We can become so enmeshed with our circumstances and their solution, or with our emotions and trying to handle them, that we miss the very thing God is doing. We are living on too negative a plane if all we are wanting is the solution to problems or the improvement of our self-control. The Kingdom of God is not a discipline program basically. It is essentially a war over the Word. And because it is a war over the Word, it is a war not only over the written Scriptures, over the Living Word as it has come, and that the Word continue to flow; but it is also a war over the Word of revelation that gives guidance and direction day by day—the tuning in to find out, “What does God want?”
Let me give you an illustration. Suppose you personally are going through a great struggle and you concentrate so much on that battle that you are not really in tune with the Lord so that you listen to what He wants to do that day. It may be the day to loose a thousand dollars to meet a certain need. It may be the day to speak a Word that brings judgment over a certain situation. God may be saying, “This day is the time for it,” and so you tune in and you flow with God in what He wants done that day, that hour. This can make the regular scheduling of our lives difficult.
The greatest difficulty is that the carnal mind, or sometimes even a mind trained in the things of the Lord, always comes back very much to the focus, “We have so many problems. We have so many things we must do. All of these situations are tense.” Yet if we stay on the higher plane, just one word of prayer will be more effective than all the other things we can do.
When I began to wait on the Lord, I had to stop making a lot of phone calls, visitations, and so forth. Some people were upset with me, but I remember some things that happened. In that waiting on the Lord we tuned in to a higher level of life for all of us. The spiritual level came up, so that we were not saying, “O precious Lord Jesus, hold my hand and lead me through this great, difficult problem I’m in. And when I get through I’ll say, ‘The Lord helped me solve my problem!’ ” The lions’ den is not the problem (Daniel 6:7–27). The fiery furnace is not the problem (Daniel 3:6–27).
The circumstance is not the problem. What we are going through is not the problem. The problem is this: What has God said? What is He saying? What is He going to say to me today? We must become so in tune and so focused on God that we shift the main focus of our heart away from our immediate circumstances and daily life to a walk with God. And that is exactly where it is.
We have made tremendous breakthroughs in the impartation and the laying on of hands. What should we do now, go back to just solving problems? Or do we stay in that realm which has been imparted to us? Do we determine to live in it? If we determine to live in it, there is our help, both spiritual and physical. There is our sustenance. We take His Words and we eat them.
Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart … Jeremiah 15:16, KJV.
Don’t just hear the Word; don’t just be inspired by it. Eat the Word! Actually eat it day by day. It is as necessary as the vitamins and the minerals and everything else that is in your food, because man is not going to live by bread alone or by anything else that he takes in; he is going to live by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3). This is my healing. This is your healing. This is the answer for all of us.
But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ ” Matthew 4:4.
Let me point out the way that defeat comes. You hear a Word from the Lord—a wonderful, positive Word of victory—and almost immediately, assault comes against you and you can’t even figure out what is happening to you. Circumstances and problems become magnified. It is at that point that you make this choice: “I will not live with this focus on these things. I am going to live with a focus on the Word God spoke.” You live in the realm God opens up only because you are determined to live in it; your will is set to live in that realm.
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. Colossians 3:1–2, KJV.
If the responsibility is ours in the spiritual resurrection life that we have participated in so far, then we should be constantly focused on the Lord. We are focused on it; we are drawn into that place where Christ is at the right hand of the Father with authority and power (Ephesians 1:18–21). We are drawn to that place because we are determined to rise to it.
There is an old magic trick called levitation in which a magician makes someone rise so that gravity no longer seems to control him. But this determined focus is no magic trick. There really is such a thing as rising—waiting upon the Lord so that you can renew your strength and mount up with wings as eagles (Isaiah 40:31). If you do that, the problems cease to be the defeating problems that Satan wanted them to be, and instead they become the evidence of the power that God wanted to reveal in the higher level that you have attained. God does not want you to fight through the enemy to take the hilltop. He wants you to rise up in Him and bomb the enemy from a height where the enemy cannot touch you. And the only way to do that is this absolute focus on what we have received in the Word.
We should review the Word that God has given us. We should go over the Word step by step so that we consistently live in it, because that is the foundation we build from.
People who flounder in their problems will request, “Pray for me; dig me out of this hole.”
“Why are you in a hole?”
“Well, this happened, that happened, the other thing.”
