Whenever we start a project and really exert ourselves faithfully to it, we come out all right. But how many projects have we begun and discarded? It is that little trait we have of becoming distracted that we must correct. If we could overcome it, we could up the effectiveness of our prayers and our labors a thousand percent. Something must reach our hearts to make us pick up the words that God has given us and put our hands to the plow and not look back. Then what a blessing of the Lord will be upon us!
I believe with all my heart we are in the final stages of spiritual battle that God has ordained, and that we could break through into some of the most tremendous victories we have ever won if we are diligent. That is why I don’t want you to be distracted! Some of you have been called by God to do some real praying, and if there can be a burden laid upon you to really get hold of God, it will make a great deal of difference at this time.
We have never seen a season in which the word of God has been richer; the ministry is superior to any period we have ever known in the church. This has been a period in which more projects have been attempted and so much has been accomplished. There have been more breakthroughs financially. But don’t be deceived by what appears to be such a great victory. The enemy is not idle. He still knows if he can hit at me and succeed, he will slow the whole thing down for quite a while.
The enemy’s attempt is to distract with emotions or problems until people forget what the walk is all about. This is always a walk before God with a purpose. When Abraham walked before God, it was in order that he become the father of many nations (Genesis 17:4). Paul walked before the Lord that he might fulfill a ministry that God had ordained before the foundation of the world: an apostolic ministry to the Gentiles (Ephesians 3:1–11). Every man who has been called has walked with a purpose before the Lord. Everyone has a purpose. You have a purpose, a function to fulfill before the Lord, and you dare not let anything distract you from it. If you become distracted on a personal level, I notice that you continually have some kind of problem.
We will have to come to the place where we put the Kingdom of God ahead of our own interests. Right now the apostolic company coming forth in the earth is a cause far greater than any individual problem or need. We must learn unselfishness. We do not serve the Lord and do things so that He will do back for us. We serve Him because we want to serve Him; to be His bondservants, His handmaidens, to do His will above everything else. Even if it costs our lives, we want to love Him, to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, and love not our lives unto death (Revelation 14:4; 12:11). This we reach in for.
Our whole thinking in this walk has to be so pure. We cannot be distracted from absolute, total obedience and submission to the Lord. We must refuse every distraction and accomplish what God wants us to do.
If there ever was a dedication to be made in your heart to walk before the Lord without distraction, it is now. I have been deeply shaken in my own spirit by what the Lord has laid before me. I know you feel that at this time you must have something more from God in order to get through or in order to do the job. You couldn’t be more wrong. It is not what you must have from the Lord; you have it already. It is already within you. It is how you set your course and refuse to waver to the right hand or the left in what God has already laid upon you.
The anointing and the ministry that God has laid upon this walk is absolutely beyond belief. Perhaps prophecies have come over you, but because you have drawn back in moments of pressure, you feel you do not have the anointing or the commission from God to do what He has set before you to do. That is an absolute lie, right out of the pit. It is designed to produce within you a feeling of inadequacy when the Lord says your sufficiency is of Him. You will be adequate and sufficient because He has anointed; He has laid it upon you. I speak of the greater portion of the Body: you are extremely effective until you get under pressure and get distracted or draw back, or you start ducking from the thing.
There is no other way to walk in this walk except to stand up there, toe to toe, and slug it out until you break through into what God has for you or into what God has called you to pray and believe for. At this point the most deadly thing happens to us. This is where we are so spiritually immature that we draw back from the commission; we draw back from what He lays upon us to do.
Many ministries are really moving in, but some of you have started things and then, when the pressure is on, dropped them or reached for something else. You know the will of God. You know what you’re supposed to be doing, you know what you’re supposed to be praying for, you know the objectives before you, yet you allow other things to enter in. We could call it distraction, but more that anything else it becomes a test of faithfulness. When a man stands before the Lord Jesus Christ, his ultimate test and trial will be his faithfulness.
