We are a people of the Word. We are Thy people, Lord. We delight in Thy Word and look to it above everything else. You have trained and taught us by Your Spirit. We delight in what you say to us and esteem Thy Word above great treasures. Nothing on this earth do we esteem as much as the Word You speak to our hearts. Open it to us, but let it not be a Word that excites us for the moment.
O Lord, impart to us that which you bring through the channel of Your Word. Write your righteousness upon the tablets of our heart. May we do all Your will and so delight in it that we not be overwhelmed and overcome by the flesh, but with singleness of heart do that which pleases Thee. Let us not count our lives as empty, or frustrated, or as missing anything the world has to offer, if only we have this one thing: that even by a lonely or a difficult path we are able to walk with Thee according to Thy Word, in Jesus name. Amen.
We read in the Gospel of John, And on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there; and Jesus also was invited, and His disciples, to the wedding. And when the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said unto Him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Women, what do I have to do with you?” (literally, “What to me and to you?”—a Hebrew idiom, meaning, “How does that bother us? They’re out of wine, but we’re just guests”). “My hour has not yet come” (meaning: “It isn’t the time; my day of miracles and signs are not yet come). His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.” In a statement almost premature, she anticipated the signs and wonders the Lord Jesus Christ said was not yet to come. His hour had not come to move in this realm, but Jesus’ mother had a great deal of faith, so she said, “WHATEVER He says to you, do it.”
Now there were six stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each. Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, “Draw some out now, and take it to the headwaiter.” And they took it to him. And when the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom, said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first, and when men have drunk freely, then that which is poorer; you have kept the good wine until now” (that opened the door). This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him. John 2:1–11.
In this story, the Lord is making real to us how Mary’s delving into the great working principles of faith had thrown the door open almost prematurely, and so the first great sign came, even though Jesus had carefully designated: “My hour has not yet come.” Almost out of season, ahead of time, a miracle occurred. This was the first of some seven great signs in the Gospel of John. This first miracle that Jesus performed, the first great sign that He accomplished, was performed in a miracle which came about through this faith.
We who are expecting the great days of exploits and signs and wonders, we who are expecting this fantastic day of miracles for the remnant to walk in, should not say, “Well, the hour is not yet come; it’s a little premature.” If we obtained the same secret Mary had, maybe we could push the door open too. Maybe the initiative of our faith would open the door for this great, fantastic era of exploits that God says we are going to walk in. If we can find a way, by looking into this story, and say, “O Dear Lord, let the Holy Spirit show us what Mary, the mother of our Lord, did that triggered it off.” For Jesus had even expressed a complete irrelevance of the situation. When Mary said, “They are out of wine,” He said, “What is that to thee and Me?” In other words, “So what? Let them get their own wine. All they are going to do is have a little too much to drink.”
Here is a fantastic key for something that does not seem to be in the will of God, something that seems to be irrelevant, an occasion which does not seem to have any bearing upon the exaltation and glory of Christ. Yet, when it was finished, as the Scripture says, “This was the beginning of signs that He did and He showed His glory.” He manifested that wonderful glory that was to come for the years following: in manifestations, in miracles, in signs and in raising the dead. He started them prematurely as Mary, the mother of the Lord, precipitated it by total, obedient faith. That is always the path to God’s best. The best wine came forth through a pattern of total, obedient faith.
Voicing it negatively, that which holds us back and destroys what God wants to do for us is often only one minor area of disobedience. “Whatever He says to you, do it,” no matter how reasonable or unreasonable it appears. When God gives you a word, when God sets a life before you, don’t cheat on it. Don’t think it does not matter to have one little area of disobedience or one little area of unbelief or rebellion.
Notice that our young people will suddenly have a problem, not because they are ninety-nine percent disobedient, it is because they are one percent disobedient. It is always one little area, not a great thing. When Jesus was being tempted by the devil in the wilderness, He quoted from the Scripture, Deuteronomy 8:3, “Man does not live by bread alone.” Then how do we live? Deuteronomy 8:3 says that man shall live by EVERY word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
The strength of the remnant that will do exploits will be in the diligence to do ALL that the Lord God has spoken, so they will not ignore the least part of what God has said. When God gives a word of what we are to do, there will be obedience to that word; there will be a carefulness.
