This is not an hour in which thy heart should be heavy. No matter what your need is, you should rejoice in what the Lord brings forth in the earth.
It is a day when the ministries are surely decreasing, and the Lord is increasing. Day by day you find that the Lord is bringing an end to the flesh, and He is bringing forth a day of the Spirit prevailing.
Glorify Him that the day of the Lord’s exaltation hath come. Flow together into one Body. Stand together in one spirit. Don’t let your hearts be discouraged or dismayed.
If thou shalt look at thyself and all that pertains to thee, you shall do the wrong thing. Seek first the Kingdom. The other things will be added. This He hath promised. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desire of your heart. Come to that dedication where the Lord shall be everything.
Stop and consider what the Lord hath done to you in this walk with Him; He hath brought you into a precious Word. He hath brought you into a walk with Him.
Yet He hath allowed the personal problems and circumstances to harass you. Why would the Lord do this? So that you would come to the place where you would put these circumstances in a lesser place, that you should dethrone them from the interest in your life, and say, “The Lord shall be the first One. I shall seek His Kingdom. He shall be preeminent in all things.”
When thou shalt say this, then the Lord shall make even thine enemies to be at peace with thee, because thy ways have delighted the Lord.
Oh, let your heart be set upon this one thing: You shall not be engaged with all of your problems, but you shall pursue after the interests of the Lord and seek them above everything else.
Then shall the Lord bring health and strength to thee. Then the Lord shall prosper your way. Yea, He is able to cause all grace to abound toward you, that ye always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.
“The vision of the Kingdom shall fill thy heart. From the time that you arise in the morning to the time that you take your rest at night, you shall sing, ‘It is the dawning of Thy Kingdom. It is the breaking of a new day. It is the day of judgment and of perfect victory.’ All thy enemies shall come down, and you shall rise to a place of perfect peace.
There shall be an encouragement within thee, because the Lord hath brought thee to a place where thou art not filled with anxiety concerning the things of thine own self, but thou art filled with anticipation that Christ shall move upon His people, and that His name shall be exalted.
Thou hast come to follow the Lord, the Captain of thy salvation who hath been persecuted. And ye too have been persecuted and harassed and beset on every side. Ye are as the people that were brought to David: distressed in soul, in debt, and in bondage in many ways. Yet the Lord hath set thee free. He hath brought thee to this place that ye shall affirm before Him, ‘Thine we are, and we shall walk with Thee.’
“It is a day that the Lord doth assemble thee, as those that came to David with a perfect heart, to make Christ Lord. So thou art come to a time in which ye shall be strong to do the will of God together, and delight in the will of God together.
No longer shall ye even find joy in an individual pursuit. No longer shall ye even be content to be an individual. Your only joy, your only happiness, your only blessedness shall be in the house of God, to be one of the family of the Lord, to be part of His mighty remnant that is doing the will of God and accomplishing great things in this day.”
The Lord wants to move on us by the Holy Spirit, until we are melted into one, that we will see every bit of friction disappear between any church or any individual, as with our very lives we are dedicated to see the oneness of the Body come forth.
That is what the Lord wants to see released. He has been speaking to us in our exhortations and our prophesying that if we even take offense, we are committing a great sin to allow ourselves to be separated from our brother or sister, to break that unity of the Body.
The Lord is beginning to speak to us as individuals on the same plane. We can be hung up with our own problems and circumstances to such an extent that we forget the Kingdom of God and forget why we were called.
I’m not too concerned when someone can’t get started in a ministry just because he is all wrapped up in his own problems; he will just have to learn to walk with the Lord.
But when I see those who are going on with the Lord experience one difficult circumstance after another, refusing to give that any validity in their life as they continue faithfully in their ministry, that is what I call rising up above everything that pertains to themselves.
When Paul prayed about his thorn in the flesh, the Lord told him, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” “All right, then I’ll glory in my infirmities; because when I am weak, then I am strong.”