How faithful are you to the Lord? You cannot say, “Well, this man won a thousand souls and I won but ten. There will be less reward for me.” God doesn’t judge on that basis. He judges by what you do faithfully. If He raised you up to be an intercessor, there will be no way you can chalk up how many souls were saved or how many millions of dollars came in. There is no way to measure it. But intercession can come forth for a man of God, and you can stand by faithfully praying for him. When everyone else could be distracted, you can become the tool to help that man stand and accomplish the purpose and the function that God sent him there to do.
Peter was in prison, but it was the faithfulness of people which caused them to pray day and night for him, and the Lord sent His angel to free him (Acts 12). But, if you remember, they were negligent at first, because Herod took James, the brother of John, and slew him with the sword. Then he imprisoned Peter and was going to slay him. It was only then the church realized that undistracted prayer focused upon the Lord, their faithfulness in holding up the ministries, was the key to bring forth success; the lack of prayer was going to cause them to fail.
This message is a burden in my heart. It is not a sermon, it is a word that keeps boiling over and boiling over. It is so easy for us somewhere along the line to feel, “I had my sailing orders from the captain but this looks like a good place to stop; that looks like a good goal; that looks like a good little haven. I’ll rest awhile,” and we draw back from that which God set us to do. Deterring from the purposes which God sets before us causes such trial, such difficulty.
If only we knew how to be “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as you know your labor is not in vain the Lord” (I Corinthians 15:58). Believe that. Believe that it isn’t in vain: what God has called you to do, you can do. What He has set before you He is going to accomplish through you. Keep hammering in there, steadfast, immovable, always abounding in it.
“Oh,” you say, “I did that, and the warfare was so great!”
Of course it was. Great is the assault that Satan brings directly against someone who is in the perfect will of God. But instead of being complimented, we think we’ve reached a place of utter disaster because we are in the midst of testing and trial! I have never been in more jeopardy in my whole life than I am now. But I know with it also that I’ve never been more in the perfect center of God’s will than I am at the present.
Repent before the Lord where you have allowed yourself to become distracted by petty things on a personal level and you have become emotional or discouraged because of them. Don’t be distracted. That cannot be. There must be something within us that sets its course in God like an automatic pilot, an instrument in airplanes or boats which sets a certain course and continues on it. We would never get off the beam.
God is trying to overcome our fickleness, our emotional instability, our spiritual immaturity. He is trying to bring many sons to glory, and the greatest key of maturity is responsibility. We say a man is a man because he has responsibility. A young married fellow who doesn’t take responsibility is not considered a good husband; he is said to be immature. Maturity is rather relative, but God is not looking at how old or how young you are. He is looking at how you take your responsibilities before the Lord and determine to walk with faithfulness.
It is required of a steward that a man be found faithful (I Corinthians 4:2). You say, “Well, I just get discouraged.” Then you must have a force in your life greater than all the distractions that come against you. A motivation greater than all these things that would pull you off the track. What is it? Very simply, I believe it is love; it is faith, too. Love sees a job that has to be done and does it. We could say, “That’s responsibility,” but it is responsible love.
In the early days of this country, what was it like when a man filed a claim for land from the government, went out as a pioneer and found the land overgrown with tall trees, no place he could plant? With a team of horses he set about to cut down trees, to stump that land so that he could have beautiful, fertile land to till. How hard he worked to get a little plot on which he could grow food to make it through the winter. Many a man did that and raised a family in the middle of the wilderness.
We are called to be pioneers now, those who move into territory that has belonged to Babylon. It has not been productive. There has not been anything right. How are we going to do it? How are we going to bring forth the Church at Study? How are we going to bring forth the young prophets? What a beautiful pioneer bunch we are, running down the world, not caring enough to do something about it. I know we’re working; I know we’re giving, but we need that deep burden to pray.
We will never get what we want out of this walk until God gets what He wants from us. It is a giving of ourselves to the Lord. Otherwise, it will never work for us. This walk isn’t, “Christmas 365 days a year; come and get a blessing, come and get ministry”; it is a way to project you into the perfect will of God. And that involves involvement. It involves faithfulness.
But Christ was faithful as a Son over His house whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end. Therefore just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where Your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart (just think of that: “They always go astray in their heart”); and they did not know My ways’; As I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”
Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end. Hebrews 3:6–14.