“What about the Word you heard?”
“Oh, I did hear that Word, didn’t I?”
They had forgotten the Word.
The Lord told Israel that the battle was won by binding that Word on your forehead and around your wrists, by writing it on the tablets of your heart, by inscribing it on the walls of your home, by rehearsing it when you sit down to eat and when you lie down and when you rise up (Deuteronomy 11:18–28). He said to Joshua, “This Word shall continually be in thy mouth. Thou shalt meditate on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8). It is with persistence that we maintain a level of living in the Word, that we live in the higher realm. This level is exactly where our battle should be. We can be discouraged or defeated by our circumstances, or we can rise above them.
We are in a new level! It is a spiritual level; and we will either walk in it, or we will hopelessly bog down in battle and circumstances.
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Galatians 5:16–18, 25, KJV.
This means that you have a way of walking in the Spirit in which you do not have to spend all of your energy fighting the flesh, because you are devoted to a higher level that has taken dominion over the flesh. That does not necessarily solve the problems of the flesh; it just means that you do not have to solve them because you are walking in the Spirit. As an illustration of that, consider someone who is battling a certain problem or habit of the flesh. There are a thousand varieties of things that a person can fight in the flesh. Shall he spend his time fighting that, or shall he just break into God, repent of what he has done wrong or do whatever it is that he needs to do preliminary to it, and let the blood of Christ cleanse him from his sin and give him a fresh start? Then once he has done that should he go back and fight the flesh? No! From that point he starts walking in the Spirit. In reaching up to the highest spiritual level he can attain, immediately the problems of the other area below in the flesh are no longer the focal point.
The things that really count are the times when God gives a Word and we call everyone together and speak that Word which opens up a new realm. Everyone in all the churches in the whole Kingdom is blessed by that Word. But if I devoted all my time to trying to solve different church problems, we would get nowhere. Other people have to do that. But they cannot if that is the exclusive focus of their heart. They cannot do it! Their focus must be upon the Lord.
These problems that we have in relationships are real. For instance, in this mobility of the apostolic company we face the problems of finances, of where we are going to sleep, of what we are going to do, of who should be pulled in for training, of how to provide a basic discipleship training program, and so forth. The personality problems are all involved in these things. There are a thousand things involved, but all of them have to be considered insignificant.
There are basic ways of organizing, but organization should have only one design: to loose us from being locked into organization so that we can know how to function and focus on a spiritual level, and so that on a practical level we can achieve what God’s Word set before us to do.
In applying this to the Word-work, we cannot say, “Here is the Word; we are going to work in it. We will lay down all the rules and organize it so that we have Word-work.” “Word-work” is a wonderful hyphenated word we have devised to mean working to publish this Living Word. But even that could become so mechanical that we will never get the Word-work done.
The Word came by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The work in the Word will be by the anointing of the Holy Spirit also. Therefore, we must have just enough organization to loose us from a dependence upon organization.
Most of those who have lost their walk with the Lord lost out because they became frustrated and tried to do the work God called them to do and fulfill the prophecies over them from a human level, instead of living an anointed, blessed, spiritual life with a constant focus on the Lord so that they drew from God what was necessary to do it.
Years ago when we were building Grace Chapel, those who were carpenters or skilled laborers left because they saw that it was going to be a lot of work, and they did not want to do that; they were not dedicated to it. I complained to the Lord about it, and the Lord really spoke to my heart. He said, “Unconsecrated hands are not going to work in My house.” Even in the construction of the building it was necessary that there not be unconsecrated hands.
The Lord wants our walk with Him to be first, and He wants the rest of our works to come out of that priority.
We constantly feel the pull down by something that happens in our daily life, or something that we feel smoldering—a little emotional problem, a friction, something that somebody does wrong. And finally, we can magnify that to such a point that we climb down from the wall we were building, when we should have said, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down …” Nehemiah 6:3.
Refusing to be distracted in what the Word of the Lord sets before you is the key to eliminating most entanglements and battles with Satan—battles that should and need never be.
We should never have to stop and battle the enemy when we face those things. Assume that the devil is a defeated foe, and assume that we have a mighty work set before us to do. There is a great deal which does demand our attention, but there is so much more which we will not have to give attention to if we live on this higher plane.