These ministries have to come through this. There must be death working in you, or there will not be life working in those to whom you minister. This is the pattern by which it works. Do you want to be a prophet of God? Okay, die a little. Go ahead and die a little. It’s not pleasant though, for no one likes to die. Even if someone holds your hand, you don’t want to die. God gives us lessons against sympathy, and then we are put in a place where we say, “I could use a little.” The Lord is teaching us, “Come, rejoice in the Lord, and in the power of His might. And the joy of the Lord will be your strength.”
There must be something that lifts us up: the joy in doing His will, the joy of being in the center of His will, regardless of the battle we are facing. Become dedicated to a oneness, to move on together, with no jealousy, no envy; so that when the Lord blesses a brother and he seems to flourish while you’re way down in a hole, you don’t complain. That is between the brother and the Lord; it is not between you and the brother. That is for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to talk about—not you.
You may say, “I want to prosper.” Untold prosperity will come, but God is looking for a people who will place the interest of the Kingdom ahead of their own infirmities. Then He knows He will have a people who will place the interest of the Kingdom above their own prosperity. How can God trust people with the money that is going to be released when He can’t trust them to put His interests ahead of a few little personal problems? Every business that has come forth has gone through the very same process. God starts it: we have the promises, the leading of the Lord, the confirmation of prophets. Then we watch that business on the brink of closing its doors, facing trouble and one problem after another.
I have a feeling God will have to trust us to put His Kingdom first regardless of all our struggles. And when we get so that we really seek Him first above everything else and continue seeking His face with all joy, then God will have a people on whom He can pour out the money, for He knows the money will go where He wants it to go—for His Kingdom.
I want God to work His faithfulness in me. That faithfulness comes when we are being tested and tried, and we pass the test. That is where we learn to be faithful stewards. You don’t learn to be a faithful steward while the Lord is giving you a big pile of money. You learn to be a faithful steward when you have only a little and give to the work of the Lord as He leads you. Your stewardship begins when the prophet says, “Make me a cake first,” and you dip into the bottom of the barrel and use the last drops of oil in the cruse and give that to God. When you give God all of your meager portion, you learn what He meant when He said, “Look at the widow who cast in her two mites. She has done more than all the rest, for out of her meager living she gave all that she had.” That is what God is looking for—total, absolute discipleship.
Quit whining, “Minister to me; I’m going through something.” What? Minister you out of the hand of God? We’re not about to minister you out of the hand of God. I’ve been in the hand of God. Would I dare blaspheme the greatest year I’ve ever known, when I’ve walked under the rod, under the stripes, being chastened by the Lord? The Lord has prophesied sonship: “Now you’ll come to full sonship; now you’ve come to divine health.” What has happened? Nothing but scourging. It finally has dawned upon me what God is saying, “I scourge every son whom I receive.” Whom He loves He chastens. I glorify God because He has counted me faithful and has brought me to this level. Gladly I am going to glory in what God is doing, because I know that if I suffer with Him, I’m also going to reign with Him.
When you want a shortcut to be a prophet?” Then I watch God put them through the fire. What are we going to do? Abandon them? God forbid! Don’t abandon them; just hold the door of the furnace shut. Keep them in there a while until God has a man! The Scripture doesn’t say that God will use a man because he has certain talents and abilities. It says, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” A man sent from God. The world is going to hear prophecies and see ministries come forth. They will try to identify them: What movement did they come from? What sect, what group, are they from? Only one thing can be said of them: This is a man who comes from the hand of God.
“In old order you polished up the natural ability, and everything was geared to the psychological approach to the masses. But in this hour God is drying up everything from the personality realm, from the human ability standpoint, and is emptying out the vessel until he feels so absolutely inadequate that he doesn’t even want to hold his head up inside the church building. Then God says, ‘Now will you do what I want done?’ and He begins to minister through a vessel that has finally come to the knowledge that in the flesh dwelleth no good thing.”
We’re coming into the new plane of the creative Word. Don’t you expect Satan to contend with us every step of the way? Don’t you think that God is going to put us through it, to first of all determine what kind of vessels we will be? Will we be exalted in the flesh? Or will we be yielded to the Holy Spirit to let God do the thing that He wants to do through us? We must come in faith, with such humility of heart, such willingness, that we put God’s will before everything else.
