It is very important that we firmly establish our attitude toward the Lord. Because a living Word is being committed to God’s people in this day, there will be very difficult times when discouragement and persecution will come against us to make us draw back.
We will have nothing going for us except the fact that a living Word is coming to our hearts. It could also be called a high level of anointing, the gospel of the Kingdom, or the apostolic Word for this generation.
Our focus must be wholly upon the Lord and what He speaks. Our battle must be over the Lord and His Word. The issue is the Lordship of Christ and His Word.
Satan will do everything he can to make you place your focus upon something else.
If you are tempted to think that there are not enough of God’s people to bring forth the Kingdom, remember that God is not limited to save by many or to save by few (I Samuel 14:6).
If you feel that God’s people do not have the brainpower, the methods, or the organization that the world has, you are right. However, Paul tells us that God will take the foolish things to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty (I Corinthians 1:27). He is not raising up a strong group of corporations which can knock down the established corporations; that is not the idea. God delights in having you use a slingshot and a stone when you are confronted by a giant, provided that you come in the name of the Lord. If you come in the name of the Lord, you can pull down the giant.
The human tendency is to look inward in order to see if you are adequate. Are you threatened within yourself as to your position or your ministry, as to whether or not what you are doing is important or worthwhile, as to whether or not you can be effective? If you can be moved or shaken on any of these points, you must remember that no man can do anything greater than to follow the commission the Lord gives him. Nothing is greater than to submit your life so totally to Him that whatever you do, in word or deed, you do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (Colossians 3:17). This must be your response, regardless of what God does in a situation.
Many times it may seem that a little healthy judgment would put the fear of the Lord Jesus into people, just as it did when Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead before Peter (Acts 5:1–11). However, you must realize that judgment will be committed to the saints of the Most High only when their reactions and their focus on the Lord are perfect in every situation. Then the Lord will loose the judgments on the earth.
The early Church was not too concerned about judgment. Jesus cried from the cross, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). As Stephen was being stoned to death, he prayed, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:60). Both Jesus and Stephen did not want the sin of what the people were doing under the fury of persecution to rest upon them.
Wherever a person is not willing to walk in the Word he receives, suddenly everything that he has goes sour and becomes perverted in his heart. Regardless of how much truth you have received, you must be ready to walk in all of it; otherwise you will turn against the light that is coming to you. It is difficult for a person who is deceived ever to understand that he is being deceived. If he could understand it, he would not be too greatly deceived. When a person is deceived to the point that no one can bring him into any understanding of what it is, deception then becomes a satanic hold upon him. Whenever a person does not want to retain God in his knowledge, God turns him over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28).
It is hard to fight against what God does. He is very zealous over His Word, and He is jealous over what you do with the Word He gives you. It is dangerous to receive the truth and not have the desire to retain it. It is dangerous to hold the truth in unrighteousness—to have light and know what you should be doing, and yet deliberately not do anything about it.
You may know what you should be doing and yet not be doing it; but if you are sorry about it and a state of repentance exists in your heart, God will be longsuffering with you. Even if it takes the entire millennium to accomplish His will in you, He will be long-suffering. However, when you hold iniquity in your heart and regard it with approval, refusing to take action on it, then you are in trouble. David said, “If I regard” (if I look with favor upon) “iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Psalm 66:18). This is the problem you constantly face as you walk with God.
Never reach the point where you think you cannot go on any further, or that you cannot be involved any more. Although you may seem to get by with it, sooner or later the judgment of God will trip you up, and you will slowly but positively lose your capacity for the truth. You cannot hold the truth in unrighteousness. You dare not be in the position of not wanting to retain God in your knowledge. Romans 1 tells what happens to people who do not want to retain God. There we read of the perversion and the idolatry that came upon the earth when people knew the Word of God and backed away from it.
The greatest persecution against God’s moving comes from people who once have walked with God. Many of the false prophets and the false Christs that arise in the end time will be people who once knew God, but have turned away from the truth. In the Scriptures Judas has the same title as the antichrist. In John 17:12 Judas is called the son of perdition, and in II Thessalonians 2:3 the antichrist is called the son of perdition. Do you understand what this means? They are one and the same. They come forth as a mighty religious spirit.
In the end time, the difficulties come from those who have gone in the way of Cain, the error of Baalam, and the gainsaying of Korah (Jude 11). Korah was a mighty prophet of the Lord. Baalam was an accurate prophet of God until he went astray. Eve named her first son Cain, meaning, “I have obtained the man from the Lord” (Genesis 4:1). She thought she had the one who was going to bruise Satan’s head. She thought he would fulfill the promise that God had given to her when she and Adam were thrust out of the Garden of Eden.
You may have been born for great things, but what counts is the way you retain God. Do you think that you are doing fine? Remember Paul’s admonition: Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. I Corinthians 10:12. Who betrayed the Lord in the hour of need? Judas, the man who had been given the trustworthy responsibility of being the treasurer among the disciples. A man with great responsibility is the one who probably will betray, because he will think he has everything under control; yet he does not. Who denied the Lord? It was Peter, the one who first had the revelation from the Father that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16). Who turned in an hour of bitterness and wanted to bring down fire from heaven to consume the people who were adamant in their rejection of Christ? It was James and John (Luke 9:54). John, the apostle of love, wanted to see people burned up.
