Happy holiday. Maybe “joyous Advent” would be better.
I would like to read a few verses before we start, beginning with Exodus 8:1.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let My people go, that they may serve Me.
Then in Exodus 19:6, the Lord says:
And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.
Then 1 Peter 2:9, which is almost a reiteration:
But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.
And then, showing that I am a true Richmonder, Revelation 1:5-6:
Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood;
and He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father;
to Him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Let us pray.
Father, I am grateful, like I said this morning, that we do not have to grieve today because You have given us a Savior, Jesus Christ the righteous. Lord, this morning we rejoice in Him. We are thankful that You have called us to Yourself through Him, and He has saved us.
We present ourselves to You, Lord, as Yours—to be with You and to give ourselves to You here in speaking and hearing. We ask, O Lord, that You would be pleased to speak to us this morning.
Father, I admit my own weaknesses, and these brothers and sisters do not need to hear me. They need to hear the voice of God. Lord, I am only asking that You, by Your Holy Spirit, would take something of this word and make it Your own, and bring it to Your people, that they might be encouraged and empowered to follow You all their life.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
I really wanted to talk about something else today, but this is what the Lord gave me. The last couple of times I was able to share with you, we talked about serving God in our generation.
You are going to find out that I really hate this word because, to me, it has become a buzzword. People talk about, “What is your burden?” and things like that. But you are going to find out that the Lord has burdened me with calling people into personal relationship with Him.
I am sorry, but that is what He has impressed me with most in my reading of the Scriptures and in my going on with Him. You will probably get tired of it, but I think this is something the Lord really has on His heart.
Almost every time I speak, I know you hear something of that. I am not saying that as an apology, because I think that is on the Lord’s heart. I am just saying that this is the way it is. This is what the Lord has given me.
In talking about how we are to serve God in our generation, we have said that it is a relationship. But I want to go further than that this morning, so that we do not think we are just going off on our own and having our own little relationship.
We are all called into a relationship that brings us into a body. In this relationship, in this body, we are brought into a relationship to serve God. That is what He redeemed Israel for.
When He redeemed Israel, He said, “Let them go out and serve Me in this mountain.” In the same way, He does not save us just to say, “Go away, children. Have fun.” He calls us to Himself that we may serve Him.
This morning, as you probably noticed from the verses I read, we are talking about the priesthood. Being a Catholic—or a former Catholic—you might think that I have a different view of priesthood. I do not think I do.
There are priests in every religion. But one of the teachings that came out of the Reformation, and was really important, was the priesthood of every believer.
We have groups, such as the group that we are around and the group that I come from, that have a tendency—because we are all called to be priests—to let only certain ones function as priests. Then the rest of us put it on autopilot. We let it cruise.
That is not what the Lord is after. The Lord is after everyone being a priest.
Now, what is a priest? I want to make it very, very simple. It is not somebody who wears a robe. It is not someone who officiates the Eucharist.
In the simplest terms, a priest is a person who has a special relationship with God, and out of this special relationship, he is able to serve God. That is what a priest is: someone who has a special relationship with God, and out of that relationship, he offers service to his God.
It does not make them holier-than-thou kinds of people. It makes them real.
I can only speak from my own experience. As I said, I grew up Catholic. I remember Father Wallace. Father Wallace was a younger priest, and I remember Father Wallace playing football with us.
He was not so out there somewhere, up in the heavenly places or something like that. He took who he was and the ministry he had from God, and he brought it down to us. I thought that was really neat. That was impressive to me.
At the same time, he served God. In doing that, he served God.
This is your faith as a Christian. This is your purpose in being a Christian. This is your vocation as a Christian. All who are in Christ have been called to be priests: to have this special relationship and, out of this relationship, to serve our God.
I am not going to go into what a priest does and such like that. Maybe at some other time that will be something to do. But I want to look at the result of priestly ministry.
You have to take these things both personally and corporately. You cannot say, “Okay, this is for the personal, and this is for the corporate,” because they apply to both.
What are the results of priestly ministry? We want to see its importance for us, for God, and for His purpose in the church.
We are going to look at three examples—or three results—of priestly ministry. They are all in the Old Testament, because that is mostly where we see priests. The priests we see in the New Testament, except in the epistles, are not always good examples. Like the priest who passed by the wounded man while the Samaritan took care of him—not a good example.
Let us turn to 2 Chronicles. I know this is the book that most of you read the most.
I will say this: if you read 1 Chronicles, 1 Chronicles is the book of grace. Then in 2 Chronicles, you have the falling of the kingdom. But 1 Chronicles is so full of grace.
We will look at 2 Chronicles 22, beginning with verse 10.
Now when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah.
But Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the king, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him away from among the king’s sons that were slain, and put him and his nurse in the bedchamber.