I’m not talking about the phony humility when a man seemingly humbles himself with a hang-dog look and says, “Oh, I’m nothing,” but still goes about taking care of his own business and his own interests, looking after “Number One,” no matter what happens. What he wants, he wants. If God wants something, that’s too bad for God; He’s not going to get it. This is the attitude of many who are in the pulpit and claim to have a walk with God. They are not going to get their desires because they are not ready to yield the interest of self. God wants you to lay your Isaacs on the altar; or to say like Job, “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away,” and then start worshiping with all your heart. When you have been stripped right down to the edge of life itself, He wants you still to worship Him and say, “Whatever You want, Lord, that’s what I give You. It’s all Yours.”
It is this kind of ministry that God is looking for today—men who will follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes. Whatever He wants, they want. Wherever He goes, they go. Whatever He says, that they will do with all their heart. They are not thrusting one another through. They are not breaking ranks. They are just opening their hearts to do the will of God, every day, in every way. They will crawl on their hands and knees, if necessary, to the place of ministry, to give the last reserve of strength to God. When God sees that He is truly first, and Jesus Christ is the absolute Lord over this apostolic company, then it is going to shake the world and bring down the walls of Babylon.
Can God trust some of us when our own hearts may be more untested and untried, more undedicated than some of the men God has within the strongholds of Babylon? This is not a matter of comparison; it is a matter of dedication. The thing that Babylon has to its fault is that it is not dedicated to the only Lord, Jesus Christ. They have other lords over them. The thing that God is demanding absolutely of you is the Lordship of Jesus over you. You are His bondservant, to do His will absolutely, whatever it might be, wherever He might lead.
You can’t do it with any reservations. You can’t do it with any self-pity. Pray as I have prayed for years in moments of testing. Say, “Lord God, I thank You for the privilege of serving You. Thank You for the privilege of being in the battle.” Thank God for the privilege of going into the sufferings and dealings of the Lord. When He gets all through beating, you say, “Thank You, Lord.” I’ve prayed that way hundreds of times. It is not a phony prayer. I mean it—with all of my heart I am grateful!
There needs to be repentance in our hearts, that which says, “O God, I aspire to this ministry, but I want to be sure that everything of the flesh and self is out of the way. As I am walking down the road, I don’t want to carry any seeds of self-seeking that will explode like a time bomb and destroy everything God is doing.” God does not intend to do that either. This move is not coming forth as some have in the past, when a man served God for five years or so and then got off the track.
We must have faith to move ahead in the Lord as we go through testing’s. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. The Lord is more concerned about what He is doing with you, than what He is doing through you. Let’s yield ourselves wholly to the Lord, because what we are going to be in quality—the quality of oneness and unity between the brethren, one Body indivisible in spirit—is more important than our aspirations or ambitions of shaking the world right now. We refuse to let anything separate us. We are called of God and set in one Body, and to that we are dedicated with our very lives. Leave the results in the hand of the Lord.
From now on it will go beyond His dealings with individuals; He will deal with us as a Body, as He brings forth that unity and oneness. Then He will bless and provide for us as a Body, just as He has provided for us individually. There will be no end to the provision of the Lord and the abundance that will be poured upon us.
I know I’m speaking by revelation the thing that God wants spoken to our hearts. We must recognize it as a foundational Word. We not only heed it, but we embrace it, in the name of the Lord. We take this Word to be written upon our hearts. We will walk together. We will place the interest of the Lord above our own. We will not take offense at anything anyone would do. Even if they were to smite us, we would absolutely refuse to withdraw from the Body.