Do not confuse this obedience with legalism. It will not be a sudden, legalistic thing that we labor under, but it will be a carefulness before the Lord that heeds every word. It is the little leadings, the one little word that God gives while we are trying to do all of the great things: “Why, this wasn’t too important—slide it back under the table.” We suddenly find it magnified by satanic assault to become something almost out of proportion to what it seemed to be. Don’t despise the commandments of the Lord, not even the least of them, in any way. When a word of revelation comes, be diligent to it.
Oh, that we would have men in the House of the Lord who would open the door to miracles and exploits: diligent men like the scribes of the New Testament era—scribes of the Kingdom who would sit and record and go over the prophecies, to bring forth the emphasis, again and again and again, lest one little thing that God has spoken escape us. Many times, through the years of this Walk, when a teaching would first come, we would exclaim, “Oh, beautiful; beautiful,” but we would not give it the attention that we should have. Many years later, after we struggled and floundered around, the same word would come again, and we would then find we had better be diligent to listen to it.
We had better follow EXACTLY what the Lord says. That, of course, is the whole idea in personal ministry. The one thing you learn in the ministry that comes over you is that you had better pay attention to everything God says. The difficulties have come, not because people were not wanting to walk with God, or because they did not want a prayer life etc., but because of one or two little areas.
I remember when one of the finest prophets we had was lost to the Walk because of some things which he thought were not important for him to do. He would put it aside while concentrating on what he thought were the important things. Now he is doing nothing. We remember the word of Mary, “Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.”
When the Apostolic ministry says something in the Lord, and it seems to be just a little casual remark, we still had better listen to it carefully, because it may turn out to be something so important that on it will hinge a great many things.” This does not seem always on the positive side, but even on the negative side this works.
Be diligent to ALL. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by EVERY word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The life we are going to live, and the walk we are going to follow through with, is going to come by diligence to embrace ALL of it.
I am giving this as a word, and let there be diligence on the part of everyone, especially whom God has appointed over the House of God, to go back and review all of the basic things the Lord has instructed us in, and to give diligence to them. Let us give diligence. Let us not say, “This is not important.” But until God says, “Do not do it anymore,” let us keep on doing it.
Let us give diligence to water baptism and believe for God to elevate it as the word told us. We have ignored the word that it was going to be a fantastic experience, a transforming thing, a burial of the old life. Let us give diligence to the Communion. Let us give diligence to the revelation of the Kingdom Sabbath that has come, and not feel that we are just going to ignore it because it does not seem to be too important. Let us give diligence to bring our tithes and offerings into the storehouse (Malachi 3:10).
When God gives a word of prophecy about a project or something that is to be set before the body, let us not cease to wait before God until it is fully accomplished. Let us believe the Lord.
If God is in a project, let us stay with it until it is completely launched, and still believe God as we see a spiritual fruitfulness coming forth that God has ordained. Whatever God is in, let us give diligence to it. Let us not leave the matter lay, unless God says, “All right, let it lay; it is not an issue now, you will pick it up later.”
The kind of employee a boss likes is one whom he puts on a job who works and works at it, not even stopping for lunch. The boss comes to him and asks, “Why didn’t you have any lunch?” The employee answers, “You told me to work. I’ll work till you tell me to stop.” This is the kind of man who could end up owning the business. Give diligence—give dilligence.
What about the prophecies? Give thyself WHOLLY to them, every word of them, that thy profiting may appear to all (I Timothy 4:15). Each of you will come to the place where everyone can see the word springing forth. It is not just to be stirred for the moment. Write down what God says to you in a book. Leaf through it every week. Ask yourself, “Am I doing this? Am I pursuing what God wants?”: not in a legalistic sense at all, but with carefulness to do the whole will of God.
Remember what Paul said about the Galatians? He said, “Oh, you’ve lost so much; you’ve gone back to the old legalism. Where is that carefulness?” Instead of being spiritual people, careful to seek God that His grace might flow into their lives, they had become legalistic, thinking, “If I’m circumcised, when a knife cuts off the foreskin, then I have it made. I’m in the Kingdom.” No amount of cutting is going to bring the Kingdom. The Kingdom is going to come by the thing they abandoned: the CAREFULNESS to do the will of God.
Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, about the Law and the prophets, that if there is just one man who comes along and takes only one of these little principles and teaches against them, he is least in the Kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19). God does not want us to count any truth as irrelevant or unimportant, but rather we should embrace this Walk.
