Although our focus is very much on the Lord, because we are moving into days of restoration, many pressures are coming over which we must learn how to prevail for our survival.
We cannot judge anything on a human level. We cannot condemn anyone who is going through difficulties, because we do not know all the sources of the oppressions or why they come. Because Satan tries to stop what we do, everything God sets before us will be hampered; therefore a hunger for God, and a desire to walk with God has to be in every heart.
If a brother who has a hunger for the Lord sins against you, how many times do you forgive him? Seventy times seven—there is no limitation to the grace of God; but God is also bringing a great deal of discipline to the Church. You must acknowledge that God is doing it, and that the only answer is to deepen your dedication to the Lord.
Rid yourself of any weak area fast, because Satan will come in like a flood and use an area of weakness to bring oppression against you or through you. This may not mean much to you now, but along the way you will really begin to understand it.
When you were first drawn to the Lord, you were nurtured and blessed. Then when you were strong enough, pressure came: discipline to bring you into what God wanted. Don’t expect soft, easy treatment; because you’re going to walk with God and be a part of the army of the Lord.
You are to be prophets and prophetesses of the Lord, that great company of people God has raised up to speak His word in the end time. You can’t be a prophet or prophetess of God if you don’t know anything about the Scriptures, or how to walk with God. Anyone who remains a victim of his own impulses never learns how to walk with the Lord and never matures. You have to learn how to appropriate God’s grace for your strength, day by day.
Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation … And these signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues;” Mark 16:15, 17. Areas in every spiritual advance, must first be cleared out. It’s not enough to move into a ten story building and fumigate the first floor only. Someday you’ll want to use the second floor; then you’ll find that it has to be cleaned up, just like the first floor. Each level you rise into requires a fresh dedication, almost as if you have to believe God all over again.
To a child, the problems in first grade seem great, but when he is promoted into the third grade, the first grade problems don’t seem to be so big anymore, and he laughs at the first graders who worry. The problems we face now are not the same as those at the beginning of this walk.
Satan is trying to disrupt the unity of the Body. No matter how many faults you see in your brothers and sisters, or how many problems you have relating to them, you will do better to stick with them and pray for them because everyone needs the protection found in the Body now.
You can’t be vicious or cruel in anything you do. You yourself have been in bad situations and have come up out of them to walk with God, so don’t condemn another who is slow coming out of them. Keep your heart open; you can’t take the grace of God for yourself, then turn around and deprive the next person of it. Still, the grace of God works differently in each case. It’s very hard to always know which course of action is the best to take. It is much easier to sit back and say you would do things differently than to be in the place where you’re constantly looking to the Lord to give you guidance and direction that will help you set the course and take the place of leadership.
We must have faith and pray for each other, for Satan would destroy some of our people, as he did with the early Church. Peter, James and John were always farther out in the front line than the other disciples. Herod slew James, the brother of John, with a sword. James was one of the inner circle who had known the great mysteries and wonders in the revelation of Christ on the mount of transfiguration and at Gethsemane. Peter was almost killed too; he was jailed until the Church realized that God had limited Himself to move both defensively and aggressively through their prayers and faith. Then prayer was made without ceasing on behalf of Peter, and the angels opened the door of the jail so he could escape.
God could have done this sovereignly, but He works out His salvation through us and He, a sovereign God, is saying in effect, “No longer will I move arbitrarily apart from you, but I’ll give you promises and then fulfill them through the principle of prayer and faith.” That being the case, can you see why Satan tries to keep people from praying? The only way God’s deliverance will come is through the prayers of the people, through their faith as they worship and seek God. Everything we do needs prayer. Don’t take anything as a matter of course; don’t be presumptuous. We must seek the face of the Lord with all of our heart.
No matter how many times those who earnestly seek God stumble, God ministers to them by mercy, but the anger of the Lord comes against those who cover things over and are hypocritical. If anything in your life is covered up, get rid of it, because God will deal with it. If you’re discouraged, look deep within your heart and find the source. See if you are reluctant to really repent and seek the face of the Lord to get rid of the old flesh.