As far as your personal feelings are concerned, the days of sensitivity are over, all finished. You must come to the place now where you say absolutely, “I’m completely dedicated to the oneness and unity of the Body. Even if I become like a doormat to all the brethren, I say, ‘Amen’ to it. At any price, I maintain this unity of the Holy Spirit within this Body in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
“This spirit of whining, this spirit of self that wants to be exalted, this position-seeking attitude, is an Ishmael spirit. To have the pureness of what God is bringing forth in this hour, there cannot be sweet water and bitter water proceeding from the same stream. There has to be that total death to the self-life, so that if God says, “You’re to be a doormat,” there is not the slightest hesitancy in your spirit to say, “Be it unto me, Lord, according to Thy Word.” This will produce the great force of God in the earth in this hour. Everything that we have seen in the past has been a mixed thing with little flashes of diluted revelation. Before it moved very far down the road, it had dissipated down to some lower level of human striving where nothing could come forth for the glory of God. But this is the hour in which we shall see it put together in the right way.”
“For many years we have been yearning to see apostolic companies travel through the land and to see the churches come forth. I believe God has held it back. He has brought the people of God through probes, through deep preparation.
I believe this is more important than a set of directions and principles by which we govern our churches. It is a principle, an attitude of spirit: Christ is Lord, and He is the Head of this apostolic company; He is the One being glorified. When these companies go forth in the earth, many things will be brought against them, but they will be able to say, ‘None of these things move us. We’re not counting our lives dear unto ourselves. We’re going to finish our ministry with joy. Our ministry is to see His Kingdom come forth.’
“Many people have traveled through the land with a selfishness and an ambition. It is not the order or the organization that is Ishmael. It is the spirit, this ambition of the flesh, that is Ishmael. And it is the spirit that is Isaac. The thing that makes us the true people of God is that we have the true attitudes of the Kingdom. We run our lives by the standards of the Word of God, His standard of success which says, ‘You’ll walk before Me with an unselfish dedication to see the people blessed, to walk with God regardless of anything that comes against you, with a dedication which won’t count the cost, but will count it a delight to walk in whatever God sets before you.’ If we have this dedication worked in the ministries, this move will shake the earth and bring forth the Kingdom.”
In the past I have thought, “After the Lord does this or that for me, then life will be a little easier.” Yet I have not found anything except the Lord increasing the load, increasing the responsibilities. I think it is time that I get wise to the fact that the Lord is going to do a great deal through a few, through a remnant, which means that every one of them will have an increasing amount of responsibility. The Lord will not increase the number of people as rapidly as He increases the responsibilities, the areas of battle and conquest, and the areas of ministry.
Many, many churches will come up, and eventually there will probably be a hundred bodies of people to every dozen ministries who will travel among them and establish them in the Lord. The ministries will not increase as fast as the responsibilities increase. This means that I am not going to face a lesser task; it means that I must break through. The mountains will be cast into the sea. The Lord will make paths for us to get through the difficult, impossible place only so that we can reach another area, and minister even more effectively. Every blessing will lead us into more responsibility and into a greater need.
The Lord came and appeared to His disciples while the waters were turbulent and the storm was raging. He brought an end to the storm, and immediately they landed. What did they face then? A man possessed by a legion of demons, so powerful that no one could even chain him. They faced the impossible and saw the man delivered.
They came down from the mountain where they had seen the Lord transfigured and glorified before them. What then? They struggled unsuccessfully to cast out an epileptic demon. They had had success in many similar cases; why couldn’t they touch this one?
The Lord had to teach them something more. As we come out of one battle where we have finally learned how to overcome the enemy there, we will face another principality and learn how to deal with it, until finally we will learn to explore the whole spirit world and all the principalities and powers that can come against us.
We are the ones God has chosen to come against them. It is not at Satan’s initiative; it is at ours. We are the ones who are moving into strongholds that Satan has had reserved for centuries, for millenniums. We are the ones who are taking for the King what He has won for Himself. We are enforcing Christ’s victory in realm after realm. Do you expect it to be easier as you are coming against the strongholds, to the days of violence, as you are prevailing against all the powers of darkness?
Maybe one day you will have no more personal problems. You won’t be worrying about the rent or the car payment. All you will be facing is a simple little torture rack. Who knows what the day is going to bring forth? Don’t worry about personal problems now. Commit them to the Lord. Put the Lord first; seek Him above everything else.