We still set our mind up as some crazy kind of computer, or some supreme court mechanism. We feed questions into it like, “Is this important?” and it answers, “No, that’s not important, that’s of the devil.” But it IS important. We come to magnify the word of the Lord; to exalt everything HE tells us to do. I am trying to point out that some people say, “I didn’t do much, just a little violation.” Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor. Ecclesiastes 10:1. Just a little fly—it works that way. One Achan in a couple of million people will hold up the whole progress of conquering Canaan, make you turn your back and run, and you say, “What happened?” One Achan (Joshua 7).
Moses, a man humble and meek, was vindicated by God more than I have ever known of any man to be vindicated. If men opposed him, God opened up the earth to swallow them up and He consumed them with fire. Oh, how He established His servant Moses! But when it came time, because of one time of disobeying God, he did not get into the land of Canaan. He stood and he looked at it. What a torture it must have been to his heart, with his eye not dimmed nor his natural force abated, to stand and look far over from Mount Nebo into the land, and hear God say, “Sorry son.” One disobedience, one moment of wrath, though he was a man meek above every man on the face of the earth, in one moment he gave way to the flesh and he struck the rock. You say, “Well, that was the days of the Law.” Then remember those elders whom Paul turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh (I Timothy 1:20), because they could not guard their mouths.
One word can change the course of your life. Read chapter 3 in the book of James. It says that the tongue is like the rudder of a ship which turns its course. And it tells us the tongue is a fire, and how great a fire a little fire kindleth, when you do not learn to control your tongue. One of our young men has not yet learned to bridle his tongue. He has a heart that loves God so sincerely and God could make him one of the greatest prophets in the land, but if he does not learn to hold his tongue, he will wreck himself—just because he loves to talk, to gossip. James 1:19 says, … let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. It just takes a little thing. We talked a while ago about the significance of one little thing: hands being laid on your head by a demonic force and how it distracted, how it threw people over the precipice and gave them a shove so the things within them began to take form and shape, and actions began to come far beyond what was coincidence. No one could argue against the infallible proof. The Walk was thrown into just one little thing. “But, we didn’t know.” Yes, but what about the things that you do know? Let’s go after those things too. Let’s stop and think of the times that you have fallen into the ways of the flesh and what it has done to your perception. It takes just one little word, one little rebellious thought. The point is, you can have those things, but if you are diligently seeking God to be loosed from them, they will have no force in your life. We have to be consistent and persistent repenters until the areas of the flesh are reduced to nothing. We have to be seeking God with all of our heart.
This may sound legalistic, but God is saying to us, “Now, go ahead. Go on. You can make it.” Therefore, we do not want to tackle Ai and find out that an Achan has stopped us from the victory. We do not want to see this sacrifice, the love, and the intercession of the whole Body suddenly brought to a halt in one of the different areas where we are working, because something there has happened that God cannot look upon with favor.
In this day of the grace of God, we are to give heed, as it says in Titus, “The grace of God has come teaching us, that in denying worldliness and ungodly lust, we should live soberly, righteously in this present world” (Titus 2:12). We are looking for Christ to come. The grace is not coming to say, “Here, I’m going to judge the whole world for their sin, along with the old-order preachers with their hypocrisy and their cover-up, but you dear people in the Walk, I’ll excuse.”
You say, “Yea, Babylon is going to come down!”
Yes, but the wrath of God will judge the circumcised and the uncircumcised alike. He is going to come to deal with those in the Walk too. His judgment will begin in the House of the Lord. And I have been praying, “Lord, deal with us.” I am not holding back.
Have you ever watched a mother stand back and say, “It’s time for Daddy to spank.” So he does. Though he is not injuring the child, the mother just stands there and says, “Oh—oh!” She feels so terrible. “Don’t do that, don’t do that,” she pleads. But Mama is violating the whole order of the family. Instead she should say, “Look, I’ll hold him. We’ll see to it that he is not physically injured, but we are going to blister his bottom.” Then that little child learns there is unity between Mother and Father.
I have prayed things away from you people. I have prayed things away from pastors, but God showed me this was the little thing in me, and I repented. You can say, “Well, what’s in my life is just a little thing,” but no more should those little things be covered. I have taken my hands off and have said, “Go ahead and wallop them, Daddy. You’ve been walloping me; wallop them too.”