This doesn’t mean elementary salvation, that we won’t be saved unless we do this. But it means we are partakers of Christ in His great triumph, in His glory, in the famous coming forth in the whole plan of the Heavenly Father. We are partakers with Him, and if we suffer with Him now, we shall reign with Him. If we are faithful now, we shall rule with Him. Our hearts must perceive that a remnant is being raised up. It will be one of the greatest instruments in the hand of the Lord that has ever come forth in all of God’s dealings in any generation or dispensation. It is coming on us now.
I would not be a faithful man of God to lead you correctly unless I constantly exhorted you to bring you up to the spiritual standard of God’s requirements in faithfulness. I desire that you be a partaker of what is coming upon the whole earth. However, not only will you not partake of it, but this whole thing will fail unless there is a great deal more prayer.
We must get this gospel to the ends of the earth. I am not concerned about pumping up anyone’s church program to keep it going. Nothing doing! Either we catch the vision to go to the ends of the world or it is nothing at all. I want to know where you stand. I want to know exactly what you’re going to be. More than that, I want to see you in there pitching. I want you to be an example of sacrifice in seeing the living word go forth.
If this whole move becomes a free ride to a lot of churches and to a lot of individuals who want only to be blessed themselves, we will miss everything God is after. He is after an apostolic company who will follow the Lord absolutely everywhere God leads to go, in everything He leads to do, who will be what He wants us to be.
Don’t play around with distractions. Be faithful. Seek God until He works something within your heart. Reach down and pull that passivity up by the roots. Get hold of the thing down in your nature which causes you to start something, then drop it and not follow through with it. You dare not hear a word from God, an apostolic word as real as if the early apostles were standing there, talking with you, and walk away, not too concerned about what you do with it. God will judge for the word you receive and how faithful you are to it. Our worship will show it. It isn’t the mechanics of worship so much as it is the spirit of the people who are worshiping—that reverence, that fear of God, that utter delight in doing the whole will of God.
Paul wrote to the Galatians, “I marvel that you are so soon removed from the gospel that you heard, to another gospel” (Galatians 1:6). We follow one emphasis, then soon here is another, and another. God has given you a good pure word. Anchor onto it and say, “I’m going to walk with the Lord.”
Let me point out something. You will be preoccupied with circumstances and distracted by them, or you will overcome them and follow the pillar of fire. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt, they had a sure word from God. They had everything going for them—a pillar of fire by night, a cloud by day. When they followed that, everything was going their way: manna, a stream of water following them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing. Their shoes didn’t wax old; their garments didn’t wear out. Imagine the immunities they had, the protection!
Suddenly, they began to complain. “It’s hot.” (It would have been a lot hotter if it hadn’t been for that cloud over them.) At night they said it was cold. (Wouldn’t it have been a lot colder if it hadn’t been for that pillar of fire?)
“But I wonder what new shoes the stores in Egypt are bringing out now? I don’t have any new shoes. I’ve been wearing these shoes for forty years.” Their shoes not wearing out was an occasion of complaining, I suppose.
“This manna—it tastes like wafers and honey. But our soul loathes it.”
“What do you want?”
“We prefer the fleshpots, and the garlic and the leeks and the onions of Egypt.” Psalm 78:25 reads, “Men did eat angel’s food.” Imagine that good pure food. But they drew back.
“But can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Can He give us meat to eat?” The Word says God was angry with them. This could be true in this walk, too. With everything God is doing you don’t stop to say, “We still have it better than anyone I know of”; you begin to grumble in your heart, “But I want this, I want that. I don’t like this circumstance. I don’t like that.” The way God is ordering you to go is for the maturity of your spirit. It will bring you into something you never dreamed of before, a land flowing with milk and honey. You are headed for the greatest promises that God could ever give a people, and you want to complain!
You say, “But it’s these circumstances.”
Eventually, the circumstances overcame the Israelites and they died in the wilderness. Someday someone is going to go find a lot of bones there—don’t forget, many hundreds of thousands of people died in that wilderness. For forty years, very consistently they were having funerals. Caleb and Joshua, who kept rejoicing in the Lord and wholly following Him, lived (Numbers 14:38). They moved right on, conquerors in the name of the Lord.
