When God brings people into an awareness of the Lord, they suddenly know what the Lord means and begin to find the meaning of their lives. Nothing is as important as finding out what God has for you in your life. It opens up the heavens to you, and you find out who the Lord is. It is all right to look for answers about what God’s word is on this, that, and the other thing. But the day will come when you find out something special—not “this or that” or even what the Lord wants in your life—you will open up to Him, and He will be revealed to you.
Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord. Hosea 6:3a. You are looking for many answers. Just look for one. None of the questions you have are as important as one thing: that you know the Lord. You must know Him, because you can be shifted about. A boat can be anchored, but the waves can be beating and shifting it back and forth, even though it is anchored. That is what you are feeling day by day, but you know there is a place of security and strength in God. You are not going to wake up in the middle of the night with questions about yourself and what you are going through. You are not going to be harassed in the middle of battle. It is not just an anchor; it is more than that—knowing He loves you. You may not yet know that He loves you, nor what He really wants to mean to you.
Now before the Feast of Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the uttermost. John 13:1.
Would you like to have been with the Lord in that little, dim, second-story room? Not many rooms in Jerusalem were like it—large enough for a little low table on which the Passover was laid, where they gathered around. Think what it was like to be in a room like that, with no light other than the little oil lamps smoking and burning, listening to Him talk, feeling that love come through, listening to Him tell how He was going to die, experiencing something gripping your heart until you felt as if it were going to stop. Think of being one of those twelve around Him, listening to Him saying, “This is My body; it will be broken for you. This is My blood; drink all of it.” The cup would pass from hand to hand. In a kind of stunned silence you would hear Him: “You say I am Lord and your Master, and so I am.” You would watch Him take off His robes, gird Himself with a towel, and wash the feet one by one—having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them to the end (or He loved them to the uttermost). “I washed your feet, and so you ought to wash one another’s feet.”
Then you would start singing some little familiar psalm, like a funeral dirge, and journey out to the edge of the city. What would it be like to be a disciple and know something that you could not really comprehend, until your mind was numb and your heart was like lead, to hear Him say He was going to die for you—yet you could not face it; you could not accept it?
We do not yet know how He loves us. I wish it were possible to have a recording to play back and listen to Him, in some way to have it come through what He was saying. We have a problem: we love the Lord; nevertheless we do not really know Him yet. We do not know how much He loves us. And so we start worrying about what we are and how limited we are, yet that is not true. He loves us more than we know. He loves us to the uttermost.
Would you like to have been a disciple of the Lord? Would you like to have followed Him, to have lived through the horror of that noise and din, seeing Him dragged away and beaten, then crucified? Would you like to have stood at the foot of the cross and looked up at His agony? Would you want to know that, so you would know how much He loves you? Would you like to have been a disciple of the Lord, standing there and seeing the world grow dark, and barely discerning Him hanging there? How can we measure His love? Would you like to have a vision of Him now? Would you like to know prayer beyond any intensity you have ever known and visualize in your mind an image of Him at the right hand of the Father interceding for you to save you to the uttermost?
How much He loves you! A day is coming when that will be revealed. You are going to see Him. I John 3:2 says, …we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. But when you see Him, He will break your heart. A great cloud of witnesses surrounds us, and the Lord Himself is seeing how we walk. It is almost unbearable what some are going through. Chosen of the Lord, precious people, called of God, called out of the world—how much He loves you! You do not know how He loves you to the uttermost. It is not in your mind nor in your heart to know it. I wish we could minister to people and say, “Lord, show them how much You love them. Bring them out of all their thoughts and feelings that are giving them problems, and show them one thing: show how much You love them.” Such a revelation is certain to cure rebellion and all the drawbacks you have.
I want to serve Him, don’t you? I want to be loosed from everything I was born with in this generation. I want to be free.
Did You bring me forth, O Lord, to throw insurmountable mountains in my path? Did You bring me forth to break my heart with a grief that can never be comforted? O God, what did You do with me? Did You bring me to rivers that cannot be passed over? Did you bring forth the people You laid your hand upon and have called to this hour, that they should be like a flower blooming in the desert, to fade and wither and be blown away by the wind. Or did You bring forth a people to do Your will, to glorify You in the earth?