It is not always on your weak points that you fall. Go back through the Scriptures and study the men who stumbled. Abraham denied his wife in a moment of fear (Genesis 20:2), yet he was known for his faith and his faithfulness. David committed adultery and had another man killed so that he could take his wife (II Samuel 11); yet he was a man after God’s own heart. (I Kings 15:3, 5). Throughout the Psalms we can see how faithful he was to the Lord and how his heart was fixed to serve God. If you know the Scriptures, you realize that you never can come to the place where you say, “This is my strong point.” You can be thrown open to failure on that very point where you think you are strong.
Do you want to make it in a true walk with God? Do you want to be faithful to the Lord and see God’s will done in your life? It is important that you do your homework. If you are not diligent now about waiting on the Lord and having a real walk with Him, you could fall away and withdraw from the Lord when the pressures are on. It is very important that you be diligent to press in with everything that is within you.
How shall you walk when the pressure is on? What is the answer when the persecution comes up strong and vicious? Psalm 101 is a psalm of David, a man who was always under pressure. He declared: I will sing of lovingkindness and justice, to Thee, O Lord, I will sing praises. I will give heed to the blameless way. When wilt Thou come to me? I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart. Even under pressure, he determined to walk in the integrity of his heart. I will set no worthless thing before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not fasten its grip on me. Verses 1–3. Like David, you must hate the work of those who fall away. Let it not fasten its grip upon you. This is the answer to persecution.
In the rest of this psalm there is a shift, and instead of David, it becomes the Lord who is speaking. A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will know no evil. Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy; no one who has a haughty look and an arrogant heart will I endure. My eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me. Verses 4–6a. The eyes of the Lord are upon the faithful of the land. When persecution comes, it is very important that you keep your focus upon the Lord—upon His commission and His Word. That is the time when your faithfulness is tested. The faithfulness under pressure is the faithfulness that truly brings the victory.
The Lord promises, “Those who are faithful will dwell with Me,” and he who walks in a blameless way is the one who will minister to me. He who practices deceit shall not dwell within my house; he who speaks falsehood shall not maintain his position before me. Every morning I will destroy all the wicked of the land, so as to cut off from the city of the Lord all those who do iniquity. Verses 6b–8. This is the spirit of Christ, the spirit of judgment that is in the earth today, and that judgment begins at the house of the Lord (I Peter 4:17). Let there be a fresh dedication in your heart to walk in the Word and the commission you have received. Whenever someone turns his heart away from the Word, he enters into many things that are perverse and deceitful. He can become a tool of Satan at that time, but he has to forsake the Word before that can happen. Hold on to the Word you receive from the Lord. Deception comes because you turn away from it.
If your eyes are on personalities to begin with, there is a very good chance that you can be turned away and deceived. God will see to it that all other gods have feet of clay. He is a jealous God. Your focus has to be upon the Lord and upon His Word.
There are times when an illusion can be created by Satan, with God’s permission, so that the situation looks very bad. If you do not believe that, read the book of Job, one of the oldest books in the Bible. What was Job’s response to the testing he went through? “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). The devil was the one who executed the testing, but it was with God’s permission. God allowed the testing to be so severe that Job ended up sitting on an ash heap, scraping his boils with a broken piece of pottery (Job 2:8). His breath was loathsome, and death and decay were upon him. The only reason he could not die was that God would not let Satan touch him to kill him. Satan could not bring him to the point of death, but he kept him at a place of misery until finally Job cursed the day that he had been born (Job 3:1). Later on he repented of the wrong things that had entered into his spirit (Job 42:6).
The entire book of Job is wrapped around the stories of three comforters—supposedly brilliant, spiritual, religious men who were so philosophical and analytical in their probing into the mysteries of God that they could tell Job, “You were a sinner. That is why this has happened to you.”
The book of Job is not a good book to quote. It is to be read in the context of a group of comforters who either twisted the truth a little or used the truth in a false application. You would not quote Satan’s word in the Garden of Eden when he tempted Eve; neither should you quote the false comforters of Job, because their words were not reliable. Later on, Job had to pray for them, or God would have killed them. You should not quote the words of Job either, because it is never good to quote a man when he is speaking under pressure as Job was. Job did the wrong thing by trying to justify himself. If you want to quote the book of Job, go to the end. There the Lord said to Job, “Gird up your loins. I want to talk with you and instruct you” (Job 38:3). Job had an encounter with God, and God spoke the truth. The beginning and the ending of the book of Job can be quoted, but do not quote the part where Job was defending himself while under fire, or the part where his friends were accusing him and trying to explain his plight by reason and philosophy instead of by revelation.