Let’s have no uncleanness. Let’s have no rebellion. Let’s have no stubbornness. None of us got into this Walk to back off. We are in it to go the whole way. We are not playing church. We have never seen anything like it before, and we are not going to turn, because of some perversity in our own spirits, and draw back now.
“Deal with us, Lord. If it is there, bring it out; expose it.” Oh, what a prayer! It has taken me many years to be able to say that, and I could go back very easily and say, “No, no, no, Lord, don’t do that; please, Daddy, let’s just not go through that scene! That’s a little bit too rough!” No, “He scourges every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12:6). And what is the purpose? that we may become partakers of His righteousness. I have become dedicated to Hebrews 12 because it says, “Do not back off from the chastening of the Lord, because every son whom He receives, and everyone whom the Lord loves, He chastens.” As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Revelation 3:19.
I think we will have to say, “Lord, we must be prepared to pray for Your dealings.” Some had better do it right now. You can do it yourself and say, “Lord, I’m not asking for a cover-up. I’m not stalling.” As an apostle, an elder, a deacon, a pastor, or whoever you are, are you still zealous for honesty and truth? Paul says in II Corinthians 4:2: “We have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” Can we say that?
Remember Eli? God rejected him. The Scripture says he was very heavy, and he fell off a chair and broke his neck. He loved the ark of God, but God took the ark away because of the sins of the people. What was Eli’s sin? His sons. It says of his sons that, “he restrained them not” (I Samuel 3:13). God rejected the High Priest for being a slack father. He had walked with no blame and was a good old man whom everyone liked. He raised little Samuel, but his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.
If I do not preach the truth to you, or you make yourselves vile and I restrain you not, would God reject me? Parents, what about the things you think should be done? Is it possible we could miss it all, like Moses, by just one moment of disobedience, by striking the rock instead of speaking to it? Is it possible we could come so far in the Walk, and because we did not have the obedience and carefulness to do completely what God wanted, just miss it on a little point, that we would miss it all?
This is a message of heart-searching. I am doing the same thing as you are. I am searching my heart. It cannot be that all of our efforts (ninety-nine percent of them) could be wasted because we cover up one area, and are not willing to submit completely. “How shall we escape if we neglect?” (Hebrews 2:3). Just a little negligence, when we could do it. If there is something that is bothering us, we can come before the elders and say, “God, forgive me. God, cleanse me.” Do it, even if you have to do it a thousand times. But work at it.
Are there moments of discouragement when you run back to something that you should not be doing? A little dope once in awhile in a moment of depression, or reverting back to some pattern of lust? You could be walking with God with praise and worship, yet in the days of testings you could be voicing such rebellion in murmuring and complaining, that you could turn something loose—you could spoil your whole walk. Then you would struggle and struggle to get back into it.
It is time for us to repent. There is a need to kneel before the Lord and to say, “Lord, it is the time of repentance.” It is not going to be anything but all the way for the Lord. It is not going to be halfhearted, and there is not going to be any restraint in the way we submit to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dear Lord, forgive us at this moment. O Lord, how I could fail! There could be such a pride, Lord, that I might put my hand to the ark when it is going over the threshing floor and the whole thing is being shaken, or that there could be a fear within me, and I would resist God’s dealings.
I yield, O Lord, to Thy dealings with us, and I come crying for mercy. We are so close to everything You have spoken. O Lord, all You require is that we have careful, obedient, total faith, that whatever You say, whatever it is, we will do it. Amen, Lord Jesus.
Wives, if you have not walked in submission and help, but rather, have murmured, complained or nagged in the home and have helped to create something that God cannot bless, repent of it. Get out of that rut. Husbands, if you have been negligent of your responsibility and your spiritual headship, repent of it. Leave that wrong behind you. Move into your responsibility. Where children have been rebellious, expose them to the Lord and believe for young prophets and prophetesses to come forth who will glorify the Lord. Wherever things have not been right, let us believe the Lord that they will be straightened up. Where you have failed in prayer, and failed in the Word, and failed in these areas mentioned, by the grace of God it is going to change. All you have to do is enter in and say, “Lord, here I am. I’m going to love You with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, with all my strength. Amen.”
Thank you so much for this teaching!