There is a liberation and a release coming every time the pastors come together. You know you are liberated and you know there is more liberty to come, but you do not dare sit down and wait for the liberty to come; it comes while you are in motion.
We can’t just sit and wait for deliverance to come, and say, “Maybe these devils will go away, maybe this hinderance will be removed, maybe this limitation will be removed.”
I have claimed the liberty and the freedom and I want it to come. I believe that it will come, but sometimes we have to find, in God, a step to take, even while the chains are still on our ankles. This is a principle we are going to lay before you, and you will be very blessed by it.
We shall read three Scriptures, the first one from the last part of Psalm 147:15: His word runs very swiftly. This passage is quoted in the New Testament in 2 Thessalonians 3:1: Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified, just as it did also with you. Our third Scripture is found in 2 Timothy 2:9: … I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal, but the word of God is not imprisoned. The Word of God is not imprisoned.
I believe that this year the Living Word is going to run very swiftly, that it will run to the ends of the earth. As it is proclaimed, it will work its wonder and its miracle.
I believe the Lord is liberating us for that purpose. But it would be a great mistake for us to believe that we cannot send forth a world-shaking force in the Living Word just because we may still seem to be limited.
Paul was in prison as a criminal. You are sometimes chained down by limitations of the past. You would be the first to say, “I have claimed full liberty, and I thank God for a great deal of the liberty I have already experienced.
I am not going to relinquish my faith to believe that I will be more than a conqueror, but neither am I going to cease my efforts of ministry just because I have not gained the full measure at this moment.”
I will preach divine healing even if I am still being afflicted in my body. I thank God for all the healings, but I don’t stop and say, “I don’t want to preach it anymore because I have a headache this morning.”
I may have a limitation hitting at me but I still believe that the Word of God is going to run very swiftly. I may find myself imprisoned in a measure, but the Word of God is not imprisoned.
I look constantly at the illustrations of this in the Scripture, and perhaps not one of them exceeds the example of the Apostle Paul himself. Half of the New Testament must have been written in jail. Isn’t that fantastic! He and others were jail-birds! They were the men who gave us these glorious truths.
While Paul was writing to us about being seated in the heavenly places, he was probably sitting in an old damp dungeon. He may have been facing certain limitations, some hangovers from the past from which he was not fully loosed.
It may have been something imposed upon him by satanic assault or in persecution, because Satan was trying to stop the Word, yet he was free in the Lord.
No matter what kind of a prison you may find yourself in, there is a way to face it. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:1: For this reason I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—. Notice that he called himself a prisoner of Christ Jesus.
We love that, especially when we know what he had been saying previously: “You are no longer strangers or foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints. You are built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:19, 20). “You are being built up by God for a habitation of God.” Who was saying that? That was Paul, the prisoner of the Lord! He surely talks big for a prisoner, doesn’t he?
In Ephesians 4:1, he says something similar. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. What has he been talking about before making this statement? Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20, 21.
That is a strange thing for a man to say while in jail—talking about all the big things God is going to do, and here he is, a prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice that he didn’t say he was a prisoner of Rome, nor did he say that the devil had him all chained up. He says of himself, “I am a prisoner, but I am the Lord’s prisoner. I belong to Him, and I’m going to keep speaking His Word. He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think.”
But Paul, you are in jail! How dare you make such an unlimited promise! We seem to hear Paul answer, “The Word of God is not bound—just send it forth. It will keep working. Just keep speaking it.”
There is something glorious here for us to appropriate in our ministry—a new boldness to speak the Word of the Lord and let it run very swiftly unto the ends of the earth! Let it run swiftly, let it have free course! We must get behind this ministry even though we sometimes feel that we have limitations.
If our young people wait until they have perfect victory and everything worked out in their lives before they decide to become involved with speaking the Living Word they will never start. Just get into motion. Most of the things come to pass while we are in motion anyway.
Learn a lesson from the rich man who paid an exorbitant amount to have his car virtually taken apart, upholstering and all, to find the cause of a rattle which irritated him. Finally, when they took a door apart, they found that a bobby pin had fallen inside the door. If you park a car and start working it over, you find many things wrong with it, but I don’t think you should do that. I think you should get in motion and if there is something rattling, if something is loose, try to fix it as you go.
Some of you may have a few nuts and bolts loose, and you are waiting for a sane moment to start moving, when things seem logical and right, thinking that you will then move out for the Lord.
You will never move if you are waiting until you have perfect victory over everything first. You won’t move because perfect victory is progressive.
I can start out today in God with perfect victory and tomorrow I will face things which require that perfect victory to be expanded a little.
All of our experiences in God require expansion. They must be capable of it, so we had best be in motion. The person who prevails in the greatest way is the person who speaks the Word of the Lord and lets that Word of God go forth, giving themselves wholly to it in complete dedication. While that is happening, God works out the things in their life.
We minister to young people who want to be married. Some are so unprepared for marriage that we must say, “No, in the will of the Lord we must hold this off.”
But if we only married the people who were ready for it, the generation would soon die out. Marriage has to be in the will of the Lord, and we must use great wisdom. Most of the problems people have are either accentuated or eliminated by getting married, or else they face so many new problems which completely overwhelm the old ones, that they forget all about the old problems.
God’s Word tells us: “Speak the Word of the Lord! Let the Word of the Lord run swiftly.” Let there be nothing within you that holds back from doing the will of the Lord and trying to minister, even though you have problems.