Perhaps one more aspect of this focus on the Lord should be considered. When the Lord says, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33), He means that this has to be even above the successful relationships which we have with one another. In other words, our own relationship to the Lord is the focal point. Consider it this way: if we are focused on our relationships with one another, then we are not really focused on the Lord as we should be.
Secondary are the relationships of the Body. Primarily the problem is our relationship to the Lord. We should be concerned more about our brother’s relationship to the Lord than about his relationship to us.
This, of course, applies to husbands and wives especially. I wonder if a husband and wife will ever have the perfect relationship together until each of them is more concerned about their relationship to the Lord, together and individually. The husband is concerned about his wife’s walk with the Lord. She is concerned about his walk with the Lord. Each of them is concerned about his own walk with the Lord. The Lord becomes the focal point; and from that, other relationships will have their success, because they have His blessing.
When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him. Proverbs 16:7, KJV.
We must believe and know that the war is really over the Word and our focus on the Word. But it is not just a war over what He has already said; it is also a war over what He is going to say. We must always be attentive.
We are not scribes who dig a Word from the present or the past and rehearse that only. We must be on constant attendance to the Lord to hear what He will say. That was one thing about David. He not only followed the Word, but the Scripture says, And David inquired of the Lord … II Samuel 5:19, KJV. He asked, “Shall I go up against the Philistines? What shall I do?” Though he was a great general and could plan out many things, he did nothing until he heard from the Lord.
This relinquishing of human initiative in our decisions-coming to the place where we choose to go to the Lord and find out what He has to say—is to be our focus. And, of course, this is where we can go astray. We weigh the problems and say, “I’m going to solve this problem. This is the way that problem could be solved. I know the way to do it, and this is the way it should be done.” Maybe it is. But maybe God was not trying to get you to solve that problem with all the wonderful wisdom that He has given you. He wants you to seek His face. He wants you to focus on Him. The best solution to a problem, or even the best project, is not enough if the focus has not been upon the Lord and upon His glory, upon His Word.
The basic philosophy of the Kingdom is this: It is always the King first, in our hearts and in our thoughts. We serve the Lord with all our heart (Luke 10:27).
As usual, if you have one practical illustration of the Word, you can begin to take it into a dozen territories. We have had a few good men of God who were on their way to becoming strong prophets of the Lord, and somewhere along the line their wives started pushing, ambitious for their husbands’ ministry. With quite a wrong motivation the wife began to say, “This was spoken over my husband. Why isn’t he doing it?” The main reason is that she is the reason. Because her focus is upon getting her husband into a position, rather than upon getting him into a relationship to the Lord and getting her own heart into a relationship to the Lord, the whole Word is delayed in its fulfillment. The Lord is to be first in our focus. You can say, “Well, look at all the principles we have. We have the Word of God for the whole divine order and plan for the Kingdom.” But you still have to realize that it is His Kingdom and that you live for Him every day of your life, every breath you breathe. Your delight is to stand in His presence and hear His Word.
Elijah was a man of God who could do many things, but when they asked him who he was, he said this one thing: “I’m Elijah who stands in the presence of the Lord” (I Kings 18:15). That was the reputation he had. What a wonderful thing it would be for us to learn to practice His presence with that intensity and that faith, and to refuse to be distracted by the problems. This is where almost all of the apostolic company are right now. Will they be distracted by the problems they have to solve, or will they maintain their own walk with God and communion with God and seek the Word from the Lord? We must listen to the Word that is coming and hide it in our heart, refusing at every step of the way to be distracted away from the Word by problems until the Word becomes something written on our hearts instead of something that is bound to our forehead (Deuteronomy 11:18; Psalm 119:11; Jeremiah 31:31–34).
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:4–9.
Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. Psalm 119:11, KJV.
“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Jeremiah 31:33.
Another aspect of this that we have to consider is a husband and a wife who really love the Lord, and the wife is very much concerned about the Word of the Lord and the fulfillment of that Word in her husband’s life. She may not feel that she is ambitious, just zealous to see it done. But over and over again, we see that when we live without the basic self-correcting focus upon the Lord, then we develop another problem. We make our interpretation of the Word from a lower input of thinking. The wife will say, “This is what my husband should have. This is what God should do for him, and this is what other people should recognize for him.” While technically the motivation does not seem to be ambition, yet it may be a zeal for something that is a wrong interpretation of what the will of God really is in that instance for that person.