In this day we must cling to the Word that came from God originally. There is no point in trying to justify ourselves or in trying to interpret and judge someone else’s situation because of what he is going through. Neither is it good to give way to hearsay. Instead, we must be determined to speak nothing but a living Word from the Lord. Our focus must be on that Word, for the war we face is over the Word. Satan will be defeated if we hold on to the Word. He will not be defeated by any other means. We have no obligation whatsoever to be strong, or smart, or perfect. All we have to do is be faithful to the Lord and to His Word. All that is required is that we be faithful to that Word; then the Lord will turn it loose. The faithful heart will He establish in His sight.
Are you threatened in the job you do for the Lord, feeling that someone else can do it better? That is probably true, but do not worry about your job being taken over by the person who can do it better; worry about it being taken over by the one who cannot do it as well as you. That is what the Lord is likely to do. He takes the weak thing to confound the mighty. He uses a faithful brother who does not know what he is doing to accomplish His will. Have you ever stopped to think how many times the Lord picked the wrong people to do the right job? Moses did not think he could deliver the Israelites from Egypt because he was slow of speech; he stuttered (Exodus 4:10). Paul’s critics said that his speech was contemptible (II Corinthians 10:10). Nevertheless, in I Corinthians 4:19–20 Paul wrote, “When I come, I will know not the words of the arrogant, but their power; for the Kingdom of God is not in words but in power.”
Perhaps you wonder why God did not choose someone better than you. However, your limitations will not be a handicap to Him if you listen to the Lord and believe His Word. A walk with God does not build up your ego. As you do His will, you are aware continually that it is the Lord, His Word, and His commission which enable you. If you are able to do something, it is a gift from God, not an ability that is natural to you. Paul tells us that it is a gift from God, that no man should boast or glory (Ephesians 2:8–9). All the praise and glory belong to the Lord. We are to be zealous for the glory of God. We want God to get all the praise and all the honor. When we give thanks to Him in everything and acknowledge Him as Lord over our lives, we will be the most marvelous, victorious overcomers that the world has ever known.
This one question you must answer for yourself: Are you faithful to the Word over you? More than merely struggling along, are you faithful in your mind and in your heart to that Word? Or are you moved away from it? Have you given up? Do you look at yourself and your inner resources and feel that you are nothing, that you could never accomplish what God has said? Have you shifted the accomplishment from God to yourself? Are you going to endure because you are strong, or give up because you feel that you are weak? You cannot reason that way. Put your faith in the Lord. Put your faith in His Word.
Those who sit on the sidelines and are ineffective often are very capable people; nevertheless, even they have come to the place where they feel inadequate. Once you dwell upon your own inadequacy or the feeling of inadequacy, it slows you down and puts you on a side track like an unused boxcar. There you will sit until you hook on to the engine. After all, you are just a carrier of the presence of the Lord. He is the one who has the steam and the power; He is the one who pulls the train. You must hook on to Him because you have no power in yourself. The Scriptures tell us, … Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Zechariah 4:6. That is the way His will comes forth.
Let there be in your heart a new dedication to the Lord. Keep your focus right. Let your attitude toward everything you encounter be pure and perfect. Move in with faith, and determine, “I will trust in the Lord with all my heart. I will not lean on my own understanding. In all my ways I will acknowledge Him, and He will direct my paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6).
If we are faithful to His Word, we will come under persecution. However, if we remain faithful, we will see the one time in the history of the world when the tide changes and the judgments of the Lord come forth as the Scriptures have indicated. Do yourself a favor—do not defend yourself or retaliate. Instead, worship the Lord. Love Him. Cling to His Word.
In Romans 12:18, Paul admonishes, “As much as lies within you, be at peace with all men.” Do not be defensive when persecution comes from those who once walked in light but have turned away. Instead, keep your heart open to pray for them. You must not be exclusive in your thinking, but at the same time, you cannot compromise the Word you have received. Do not let persecution make you feel that you are some special person; neither let it cast you down to make you feel discouraged. Just keep your heart open. Persecution has always come against those who truly believed God’s Word; but as greater truth is revealed, the persecution becomes more intense and focused and the enemy becomes more vicious.
Set your heart to go on with the Lord. Let your focus be on the Lord, upon His Word, and upon the commission that He has given. There is no other way to go. How can you prove whether or not the revelation you have received is a Word from God? Be dedicated to it. If by it you can stand against all the assault of the enemy and see that Word come to pass, then it is a true Word. There is no way to prove a Word except by believing in it enough to be willing to lay down your life for it.
God leads His people by a pure Word and a pure vision because of shepherds after His own heart who desire to be faithful to that Word. We cannot exalt the vessels, but we must exalt the Word and glorify God for it. There is nothing like the apostolic Word that is coming in this generation. It is not a turning away from the Scriptures; rather, God is pouring out upon the Scriptures an apostolic illumination for the hour of the Kingdom. The rabbis in the time of Christ tried to explain the Scriptures, but we would not read their opinions in a church service today because they had no vision of Christ or the Church. In this day we would also be hard pressed to get much meat out of the writings of the great reformers. They had the Word of God for their generation, and it was very good; but now God is bringing light for this generation out of the same Book. The vision of the Kingdom is coming forth. It is not contradictory to the light that came before, but it has an emphasis and an anointing for the day of the Kingdom.
Study the living Word that is coming, and follow it. His Word is the issue. Be faithful to it.