God is loving, full of grace and mercy, but some people play along on the sympathy of others, getting them stirred up. Something down deep in their spirit is wrong. God wants truth in the inward parts. Behold, thou dost desire truth in the innermost being: and in the hidden part thou wilt make me know wisdom. Psalms 51:6. Pray to be deeply truthful and open to God, to confess your sins and repent of them, to seek the face of God; and God will see that you are not abandoned. If you don’t repent, you will walk right up against God, and He will deal with you. You know what you’ve done, you know the things you hide. Get them out before God. Many of your problems would have ended if you had given yourself more to seeking the face of the Lord. Maybe God would not have to deal with you so drastically if you would deal with yourself.
Many try to be led by the Spirit of the Lord, but the old self gets in the way. Often we do not deliberately go against the Lord, but we ramble down the road without asking, without seeking, without knocking, without believing the Lord. We have to be dedicated to do the will of the Lord. There is nothing of the old life we need to hang on to; there is nothing to yearn for. Only one things is left; to walk all the way with the Lord.
Something eats away at some people’s spirits until they fall short of what they should be in God. Soon they are drifting; they aren’t aggressively moving into anything. Before they know it, they’re in trouble. We don’t need to let the young people get into trouble. They come into trouble spiritually because they don’t know they’re in trouble. Some of the causes of this are the conditions, environment and circumstances we live in, and in some cases, our families. No matter who does what to you, watch closely that you do not become resentful. People will do things that stir up resentment, not knowing that Satan is using them. Those who are resentful over things done to them in the past must realize that God allowed them so He could work His will in their lives. By being resentful they continue to thwart the will of God and stand in the way of every good thing that God wants to do for them.
Many times people become resentful over things done to them in their personal experiences. Husbands and wives become resentful toward each other over the way they’re treated. Actually, the resentment is as bad as the offense that was committed, because a person who is resentful will immediately throw up walls to the one who offended him and also to God. Then he’s shut off and nowhere, with resentment working away at him. If you become resentful, when others around you are filled with resentment, something in you reacts to them and then you’re as bad off as they are.
Nothing is as deadly in this walk as sympathy. You cannot become sympathetic with a person’s rejection of Christ. You must love him, but you cannot be sympathetic with his decision. There is a difference. God will deal with those who simulate repentance, those who are not really sorry of sin. They don’t really want to break through so they put on an act. God knows when people put on an act, yet those people still solicit a lot of sympathy from other people. But when God starts to deal with problems in the Body, the people who have sympathy will be dealt with too.
When Korah came against Moses, the earth took not only him, but everyone who sympathized with him: those who came to Moses the next day and said, “You slew the Lord’s people.” But it was God who opened the earth up, Moses couldn’t have done it alone. Then the Lord smote the Israelites with a plague, and Aaron had to grab the censer of incense and run down to make intercession for the people or the entire nation would have died. God would have no part with a people who were sympathetic toward those He was judging.
This could happen easily now, for God will go through the whole Body. Those who are lost are those who were dragging along in the last step. If you’ve been going along with defeat and bitterness in your spirit, when you come to the next step, you won’t be able to handle it.
Sympathy, passivity and resentment have to go. Every once in a while someone will talk to me, and though his words are one thing, what is in his spirit is another matter. Down underneath he is resentful. Sometimes homes break up because one member doesn’t want to walk with God and the other does, but the one who does want to walk with God still limps along. You wonder why the believer can’t make it now that the unbeliever has departed. It is because he’s still resentful over what happened to him in the relationship.
When someone has done something to you which you resent, if you start praying about that situation, you’ll pray vindictively. Then if God doesn’t deal with them, you’ll shift the resentment to God. That’s why resentment raises walls to the Lord. You almost dictate to God, what He must do to satisfy your resentful feelings, but God says “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay” (Romans 12:19). When you pray vindictively, instead of putting things in the hands of the Lord, God will not answer, because it isn’t your business, it’s His. Then you turn your resentment toward God because He isn’t doing it.
We must leave things in the hands of the Lord. We must be loosed from resentment before it cuts us off from God. Nothing prevails in this walk but a right spirit. We have to be able to bless those who curse us and do good to those who despitefully use us.