We are faced with the fact that this Word will require some heart-searching, for this is the thing that keeps us on course. This is what sights our position and says, “Here we are, and this is what we are looking at.” It has to be there.
Peter looked at the waves and he began to sink, but he had moved into the greatest venture when he said, “Lord, just bid me come.” Jesus said, “Come,” and Peter jumped out of the boat and started to walk on the water. Give him credit for that. And he would have continued to do so had it not been that he focused on the waves and the winds so boisterous, and he began to sink (Matthew 14:28–30). That little bit of doubt is there.
And He said, “Bring them here to Me.” And ordering the multitudes to recline on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave to the multitudes, and they all ate, and were satisfied. And they picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve full baskets. And there were about five thousand men who ate, aside from women and children. And immediately He made the disciples get into the boat, and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes away. And after He had sent the multitudes away, He went up to the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone. But the boat was already many stadia away from the land, battered by the waves; for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking upon the sea.
And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were frightened, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out for fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” And Peter answered Him and said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” And He said, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, “Lord, save me!” Matthew 14:18–30.
The faith that prevails will be a faith which unflinchingly focuses on the Lord and on His Word, on what He has said and on what He is saying, and which diligently waits for any Word that will come.
A person with that focus knows that if he gets a little off course, the Lord will show him, and everything will be straightened out in his mind and his thinking about how to serve the Lord. In this way that faith will be the faith which does the greater works.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father.” John 14:12.
We cannot focus on the “battle,” as we call it. We often say, “Oh, the ‘battle’ is so great.” Maybe sometimes it is great because we focus on it. We say, “Well, let’s see what the devil is doing today.” No, let’s find out what God is doing, and then we will understand why the devil is trying to create a distraction. To fight the devil in spiritual warfare, in battles where God has already provided the victory, seems many times to be playing into the hand of Satan. To engage the opponent in an unnecessary battle, to draw him off into an ambush, is an old military strategy that generals use. You think you are chasing the enemy only to find out that you left the arena of service and accomplishment that God wanted. Why worry about the devil? Why worry about the battle? Let’s get our focus off that, off the circumstances, off the restrictions, off all the things that we are going through, and keep it upon the Lord. Let’s see that something more comes out of this Word than we have ever seen before. I believe we are in it.
This realm which we are breaking into, the realm of spirit and revelation, is absolutely unexcelled in its potential for judgments, for greater works, for signs and wonders. And all of this will come by a simple thing of focus on the Lord and awareness of the Lord that we practice at all times.
I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Psalm 34:1. I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Psalm 16:8. “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night …” Joshua 1:8. All of these things are the constant principle that we have heard, but do we know how to make them really the practical application and dedication of our life? If we do, we immediately hit the realm where the great prophets walked. And if you look in the Scriptures you see that even some of them did not always do it. Some of them were discouraged by the things that they went through, and they lost their focus.
Paul is a good example of a man who lived with this single focus. After years and years of suffering, writing much of the New Testament in the process, he could still say, I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. II Timothy 4:7, KJV. He could say that because he could also say to King Agrippa when he was on trial, … I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. Acts 26:19, KJV. He saw the Lord on the road to Damascus and he was never disobedient to that vision (Acts 9:3–6); he never lost sight of it. It was never a focus that he turned his heart away from. And I think that this is the key for all of us.
We will experience many things; and if we can be moved by them, the circumstances and persecutions will destroy us. If we can be influenced by them, we will sink and drown in them.
We say, “We have heard from the Lord; we have met the Lord; we set our hearts upon the Lord.” Everything else will be relegated to a place of victory in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our focus is: What has God said, and what will He say to me today?
Our analysis of our circumstances must not defeat our heart’s attention to what God spoke and will speak to us.
If our faith focused on what our Lord said He has given us, we would eliminate most of our entanglements with circumstances and our encounters with Satan.
We should be more concerned with our brother’s relationship to the Lord than with his relationship to us.
The war is over His Word: what He has said and what He is going to say.
The Kingdom is the King first in our hearts and in our thoughts.
Prevailing faith focuses on the Lord and on His Word—on what He said, and on what He is saying—and diligently waits for the Word that will come.
Our experience of circumstances and persecutions will destroy us unless we believe in the victory of Christ Jesus that His Word provides.