If you can be distracted by the circumstances and problems, you will begin to rebel, to murmur, and complain. God help us. We can be guilty of these things, or we can be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. And we don’t need to take forty years to get there, either; we can make it in a lot shorter time.
David took a census to see how many standing men he had (I Chronicles 21:1). I would not want to do that; I am not trying to find out how many are really behind the walk. I just want a few. We are tightening the ranks, getting ready to move in and do the job. I would like to feel that you are going to be praying and pushing all the way, that everything God sets before us we shall walk in, absolutely and perfectly.
And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Hebrews 6:11, 12. I pray that God will help each of us to get with it.
I bring many messages to bless you and feed you. This message I bring to shame you; to shame you for the hand that was to the plow and you looked back. I am bringing it to shame those who were not diligent and steadfast in what God set before them to do. I want God to shame you if you began to pray, and you knew the need and the burden but the moments of prayer became rare and scarce. You I would shame so that you would lift up your heart and seek the Lord, lest there be casualties in this walk, like James the brother of John who was slain by the sword of Herod. I trust that every man of God, every apostle and prophet will know the liberating force of a church that prays without ceasing, day and night. No prison can hold them, nothing can chain them, nothing can hold them back from what God has set before them to do, because there is the liberating force of the people who are steadfast and immovable in what God set before them to do.
This is not a time for long periods of repentance, but it is a time for a quick repentance and a quick laying hold of the hand to the plow again, doing the thing You have called us to do with a whole heart, and loving one another. It is time to stop the murmuring and complaining, the passivity and indifference. Give us diligence, Lord, to be faithful to You; and steadfast in Thy name.
Now, in this hour of my crisis, will you take up the burden? Will you pick it up again with real faithfulness and go into real intercession for me? I am counting on it with all my heart. Look to the Lord about what is at stake, and pray and strengthen me. Go after it in the name of the Lord, and don’t be distracted. Pray that the Lord will give real focus to our spirits, that we can zero in on the target, that we will know what to pray for. We pray, first of all, for our spirits to be open, that God will give us illumination of how to pray, what to pray for, and a real focus of faith to claim it in the name of the Lord. This lifeline of love and faith is to reach everyplace it is needed.
If we intercede as we should and pray as we should as a body, other things will take care of themselves. You will get hold of the job you’re to do or the responsibility you have and give it full diligence.
How can we ever accomplish this walking without distraction before the Lord without keeping our own spirits at a high level? We run into trouble when we don’t have a walk with God ourselves. You cannot have a ministry without a walk with God. Here repentance is necessary. Dig into the Word. You have cassettes to help you; you have literature. The sermons in This Week are given to feed the people. We are putting out thousands of dollars to give you a word. Read it. It isn’t merely some free literature put out by the church. There is a real living word in it, and you read it. Keep your spirit up. Keep walking with God.
Keep your heart set on God. Daniel purposed in his heart that he wouldn’t defile himself (Daniel 1:8). It was a real purpose of heart. David’s cry was, “My heart is fixed, O God; my heart is fixed” (Psalm 57:7). Caleb and Joshua wholly followed the Lord with all of their hearts. Something within us must say, “God has a ministry for me and I cannot accomplish it unless I keep myself really walking with the Lord.” That is absolutely necessary.
Keep your family up. Don’t think, “Oh, I’m going to walk with God, but my family is another thing.” If they are not walking with God, they will be a trial to you. Minister to your children. Keep them spiritual. Pray with them, bless them, turn loose that love, and don’t get discouraged if everything doesn’t move within the first week or two. You may have lost a lot of ground and developed habits of negligence. You may have developed unfaithfulness in your walk before the Lord. Some have become almost like old order saints, surviving off the services. Everyone should come to church very much on top—we ought to start our meetings on the high level where they usually end! The next month or two could be fantastic. And when the ministers’ conference and the Feast of Tabernacles come, we could be moving in everything God has for us. But believe me, it will not be an accident. It will be something we work at with all our hearts.
