prophets and prophetesses of the Lord, that great company of people God has raised up to speak His word in the end time. You cannot be a prophet of God if you do not know anything about the Scriptures, about spiritual warfare, or how to walk with God. Anyone who remains a victim of his own impulses never learns how to walk with the Lord and never matures. You must learn how to appropriate God’s grace for your strength, day by day.
Often we are not aware when God elevates us into a new spiritual plane. We must discover the demonic activity in that realm and learn how to cope with it before we can learn the great authority and privileges in that realm. Jesus said, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. Mark 16:15,17. Before we can communicate in a new realm, the usurpers occupying that realm must be defeated. Demons lodge in every area, ready to fight every spiritual advance, and they must first be cleared out. When you move into a ten-story building it is not enough to fumigate only the first floor. Someday you will want to use the second floor; then you will find that it has to be cleaned up, just like the first floor. As you move into each new spiritual plane, a fresh dedication is required, almost as if you have to believe God all over again.
To a child, the problems in the first grade seem great, but when he reaches the third grade, the first-grade problems seem simple, and he laughs at the first graders who are worrying about them. Likewise, the problems we face now are not the same as those we encountered at the beginning of our walk. Then our spiritual warfare was primarily defensive in nature. Now we are aggressively forging into one area after another.
Satan is trying to disrupt the unity of the Body of Christ. No matter how many faults you see in your brothers and sisters, or how many problems you have in relating to them, it is very important that you stand by them and pray for them. Everyone needs the protection found in the Body.
You cannot be vicious or cruel in anything you do. You may have been in serious and difficult situations yourself and have come up out of them to walk with God, so do not condemn another who is slow coming out of them. Keep your heart open. You cannot take the grace of God for yourself and then turn around and deprive the next person of it. The grace of God works differently in each case. It is often difficult to know which course of action is the best. It is much easier to sit back and criticize than to be in the place of leadership where one is constantly looking to the Lord to give guidance and direction that will help him set the course.
We must have faith and pray for each other, lest Satan destroy some of our people, as he did in the early Church. Peter, James, and John were always farther out in the front line than the other disciples. Herod slew James, the brother of John, with a sword. James was one of the inner circle who had known the great mysteries and wonders in the revelation of Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration and at Gethsemane. Why would God allow an apostle like James to be killed? Peter was almost killed too. He was put in jail, and then the Church realized that God had limited Himself to move both defensively and aggressively through their prayers and through their faith. After prayer was made without ceasing on behalf of Peter, the angel opened the door of the prison so he could escape.
God could have done this sovereignly, but He works out His salvation through us. He, a sovereign God, is saying in effect, “No longer will I move arbitrarily apart from you, but I will give you promises and I will move through the principle of prayer and faith.” That being the case, can you see why Satan tries to keep people from praying? The only way God’s deliverance will come is through the prayers of the people, through their faith as they worship and seek God. Everything we do needs prayer. Do not take anything as a matter of course. Do not be presumptuous. We must seek the face of the Lord with all our heart.
Those who earnestly seek God may stumble many times, yet God keeps ministering to them in mercy. But those who cover things over and are hypocritical will find the anger of the Lord coming against them. If anything in your life is covered up, get rid of it because God will deal with it. If you are discouraged or filled with unbelief and confusion, look deep within your heart and find the source. See if you are reluctant to really repent and seek the face of the Lord and get rid of the old flesh.
God is loving, full of grace and mercy, but some people play along on the sympathy of others, getting them stirred up. Something down deep in their spirit is wrong. God wants truth in the inward parts. Behold, thou dost desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part thou wilt make me know wisdom. Psalms 51:6. Pray to be deeply truthful and open to God, to confess your sins and repent of them, to seek the face of God; and God will see that you are not abandoned. If you do not repent, you will walk right up against God, and He will deal with you. You know what you have done; you know the things you hide. Get them out before God. Many of your problems would have ended if you had given yourself a little more to seeking the face of the Lord. Maybe God would not have to deal with you so drastically if you would deal with yourself.
