There is a saying among Jews who are not very religious, “If God lived on earth now, people would throw rocks and break all His windows.” This old Yiddish saying grew out of their reactions to their sufferings. Although we may not express it, we who are not Jewish by race may sometimes feel the same way. Do you have the feeling that actually, God does not do a very good job? Does it seem that it is difficult to get Him to be God? Someone said recently, “Every time I ask God to help, He only wants to wrestle.”
Has that impression been a problem for you too? Have you wondered, “Why doesn’t God respond more quickly to our intercession? Why doesn’t He do more than He is doing? I want Him to answer!” It is difficult for us to understand that God’s reluctance is true to His character. If it were not for His reluctance, we would be in a great deal of trouble. In His wonderful nature, God is a mixture of attributes. First of all, He is righteous and just (Deuteronomy 32:4), and if He allowed those attributes to operate automatically, we would all be wiped out. The fact that He is righteous and just means that He should judge every iniquity. But because He is also a God of mercy—and mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13)—God is also long-suffering (Numbers 14:18; II Peter 3:9). Do you see how these attributes are interwoven? Because He is merciful and long-suffering, it looks as if He does not care. But because He does care, He does not do anything. Would you want Him suddenly to be very just with you?
Be thankful that God is also a God of grace. However, that grace comes through faith: “By grace are you saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). This higher law does not work automatically, because grace is to be ministered to those who will repent and open their hearts to serve God and to love Him. To some extent His grace is so great that He causes the sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust alike (Matthew 5:45). Nevertheless, the real things that He has provided—the appropriation of His very nature, coming into what He is, becoming His very sons (Romans 8:29)—do not happen automatically to everyone. It is by grace that you are saved through faith. There must be an exercise of faith.
Your will or attitude turns on the blessing of the Lord. It is like turning on a faucet. However, sometimes it seems that the faucet is one that has an automatic shut-off valve. You push down the handle, and after only one spurt of water, it turns itself off. Hardly enough water is released to wet your hands. Often we feel that God is like that with His grace and mercy. You ask Him for something, and you barely get your hands under the faucet before the water is gone. That is why it is better for two to agree: one can hold the faucet open; the other can wash his hands! In times of intercession, it seems to work even better when everyone enters in and holds the faucet open so that all can wash. Then everyone leaves those times with real blessing upon them.
A persistence in our faith is necessary in order to open the fountains of grace to us. This makes it possible for God to express His righteousness in a way He wants to. Thus, when you become frustrated in intercession and say, “I do not know which way to go anymore; I do not know how to reach God; I do not feel things as I used to,” it is your problem. Think back to the mistakes you have made. If the laws of God had not been suspended for you because of His grace, disastrous things could have happened to you. Your persistent faith opens up His grace to reach you. Because the principle of grace is brought in, that makes it possible for Him to express His righteousness. If He expressed His righteousness and His justice before you tapped into His grace, you would be in trouble. The very righteousness in God that you seek to have would dictate that you would be destroyed. Be grateful that He is long-suffering. But be careful, too. The next time you ask, “Why doesn’t God do something?” be sure that you actually want Him to do it!
David said, I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13.
David had that faith within his spirit. He knew that God was going to move, and that he would faint unless he believed to see the goodness of the Lord come into his life. We read in Hebrews 11:6, Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. We probably do not realize how many answers are coming because we have been set on an earnest course of intercession, of diligently seeking the Lord.
We probably are not aware that our diligence and our persistence are constantly holding the faucet open and bringing the blessing. If we failed to intercede, even for a month, the work of the Lord would flounder. Then people would say that God had started something He could not finish. That was the protest Moses presented to God: “If You judge these people out in the wilderness, the heathen nations round about will say that You started something and could not finish it” (Numbers 14:15–16). Then Moses interceded for the people (verses 17–19). Another time when he asked God to have mercy on the people, he said, “If You will not forgive their sin, then blot my name out of the book too” (Exodus 32:32).
Although Moses was a very meek man, earnest, violent intercession came out of his heart. And because of it, a persistent, consistent ministry of grace came to the Israelites in the wilderness. Although it was intersprinkled with judgments for their disobedience, yet God’s will was fulfilled. The ultimate promises of God came to pass because there was a persistence on the part of men like Joshua and Caleb, who wholly followed the Lord their God (Numbers 32:12).
Do not back off from interceding. If you are a little discouraged and scattered in your focus, get back in the flow and stay there. It is the only way the blessing of the Lord will come to you. The minute you become passive, it appears that God becomes passive too. You are the one who can shift the gears; you will not go anyplace in neutral. Why not shift into gear and get going? Move! You determine how fast you will move.
I Corinthians 15:57–58 tells us, But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory (the victory over death, the victory over sin) through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. Why does Paul conclude this chapter on the resurrection with the exhortation, “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord”? Because the persistent application of our faith is necessary.