If you get the idea that no one is going to minister in your church unless they are dedicated and sanctified, you won’t have any ministry.
There is a principle we must understand. The gifts of the spirit were not given to PERfect people; they were given to perFECT people.
You wouldn’t need discerning of spirits if half the congregation were not oppressed by demons occasionally. You wouldn’t need the anointing to come with the word of wisdom or the word of knowledge if the people were not so unwise.
If they knew the Scriptures and all of them were truly following the Lord, we wouldn’t need these gifts. Half of the people don’t even know their own problems because they are buried so deeply in the subconscious mind that they are not conscious or aware of them.
We wouldn’t need the gifts of healing and working of miracles if people didn’t get themselves in such jams and get sick, if they would take better care of themselves. But you see, it is because the church is not perfect that we have the gifts, and they begin to function.
This does not mean that we are excusing that which is not right, but we are saying that no matter what prison you are in, start speaking the Word of the Lord and let it run very swiftly with a full course because that is the only secret which will bring you out of that prison.
We are sanctified by the Word. We can become too introspective, looking inward so much, always looking for faults. I am for introspection. I believe God enables us to do it. In the Old Testament times they piously prayed, Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalms 139:23, 24.
That was very nice. But in the New Testament you don’t find prayers like that. The Apostle Paul is very emphatic in exhorting us, “Let a man examine himself” (1 Corinthians 11:28). Now the Holy Spirit is putting the searchlight inside, and you don’t piously wait for God to come down and show you your faults.
If you are a real believer, filled with the Spirit of the Lord, you are aware of them. You can take a look inward and see them, but don’t become so preoccupied with introspection that you forget to place your focus mainly upon the Lord.
We just take a little glance inside once in a while, as our eyes are upon Him, and our faith eliminates that problem immediately because we are trusting God.
Are you in a prison? Are you a prisoner of the Lord? During the past year, more than ever, I felt like a prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet the word has never been more effective. Don’t be discouraged if you are caught in a circumstance for which you can’t seem to find a way out.
You may wonder, “Am I doing something wrong?” It won’t hurt to seek God about it and find out. But if it’s just some circumstance, like Paul being in prison, or some limitation that you have no control over, come on, do the will of the Lord anyway.
Some ministries struggle with physical handicaps, with pain, and weakness of body. They are in a prison, but as they do their job faithfully, the Word of the Lord still runs very swiftly.
We may be impatient to see them healed, but until that happens, we are going to move in the will of the Lord just the same. We are going to do His will. Some may just be waiting for certain things to happen at their church. They have problems and limitations. Step out in faith. Speak the Word of the Lord anyway. God will help you with it.
This message is not complicated, but it is setting a guideline and a principle before us. Let’s go all out with one dedication: to do the will of the Lord. Let’s be ever more dedicated to speak the Word and send out the Living Word, proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom to the ends of the world. Let’s be more dedicated to that than we are concerned about our own selves. God will honor that faith and a world will be moved by God through the Word that is spoken.
Perhaps you are saying, “But what about me?” God will get around to you too. He isn’t neglecting you. But some of you would be the most ornery and impossible people to live with if you broke out of all of those circumstances without the dedication to speak His Word.
How is He going to know your dedication unless you get into it, walk in it, and do it? Be dedicated to that ministry, and when He sees you are dedicated, then He often turns you loose.
I have had a number of things which I felt were definite limitations, and you have too—the very circumstances of our lives, our whole way of life, even our whole makeup. We are limited, we want to be free!
Then one day the Lord says, “When you walk in My will, I’ll set you free.” I know I’ve been in the will of the Lord, but I have come to realize that I can walk with God. I am doing so and He is setting me free. It’s not a bargain, “You do this and I’ll do that.” It’s not working that way. But when it is necessary, there are no limitations!
While we are throwing off our chains, the Word of the Lord will still be free. Joseph, just because you are in the dungeon, don’t stop giving out those words of revelation to the other prisoners. Don’t stop being a prophet just because you are in jail.
Paul, just because you are in prison doesn’t mean that you cannot win the whole Praetorian guard to the Lord. There is nothing to hold you back. Wherever you are, the Word of God is not bound. “Pray for me,” he says, “that the Word of God may run very swiftly.”
This message is a practical step in the unity God has been building. Unity exists when everyone moves together, like a fifty-dog husky team, all in the harness together.
We are that team set to pull a load. No one can complain, no one can have something in his heart against another brother. The Lord has dealt with that level, but now He must deal with the level in which people feel inadequate and say, “Well, I’m going to sit back here; I can’t do anything.”
Some of our young people are doing this because they lack knowledge about many things, but they dig into the Word. They have to learn the basic things of the Lord as well as everything else, even though they may think they are not able to do it as well as someone else can.
God bestows the more abundant honor upon the part that lacks, that there should be no schism in the Body. I am mystified that God will take some of the most unworthy and less honorable members and bestow the more abundant honor on them.
From them comes forth the miracle and the wonder—not from the best trained ministry. God is seeing to it that the miracles often occur where they shouldn’t.
Someone may feel, “I’ve been so faithful; there should be a few more miracles in my life,” but as you look around you find that some of the beginners are doing the miracles! How wonderful! That means everyone is going to pull this load together. Regardless of the limitations you may have, don’t be afraid to get a Word from God and speak it. Let the Word have free course!