You may say, “I feel like going back.” Where will you go? Do you want to sit in Babylon? Run from a lion, and a bear will eat you. Run into the house, put your hand against the wall, and a scorpion will bite you (Amos 5:19). You have no place to run. You are either going to do the will of the Lord with all your heart, or you will find yourself in those days when the Lord judges the circumcised and the uncircumcised alike. This is the day of reckoning, and God is reckoning with you. He’s going to make you a true disciple. You’re not going to be one of those fair-weather, lighthearted adherents to some kind of a Hollywood-type evangelism or promotion. We are not organizing this into some sweet “tell mother I’ll be there” operation.
I’ll tell you what God is doing: He is getting you ready to be the army of the Lord, to lay your life down for the Lord if need be. You are going to lay everything on the line and walk through. He knows how to push and stretch you out of measure. He knows how to put the pressure on you, taking you as far as He can today, and tomorrow a little further, and the next day still a little further. He has brought this whole Body of people through one testing and one trial after another for only one purpose. He has brought us together where He can say, “Now by My Spirit I want you to flow into one. I want to make you just one unit. I am going to make you like a plague to Babylon.” You will not break ranks. There will be no way that Satan can make you turn against one another or thrust one another through. There will be none seeking the preeminence. There will be only one thought: We have only one Lord, one King. We have only One to be exalted, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
“The Scripture says, ‘By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, because you love the brethren, and you love one another.’ I don’t know of any walk that has ever come since the early Church, where you will find such absolute men and women of God, who see each other as members of one family, of one Body, whether they are in Brazil, Mexico, Seattle, on the East Coast, or wherever they are. They will defend each other to the wire. Gossip goes in one ear and out the other because their confidence cannot be shattered in what God is bringing forth in this remnant.
Go to any part of Babylon and try to find someone who has any confidence in anyone else. You won’t be talking to them very long before they are undermining the other man’s work. They say, ‘Well, he’s a fine man but …’ as they start telling you all the negative things. You won’t find one man of God in this walk who would undermine in any way another ministry or another part of the Body that the Lord is raising up. I think this Scripture is just now coming into the real revelation of how we are going to be related, and how we will be identified in this hour as the remnant of the Lord by the love that we have for one another.”
“Because you are a son, the Lord will put you through it; you will suffer for Christ’s sake. The world will study you, but they will not see the suffering; they will see the love in your heart that submits to the authority over you. That is what the Church has to come into. The love of God will be so great, far greater than the suffering that God is bringing it through. The thing that the world will see is that love for God.”
We are open to this Word, and this is the time to act on it. You can’t just come and let your ears be tickled a little by this Word. God isn’t using a feather; He is using a sword, and He is cutting deep. And so we say, “Yes, Lord. Go ahead. Cut away. Divide asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow, to the thoughts and intents of the heart. Discern it, Lord. For all things are laid open before Thee.” We are lying on the operating table, bleeding. What do we do about it? Say, “Yes, Lord. I take the Word. I’ll be dedicated to be what You want me to be—a part of the Body that You are raising up.”
Lord, give us the faith to believe not only for ourselves, but for a brother too, that if he falls into problems, we do not resist him, reject him, or rebuke him in the sense of judging him. Rather we entreat him as a brother and identify with him in his need, because we are one with him. God grant that if a brother does sin, we consider ourselves so one with him, so completely identified with his sin, that we would mourn, as Paul admonished the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:2). They should have mourned because they were so completely identified with the sin of that brother. The only reason sin could contaminate the whole Body was because they were still reacting as individuals, instead of mourning because one of God’s Body had done it. They should have been so identified and so one with the sin that they would have started the repentance within their own hearts.
That is what love does. Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. It mourns over a grievance. It covers a multitude of sins. We have something to learn yet about this kind of unselfish love for the Body and for the brethren. It will mean nothing less than laying our lives down for the brethren; not only an occasional one here and there giving his life in sacrifice, but a willingness to lay our life down for the Body, for the brethren. This must be in our thinking.