Matthew 7:7–8 shows us how important it is for us to be persistent in our faith. In the original Greek, the verbs in this passage are in the aorist tense, indicating that the action continues. Jesus said, “Ask (keep asking), and it shall be given to you; seek (keep seeking), and you shall find; knock (keep knocking), and it shall be opened to you. For every one who asks (keeps asking) receives, and he who seeks (keeps seeking) finds, and to him who knocks (keeps knocking) it shall be opened.”
Of course, in all of this, God uses a beautiful strategy on us. We keep pushing, pushing, pushing—holding the faucet open so that the grace of God can flow. By the time we receive an answer to the prayer that may be related to our circumstances, to an objective, or to some goal we want to attain, He will have worked in us what is necessary for us to receive that answer without having it hurt us. For example, you may be believing the Lord for a blessing on your finances. He will allow pressures which drive you to pray and seek God. By the time you get the money, it will not destroy you. There is nothing wrong with many of your prayers. The answers are delayed only until, in your persistence and in your steadfastness, God can do a work in you. Then you will be ready to move into it with all of your heart.
Sometimes it appears that we hinder God. Moses, at the age of forty, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter (Hebrews 11:24). He went out among his brethren and saw an Egyptian guard smiting a Hebrew. Filled with fury, he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. The next day he found two Israelites fighting and he said, “You are brethren; can’t you get along?” They said, “What are you going to do? Kill us, and bury us in the sand too?” The secret was out. He fled to the desert where he spent another forty years (Exodus 2:11–15). It looked as if the man’s life was wasted. But do you think that this forty-year-old hothead would have been able to lead anyone anywhere? For forty years he had to go through the dealings of the Lord out in the desert. He had to receive a revelation of the Lord in the burning bush. In Egypt he was probably remembered as the hothead who in a moment of anger had killed one of the guards over the slaves. But he was no longer the same man. Now he was the meekest man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3). Now God had him ready. He had produced a man meek enough to boldly lead the Israelites out of Egypt.
Delays are not always needful. God is saying now, “Believe to move with all your heart,” because the persistence that He works in you will eliminate the forty years of preparation in the wilderness before you can move. If you do not want to learn any other way, then sitting out in the desert is one way to do it. There are many who are sitting out there someplace while God deals with them. It may take a long time, but most of them will come back to some degree. Maybe ten years from now they will come back with a better spirit, ready to enter in. But they will have lost ten years! We should not allow those processes to continue. Let us not take the slow, difficult way; let us press in.
Deuteronomy 1:2 tells us, It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea. The Hebrews could have walked to Canaan in eleven days, but it took them forty years. We do not want to spend forty years reaching our destination; eleven days is long enough! God is opening a door for us. As He does, and as we keep our spirits open to the Lord, we can push in and see Canaan conquered more quickly.
The illusion comes that we are not getting anyplace. We get tired of working hard and pressing in, day after day. We wonder, “Where is it getting me?” But the Lord says to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord. I Corinthians 15:58b. Paul exhorts us in Galatians 6:9: And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. Do not get tired of pressing in, of sowing, for in due season you will reap if you faint not.
When I was a little boy, grown-ups often called me “a little sprout.” I have spent many years sowing the Word; now everywhere I go I see that God has many little sprouts growing. The Word is coming forth in people everywhere. Soon we will have many more prophets. It will not be long, because they have learned the key. They are pressing in. They are receiving the Word of God and are persistently moving in it.
God must deal deeply with us; otherwise everything He gives us could destroy us. When you are blessed, what should you do? The answer is simple. Steam right ahead. When you pray for something and God gives it to you, you should act as though you never even received it. Thank Him for it; but never let it touch you, never let it bother you. Just go on pressing in. Woe be unto us if the grace of God is not worked in our hearts, for then we respond to our circumstances to our own hurt, as the Israelites did. We look at the circumstances in the wilderness and grumble (Exodus 16:2–3). That hurts us, for then God has to deal with us. We come into the land of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey, where every man has his own vine and his own fig tree (Deuteronomy 8:7–8; I Kings 4:25; Micah 4:4). Marvelous! But then we tend to forget God. That hurts us, for He has to send the Philistines to punish us (I Samuel 4:2, 10). We cannot learn to take His dealings, and we cannot learn to receive His blessings, unless we have hearts that are “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (I Corinthians 15:58).
The discipline of work teaches us to press in. Even if you do not like the work, do not evade it. Work is wonderful discipline to produce a steadfastness in you. You miss the blessing that God can give if you are lazy and avoid the work set before you. You may excuse yourself by reasoning, “It is more important for me to be in all the intercession than it is to do this job.” Or you might decide to slip away and read your Bible out under a tree someplace. If you continually evade the work set before you, you need the dealings of the Lord—maybe a poison oak plant under that tree—until you learn to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding, allowing nothing to distract you because you are pressing through.