Many try to be led by the Spirit of the Lord, but the old self gets in the way. Often we do not deliberately go against the Lord, yet we ramble down the road without asking, without seeking, without knocking, without believing the Lord. We must be dedicated to do His will. There is nothing of the old life worth holding on to or worth yearning for. Only one thing is important: to walk wholeheartedly with the Lord.
Something eats away at some people’s spirits until they fall short of what they should be in God. Soon they are drifting and not aggressively moving into anything. Before they know it, they are in trouble. We do not need to let the young people reach the place where they are in trouble. They get into trouble spiritually because they do not know they are in trouble. One of the causes of this is their environment, the conditions and circumstances in which they live, and in some cases, their families. That does not mean they have to accept these things. Are you lacking some real spiritual discipline in your life? What you need is to have such a spiritual walk with God that you will never be lonely. You must relate yourself to the Lord in a greater way.
Regardless of who does what to you, watch closely that you do not become resentful. People often do things that stir up resentment, without realizing that Satan is using them. Those who are resentful over things that were done to them in the past must realize that God allowed all of it so He could work His will in their lives. By being resentful they only continue to thwart the will of God and stand in the way of every good thing God wants to do for them.
Many times people become resentful over things done to them in their personal experiences. Husbands and wives find resentment building up toward each other over the way they are treated. Actually, the resentment is as bad as the offense that was committed, because a person who is resentful will immediately throw up walls to the one who harmed him, as well as to God. Then he is completely shut off and isolated, with resentment working away at him. If people around you are filled with resentment and you react to them, then you are as bad off as they are.
God will deal with those who simulate repentance, those who are not genuinely sorry for their sin. They do not really want to break through so they put on an act. God knows when repentance is not sincere, yet those who do put on an act still solicit a lot of sympathy from others. When God starts to deal with them, then the people who had sympathy will be dealt with also. When Korah rebelled against Moses, not only was Korah destroyed, but everyone who had sympathized with him as well. The earth opened and swallowed Korah and his family. The next day his sympathizers came to Moses and said, “You slew the Lord’s people.” Actually, it was God who had opened the earth. Moses could not have done it by himself. The Lord smote the Israelites with a plague that killed thousands. Aaron had to grab the censer of incense and intercede for the people or the entire nation would have died. God would have no part with people who were sympathetic toward those whom He was judging.
This could easily happen to us, for God will go through the whole Body. When we move up to a new realm, those who were dragging along and not walking in the previous step are invariably lost. Walk in every step as it comes, for that prepares you for the next step. If you have been going along with defeat and bitterness in your spirit, you will not be able to handle the next step when you come to it.
Sympathy must go. Passivity must go. Resentment has to go. Every once in a while when someone talks to me, his words are saying one thing, but what is in his spirit is another matter. Down underneath he is resentful. Sometimes homes break up because one member does not want to walk with God. After that, the one who does want to walk with God still limps along, and one wonders why the believer cannot make it now that the unbeliever has departed. It is because he is still resentful over what happened to him in the relationship. Instead, he should realize that God was in the situation, and be determined to bear no resentment concerning it.
Resentment will also establish a psychic contact with the person towards whom you are resentful. By your resentment you build a bridge over which the other person can send something back to you. If you want to stop people with whom you have been associated in the past from harassing you, stop being resentful toward them. Then you will see the hand of God move in the situation and it will no longer bother you. Avoid both extremes: resentment and sympathy. Leave people in the hands of God and pray for them with all faith, but do not be sympathetic and start championing their cause and their iniquity.
When someone has done something to you which you resent and you start praying about that situation, you will pray vindictively. Then if God does not deal with him, you will shift the resentment to God. That is why resentment raises walls to the Lord. You almost dictate to God, telling Him what He must do to satisfy your resentful feelings; but God says “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (Romans 12:19). When you pray vindictively instead of placing the situation in the hands of the Lord, God will not answer; it is not your business—it is His business.
Leave things in the hands of the Lord. We must be loosed from resentment because it will cut us off from God. We must be able to bless those who curse us and do good to those who spitefully use us. In our walk with God, nothing prevails but a right spirit.