O Lord, we have loved Thee. When You have beckoned we followed; when You have spoken we humbled our hearts before You. We stand before You and ask, once again, for a new outpouring of Your grace upon us. We know our high calling in Thee, for we echo Thy apostle: …who is sufficient for these things? II Corinthians 2:16. Accept our sacrifice of a broken spirit; accept us as we give to Thee a broken and a contrite heart. Forgive us of the sin that lingers like a foul corrosive thing in our spirit. Loose us from chains our minds have forged, and make us alive to You, Lord. Unstop the ears that are deaf to Your word. Stir our hearts, because we want to serve You. Do not let us sit with oppression that shall not be broken, with weights that shall not be cast aside, with sin that shall not be forgiven and cleansed, with fears that shall not be erased and wiped away. We are becoming more aware of our human need because we see Your fullness. O God, meet every one of Your people. Amen.
“God help me. Lord meet me.” Can that be our prayer? When it comes to opening our spirits up to the Lord, we are still in kindergarten. We must really open up. But how can we ever open up to one another when we do not know how to fully open up to the Lord? That comes first. We should worship the Lord and say, “Lord, meet my heart,” opening up to Him all we can. We should have the hope, the courage, and the faith to press in.
He paid a great price. Would you like to have seen Him and heard His cry of agony come out of the dark, saying, “It is finished”? What would it have been like to have stood there? There would have been the horror of all that was taking place along with your own heart breaking. And yet it would have been impossible to turn away; you would have to have seen it. I do not think you know how much He loves you; I do not think it is real to you. You read it, but how much He loves you must come alive.
At the next Communion Table, take one more step: a step back to the cross, a step on into the Kingdom, or just stand still for what is real right now. He loved you then, He loves you now, and He will love you to the uttermost. Oh, the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:18). I hope it comes through to you.
We need the Lord to open our minds and hearts to the revelation of Himself. He must deliver us from the cold print of the Scriptures and bring us into the Living Word, to Himself, so we can know Him and have His presence come forth in our hearts. He knows all about us, and He loves us.
Do not ask, “Will I make it?” You are going to make it. Reach into it; shake off everything that holds you back; get rid of the weights. After you worship a little while you are awestruck, because you can break through to His presence. And you can do that because He loves you. There are no barriers on His part; it is only in yourself that you are hindered. You can break through. There is a new level in God for you; come on up. You can do it. Reach for a higher level in God. He is constantly setting before you a higher level to walk in, and it is important that you attain every level He sets before you, because the ultimate level God wants you to walk in is very high.
You cannot bring yourself to enough repentance, nor seek the Lord enough to be really adequate for the walk God has before you. What God has for the remnant of people who are going to walk with Him is something more than your mind has ever conceived. Do not draw back. I would urge you to seek God on the level that is before you. You must come into it. There must be a revelation of everything God has for you; it has to sweep over your heart. There is no end of it. You must go on and on and on, deeper into what God is doing in your life. Do not draw back from it. You cannot come to a service and think you have arrived; you have only started. You are only at the surface of complete, absolute sanctification.
I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. I Thessalonians 5:23–24. That is what He wants, and that is what He will accomplish in you. Seek God and hold still for it. You are going to walk with God, and it will be very real to your heart. Keep pushing on relentlessly for what God wants to become to you. That is why you are reading this message. Whenever I hear this song, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” it sounds as real as if the writer had been there. The best thing of all is to be aware that He rose from the grave. That is what you ought to visualize in your mind.
Mary Magdalene told Peter and another of the disciples that Jesus’ tomb was empty, and they ran to it. They ran so hard that they felt as if their hearts and lungs were going to burst. Peter did not quite have the youth, and he was outrun by the other disciple. What a shock it must have been to look into an empty tomb, everything all in place. But Peter did not stop to be shocked, he ran right into the tomb and looked around. Then the other disciple went inside and saw everything neatly folded and in place, but no one was there. The trip back was not so fast—there were frequent stops to talk about it. Just where did it lead? What had He said? It meant the first time you would see Him, you would see those damnable, jagged holes in His hands. But one thing, it is all over; it is finished for you. Now you can make it. He walked every inch of it. He did it all, and He did it for you. Nothing was left undone. He bought you, and you belong to Him (I Corinthians 6:20).
Would you like to have seen that evidence? Thomas had quite a problem over it: “Ah, I won’t believe it until I see those wounds.” But the Lord said, Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. John 20:29. That is you. But God will make it more real to you than if you had stood there and seen every bit of it. Let the Lord etch this in your minds forever, and make it live for you that He lived and He died and He is risen again for only one thing, for bringing you into Himself. You are His. Say, “I belong to You, Lord. By Thy blood I was purchased. I was redeemed from my sin. I was bought for You.” Believe it.