If we are to see the power of God released, it will be in the kind of unity we see in the New Testament pattern of prayer as we are concerned about only one thing. In the early Church they weren’t praying, “O God, please save the skin of the apostles.” They were praying for Jesus Christ to be glorified, for Him to be honored. They spoke the Word of God with boldness. The issue was not whether a man would be beaten for Christ or thrown into jail. The issue was: Does the Word of the Lord run swiftly? Does it have free course? Is the Word of the Lord coming forth? They were concerned about the important things of the Kingdom. We must have that prayer style.
As we pray, we should be crying out together in agony, in a true unity. Then when a Word comes from the Lord, we all glorify God, as we “amen” it and receive it. When a prayer comes, we all join with it and all “amen” it. When a need comes, we all lay hold upon it together. There must be that crying and blending together, until we do not function as a congregation of people, but we function as one man, as one Body, every one of us responding to what the Spirit is saying. If we would do that we would find this amazing new prayer style of the New Testament, until one day we would pray and the building would shake! God bring that to us again.
“We are talking about the Kingdom. Everything that God has given here is dealing with the self life that must be dealt with to bring forth the perfect flow of love and unity that must be in the Body. I would like to read from Matthew 13:24–30, the parable of the tares.
He presented another parable to them, saying, “The Kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprang up and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.
“And the slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ And the slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No; lest while you are gathering up the tares, you may root up the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares; and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
“A little later on the disciples came to Him and said, ‘Lord, explain to us that particular parable of the tares of the field.’ And Jesus said, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the Kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age: and the reapers are the angels. Therefore just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth His angels (in many cases this word is translated ‘messengers’; He shall send forth His messengers), and they will gather out of His Kingdom all stumbling-blocks, and those who commit lawlessness.” Verses 37–41.
“We have been given an opportunity to repent of anything in us that, left undone, could cause us to be one of those stumbling blocks, or one of those who would suddenly decide he could do it better alone than by being identified with what God is bringing forth in the unity of the Body. If we were to become one of those walking in lawlessness, a messenger sent from the Lord would come and remove us. Oh, what a solemn challenge there is in the Word that is coming, in the prophecy and the prayer. We must understand what the Spirit has been saying concerning our commitment to the Lord. Will we become a stumbling block, or will we walk in the fullness of obedience?”
Sometimes you become concerned and ask, “What are we going to do about those right within the Body who refuse to walk on with the Lord, who become a source of oppression to us?” You bear with them as long as you can; and that means as long as they are with you. Removing the stumbling blocks has already begun, and the quickest way for the Lord to bring that release is by reaching the depth and the pressure He is putting us in now. The ones who can’t take it disappear. This is a solemn thought. God is eliminating the stumbling blocks in His own way. The very depth of dedication will eliminate them sooner or later.
From the time this walk with God first opened up it went progressively deeper and deeper in the Lord; and the deeper it went, the more the lighthearted ones just disappeared.
People prescribe how far they would go with God. When they reached that limit, they said, “Sorry, this is as far as I’m prepared to go.” They wouldn’t go any further, and that is why this move becomes a remnant. A remnant means what is left over, what God has left.
It is not based upon their own strength; it’s based upon the fact that they are the wheat. They are not the tares, or the stumbling blocks: they are ones who have followed the Lord. “You that have followed Me in My sufferings, in regeneration shall sit on the thrones,” Jesus said (Matthew 19:28). This is the way the Lord does it. We are going through it. Most of us have gone through it. Some of the new ones coming in have said, “I didn’t know I was going to get into this much pressure.” Too bad if you’re disappointed. You should rejoice because this is the true pattern. Do you want to get into something that is a cream puff, just blown up? Or do you want to get into something that will go right in and take the Kingdom?
You may say, “I really wanted to come into a perfect church.” What would you do in a perfect church? You wouldn’t fit into it at all! Therefore the Lord has to deal with us, to bring us into the perfection in Christ. The deeper we go, the more we have to be dedicated with all of our heart to arrive at that perfection through the dealings of the Lord.