That was Paul’s attitude when the Jews did everything they could to stop him. They beat him up, hit him with rods, put him in jail, tried to assassinate him. How did he react when more troubles were prophesied to him? He said, “Are you trying to break my heart? None of these things move me. I will finish my course with joy. I have a ministry to finish” (Acts 21:12–13; Acts 20:24).
We too want to reach the place where, like Paul, nothing moves us, nothing irritates us. It is true that we are not there yet, but this is one purpose for God’s dealings. The beautiful, quiet spirit that we seek to have and the blessing we seek to become will come forth as we persistently keep pushing in, as God keeps working in our spirits. Whenever anyone ends up with a beautiful spirit, it is because he has been open for God to deal with him. We could try to find only good people with good spirits to do the Lord’s work, but we would look in vain, as Diogenes did. There is a legend that this ancient philosopher took a lantern in broad daylight and went through the streets, searching for an honest man. Of course, he felt that it was impossible to find one.
We are looking for workers with good spirits. How do you obtain a good spirit? A good spirit often comes from having had a bad spirit. As God deals with your bad spirit, you keep pressing in, crying, “Oh, what is the matter with me? I want to change! I want to be different!” You dare not be discouraged. Do you not understand what is happening to you? God is teaching your spirit tenacity so that you will reach into the blessing of the Lord. Keep believing Him and pressing in.
Probably one of the falsest concepts we have about God is our attitude toward having Him meet us. Why do we think that we must go somewhere to seek God? He is right there with you. All you have to do is symbolically shut the door on the whole, and then talk to Him. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Matthew 6:6. So you want to have a meeting with God, do you? Does this mean that you need an appointment? Is His schedule so full that He cannot talk to you today? He is different from the rest of us: He can talk to lots of people, all at the same time. He can talk to them and listen to them and answer back.
Do you want God to meet you? God wants you to meet Him! Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8a. Do not expect Him to meet you first. As you come to Him, crying for grace, crying for the mercies of God, wanting Him to help you break through, He is saying, “I am right here.”
Ask! Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Shove the door open. Many people think that the sign on the door should read “Pull”—that if you have a little “pull,” you can reach God. But the sign is right; it reads “Push.” Do you want God to meet you? Make your own appointment, and push! Press in! Believe that He is listening when you talk to Him. Throw off any discouragement. Anything passive that remains in your spirit is most deadly. You can have all kinds of problems—you can be assaulted by lust, by greed, by laziness, or by a spirit of infirmity—yet you can throw them off. You can throw off almost anything easier than a passive spirit. Get rid of it! It is deadly, for it leaves you open for every other problem to be piled on you.
Determine to press in. God says, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13. He is not trying to hide. He is with you. You can reach through, not merely for one breakthrough but for a continuous new level! Be easily entreated. Do not be afraid of being exhorted into constant effort. We will work until we tire, lie down and sleep for a few hours, then get up and go on. If we need a healing, we will look to God for it; but we must not run on to do our work without a perpetual, continual focus on Him. Some of the people who live to be a hundred are ones who, somewhere along the line, became sick and had to learn to take care of themselves and eat correctly. Those who never had any concern about their health often are the ones who drop dead of heart attacks or strokes.
God can give an answer that solves a physical problem so that you are never bothered by it again. God can also give an answer that will be based upon your continual, persistent focus on the Lord. Keep in mind the exhortation in Hebrews 12:2–3: “Look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith. Consider Him, lest you be wearied and faint in your mind.” Get your focus on the Lord and keep it there. Every minute of every day, draw His strength. Do not be satisfied with an answer that lasts only for a month before you need another answer. Determine to have the answer that is dependent upon a perpetual, continual focus on the Lord.
What will happen then? You will grow. You will move into it. The ministers could give you an answer, but then you would need another answer, and another. Focus on the Lord. Walk with Him continually. Draw from Him twenty-four hours a day. At night, bless the bed before you retire and say, “God, bless this bed tonight. Minister to me while I am in it; minister to me when I arise. All day tomorrow You will be ministering to me.” Reach in. Take the blessing of the Lord. Walk with God every day, twenty-four hours a day.
It seems that the enemy fights everything you start to do, but you will never become a good soldier in the army of the Lord if you do not have to contend for every inch of ground you take. Upon reaching the objective, you will also know what a tremendous thing God has done in you. When you think you have had about all the battle you can handle, remember that faith will revive under action, regardless of what kind of action it is. You believe, and you move into it.
Pray, intercede, stay right with it. Whatever you are experiencing will come out all right. God has allowed your situation, for He wants you to continually focus on Him. Be like Elijah and stand before Him (I Kings 17:1).
God has invited all of us to stand in His presence. We are the ones who must decide to do it. The Word does not read, “I was glad when God said to me, ‘Come up to My house.’ ” It reads, “I was glad when they said unto me, ‘Let us go up to the house of the Lord!’ ” (Psalm 122:1.) We make that ascent ourselves. We decide where we are to be.
Position yourself in the presence of the Lord. Determine that there you will stand. When decisions are to be made, God will open the right door for you and you will move in.