Let’s pray about keeping our spirits right and keeping them up. Let’s change this business of living a little in the Word, living a little in prayer, a little waiting on the Lord, a little reading of the literature, a little listening to the tapes and a little reaching out to bless. Don’t create cliques, but call up those for whom you’re burdened and bless them: “I bless you and am praying for you. I know you have a real ministry in the Lord and I pray the Lord will bless it.” We cannot have enough encouragement. We cannot have enough expression of love that will flow back and forth. When you need it, it is coming to you, and when you think people need love, your heart reaches out to give it. Remember, you don’t need more from God in order to do this. You have it already but are not using it. It is lying dormant.
Oh, we cannot have so much committed to us without walking in it with all of our hearts! We ought to see miracles. We can have enough prayer that we can move a whole world. We have not yet fully believed what can be done in one service when we come with our spirits ready with real expectation, really expecting, really anticipating. Suddenly it could break loose, if we get into a unity of the Spirit, a unity of faith, with all our hearts seeking the Lord together.
I confess I am trying to shame you for negligence. When you stand before the judgment seat, you will answer to Jesus for your faithfulness. How can I do anything but warn you, “This is the area we must get with it”? It is not how much you have received, how much you understand, how many signs you’ve had or how you understand them and this whole walk. It is what you’re walking in faithfully that God will judge. To him who is faithful, God will give more (Matthew 25:23). The church is ready to move ahead. Let’s pray about our walk with the Lord, about how we’re to be in our own spirits. To whom much is given much is required (Luke 12:48).
In one night’s time God can change the course of things. In one night’s time the tide can change and I could break through, with the love and faith of everyone. For two years Satan has warred against the commitment about divine health that came from all of the ministers and elders at the Feast of Tabernacles. I have never known two more difficult years in my life. That ought to be broken. I am claiming it, and by faith I am walking in it.
We need to be loosed from that feeling of being individuals and feel that we are one family. We are God’s family, not different people doing various labors. We can move the world if we flow together as a family and let nothing stop it, absolutely nothing.
God spoke of my liberation, and I took it by faith, but I have not made one journey that I haven’t been under constant assault. I have made the step, and now each time that I go out I am less prepared physically than I was the preceding trip. Each becomes more difficult and affects the force of the ministry. There must be a lifeline of love and a flow; we must feel such unity in everything we do. We can see it move the world.
There has been a spirit of deception which will have to be identified more and more. It is the time of deceiving spirits being turned loose on all the earth. We can know the truth, and yet be deceived and distracted so that we won’t walk in it. We will have to get a word from the Lord and actually see God literally set our hearts to it, or we will be deceived.
Deception hits in several ways. We become less dedicated to the divine order. We become more evasive. “Oh yes, I know God wants the parents and the children to get along and the children to be obedient,” but soon there is a laxity; there is not the manifestation of authority over the children. Husbands and wives become lax in the relationship God gives—“Oh, we can work around the old man.” In the house of the Lord we say, “Oh, they’re elders and we respect them,” but we bypass their authority.
This attitude comes up even toward the apostle. “Yes, he’s an apostle of the Lord, but we’ve got to work this and that out. We’re not to know him after the flesh. We’re not to be submissive to his flesh.” Excuses can be made, but it becomes an evasiveness in people’s spirits to work around the divine order. Then we come to being submissive to the Lord. He sets something before us and we say, “Oh yes,” and go at it halfheartedly. This cannot be a day of lukewarmness; God condemns it. You won’t survive with a lukewarmness. Make up your mind that you will have to go at it intensely, or you probably won’t make it.
Don’t think, “This word belongs to everyone else—but don’t know whether I need it or not.” We all need it. I need it. I shall not let my heart be anything less than one hundred percent fervent before the Lord. I cannot allow anything to detract me from what God has set before me to walk in.
Believe God to tear down the deception that wars against your mind and alienates you from one another. Especially when you would be tempted to take an issue or show partiality, don’t do it. God may be working out something you don’t understand, and you might be sympathetic with a situation or against someone out of a sympathy that might be wrong. When you don’t know how to pray, bind it over to God’s will. Believe for God to be glorified and for His perfect will to be done, and it will work.