The tenth chapter of Luke contains the story of the seventy being sent out two by two. They went out to preach the Kingdom of God in every city where the Lord was to minister. They were careful not to take any extras with them, such as purse, wallet, or shoes, but only to go and minister the word. They came back rejoicing, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. Luke 10:17.
In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. And turning to the disciples, he said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I say unto you, that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not. Luke 10:21–24.
How many men of God have a fore glimpse of the days we are walking in? Today in the house of the Lord the word of the Lord is coming in a pure flow. It is a new level of the prophetic word. Prophets and kings desired to see these days. It would be so easy to miss the significance of this present hour, to be unaware of what God is doing. We can become so addicted to the trivial that we don’t see the significant. We can be right in the middle of God’s moving and miss what He is trying to do. It is possible to be so motivated by sympathy that we find ourselves rebellious toward God when the dynamite of His moving is blasting things loose.
You can’t judge by the way things appear. You must have an eye to see and an ear to hear. Many eyes have wanted to see what you are seeing, many ears have wanted to hear what you are hearing, but they didn’t see them nor hear them because they just didn’t understand.
We are actually living in a death struggle in which principalities and powers are being brought down. Their hold over whole areas is being broken. The things that God wants to establish in different realms will be invaded by His Kingdom. The power of Christ will reach into one area after another, overcoming all the resistance of the principalities and powers to what God is doing, and we shall find all the walls crumbling and coming down. We can either see and understand enough to rejoice in the significance of what God is doing and saying and bringing in this hour, or we can be like Jerusalem was when the Lord said, “Oh, if only you knew the day of your visitation. Now these things are hid from your eyes” (Luke 13:34). How tragic to be right in the middle of something so significant and not even see it. “Lord, open our eyes to what is going on.”
We are not living in a repetition of Bible days, but in an era in which God is pouring a double portion of all the fullness of the Church—the faith once delivered to the saints, the restoration, plus the establishment of the Kingdom—into a Remnant. For many years, long before we realized it, God was bringing to us the deep principles of the Kingdom by which we live. I rejoice every time I read, Oh, how I love thy law! It is my meditation all the day. Psalm 119:97. The laws of the Kingdom of God are becoming very real to our hearts. One of the greatest principles of the Kingdom is grace.
I have been searching the Scriptures to find what our attitude is to be toward this significant hour. How are we to live? How are we to accept this walk? The battle presses upon our human nature until we sometimes react by withdrawing from the essential significant thing that God is doing, and become wholly engrossed with the spiritual warfare. And so I cry, “Lord, get our eyes off the trivial things that are magnified until we lose sight of the great things that You are doing. God, open our eyes and ears; let us see Your hand so that we will sacrifice the lesser for the greater and give ourselves wholly to it. Lord, prophets and kings have desired to see this day; now open our eyes and ears.” Are we to be a prophetic community or are we going to play around and run an old-order church? We cannot bring yesterday’s clutter into today’s move of God. Every day I am being more liberated. Every day God is loosing my thinking. I am not a slave of the old order’s thinking. My mind is free. I am not bragging when I say I have the mind of Christ, in actual practical operation now, even as the Scripture says (I Corinthians 2:16). I declare this to be the word of the Lord: we must do everything we can to bring the young prophets, the seasoned elders, and everyone upon whom the Spirit rests, into their ministry as quickly as possible. There is to be a word spoken at the mouth of many witnesses. God will establish a word in the earth and, praise the Lord, we will speak that word!
I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. John 9:4. Do you understand the times we are in? Everything the Lord is speaking confirms the fact that we cannot take these words from the book of John and play with them. We must find the perfect will of God and do it.
There are limitations of time wherever end-time opportunities are spoken of in the Scriptures. God may throw open grace for a thousand years, but at the end-time the story of the ten virgins applies: they went to find more oil, but when they returned, the door was shut. Too bad! They were cast out just because they missed His coming by a few minutes. “In an acceptable time,” God says, “I will hear you” (Isaiah 49:8). “Today, if you don’t harden your hearts, you will listen to His voice: (Hebrews 3:15). “Today”md;everything is pivoting on our taking hold now. Back off from that which causes you to err concerning prophecies of the future. Don’t let the old human nature take anything God says and use it as an excuse for not walking with God in the present.
Forget the apple-pie-in-the-sky concept and get the living bread for today. This is what God is trying to say to our hearts. His coming Kingdom will be wonderful, but we are not to live in the future. We are to appropriate the future blessings for today and endeavor to walk into them with all our heart and soul, all our mind and strength. Otherwise, instead of living with God we will walk fearfully, so withdrawn from reality that we won’t be appropriating God into the situation right now.
It is easy to become so wrapped up in the plan God is unfolding before us that we forget to live now and we begin to just exist. Once when Jesus was teaching the great truths of the Kingdom, the disciples became irritated by the children who were crowding in for blessing. In the midst of the most profound teaching, Jesus stopped, and said, “Suffer the little children to come to Me”; and He blessed them. Why? Couldn’t it wait until they were a little older and more appreciative? No! Don’t be too busy. Do everything you can right now. Is there a prophecy over your boy that he is to be a prophet? Then bless him and minister to him today.
We are living in a fantastic day, a time when everything is being opened up to us, yet we are not really walking in as much as God has laid before us. Call upon God. With all your heart move in all the authority you have. The time is short and we must make it happen now.
The parable in Luke 14 tells us that the people who were invited to the feast wouldn’t come, causing the master to become so furious that he sent out his servant to bring in the lame, the halt, and the blind, “Go out quickly and compel them to come in.” There are people whom God will loose. Go and see if they are maimed, halt or blind; then compel them to come in. Out of such will come the apostolic company.
Don’t be anxious. Don’t worry. Don’t be fearful. Don’t live so tense that you don’t realize you are walking with God now. Not tomorrow, not next week, but right now you are intercessors! You are not going to pray by-and-by; you are living intercession coming up to the heart of the Lord now. In the book of Revelation, along with the unfolding of all the end-time events, we read of incense coming up to the Lord-the prayers of the saints, precious to God (Revelation 5:8).
What are you going to do with this word? Don’t just think about it. Act on this word now. The easiest way to do nothing at all is to delay until the intensity of conviction leaves. Let truth lie in your heart unacted upon and it produces calluses upon your spirit until you no longer have feelings about it, and no longer want to do anything about it. We must come to hate apathy. We don’t want to withdraw from the intensity of discipleship the Lord lays upon us in this hour. We shall be overcomers, walking in the victory of the Lord, doing His will. We are going to stand upon the Scripture, “In the day you seek for Me with your whole heart, you will find Me.”
The Lord honored a woman’s faith when she said, “The dogs get the crumbs”; but we are not after crumbs. We want the children’s bread. We want to be seated at the table. We want to assume our full privileges, blessed with all spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We want to be a free people because the Lord has made us free. We want to lay hold of the grace He has provided for us. The cry of our heart is, “Lord, we are constrained. Teach us how to lay hold upon You.” Isaiah says that He wondered that there was no intercessor (Isaiah 59:16). Ezekiel says that He looked for someone who would stand in the gap (Ezekiel 22:30). In those days there were none who laid hold upon Him, but in this day we are going to lay hold upon His fullness because it is what he wants.