So Jehoshabeath, the daughter of King Jehoram, the wife of Jehoiada the priest—for she was the sister of Ahaziah—hid him from Athaliah, so that she slew him not.
And he was with them hid in the house of God six years, while Athaliah reigned over the land.
Continuing into 2 Chronicles 23:
And in the seventh year Jehoiada strengthened himself, and took the captains of hundreds into covenant with him.
And they went about throughout Judah, and gathered the Levites out of all the cities of Judah, and the heads of fathers’ houses of Israel; and they came to Jerusalem.
And all the assembly made a covenant with the king in the house of God. And he said unto them, Behold, the king’s son shall reign, as the Lord hath spoken concerning the sons of David.
Then, in verses 8-11:
So the Levites and all Judah did according to all that Jehoiada the priest commanded; and they took every man his men, those that were to come in on the Sabbath, with them that were to go out on the Sabbath: for Jehoiada the priest dismissed not the courses.
And Jehoiada the priest delivered to the captains of hundreds the spears and bucklers and shields, that had been King David’s, which were in the house of God.
And he set all the people, every man with his weapon in his hand, from the right side of the house to the left side of the house, along by the altar and the house, by the king round about.
Then they brought out the king’s son, and put the crown upon him, and gave him the testimony, and made him king. And Jehoiada and his sons anointed him; and they said, Long live the king.
Then Athaliah heard it, was upset, and they killed her.
Now, Jehoiada was the high priest at the time. He served as priest. But what came out of the ministry of this priest? What came out of his ministry to Judah, to the Lord, and to the people at this time?
The king was put on the throne. The king was put on the throne of Israel. That is important, because one ministry of priests is to bring the King to His throne.
You know, when David was crowned king in Hebron, Hebron was a city of priests. That is where he was first crowned. The same is true here: it is priestly ministry that brings the King to His throne in the assembly and in your own life.
There was somebody in this place who had usurped the throne, who had taken the throne away from its rightful King—from the One Who should be on the throne. The priests were the ones who took the rightful king and placed him back on the throne.
That was the result of their ministry.
For something like fifteen or sixteen years, there had been a king who followed the ways of Ahab. The kings before Joash had been related to, or married into, Ahab’s family. What was in Ahab’s family had leaked into Judah.
Then you had this one who actually usurped the throne and said, “I will rule in this place,” and murdered the others. This priest hid the true heir at peril to his own life. Then, at the right time, he brought him forth and brought him to the other brothers and sisters and said, “This is the king. He should be on the throne.”
The brothers and sisters agreed: “Yes, he is the one who should be there.”
The other part of this priest’s ministry was that he equipped these people to put the king on the throne. You might not think much of it, but verse 9 says:
And Jehoiada the priest delivered to the captains of hundreds the spears and bucklers and shields, that had been King David’s.
He took the royal weapons and said, “Here they are. Now you are equipped to put the king on the throne.” That is priestly ministry. Priestly ministry equips.
The result was that people were equipped and the king was put on the throne.
Let us stay in 2 Chronicles, where they have all these wonderful names. I think some of us should be glad we were not born in biblical times.
Let us go to 2 Chronicles 34, beginning with verse 14. This is during the reign of Josiah. Josiah had sent the priests to repair the temple. He gave them money and said, “I want you to repair the house, the temple.”
They were going about repairing things, and then we read:
And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord given by Moses.
And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan.
And Shaphan carried the book to the king, and moreover brought back word unto the king, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they are doing.
And Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. And Shaphan read therein before the king.
The king responded to this. Let us look at his response, beginning at verse 29:
Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.
And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests, and the Levites, and all the people, great and small: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord.
And the king stood in his place, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments, and His testimonies, and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book.
And he caused all that were found in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers.
And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that were found in Israel to serve, even to serve the Lord their God. All his days they departed not from following the Lord, the God of their fathers.
If you want to go back, I think it is 2 Kings 23, and it goes step by step through the actual things Josiah did.
But let us look at the ministry of the priest here. The priest took the Word of God and brought it to the king.
Remember, we just talked about putting the King on the throne. Now this priest took the Word of God to the king. Then the king took the Word of God and put authority into it.
Out of that authority, there was revival. Revival came to the people of Judah because the Word of God was given authority by the king, and the Word of God was taken to the king by the priest.
What am I trying to say? Priests take the Word when they hear it and when they read it, and they do not trust their own understanding with it. They take it to the King and say, “What are we to do with this?”
Hilkiah did not go to Josiah and say, “King, you have the law. Here it is. You had better straighten this society out. My interpretation is that you need to do this, this, and this.” He did not do that.
He took it to Josiah himself and said, “How do you see this? How do you read this?” Josiah tore his clothes. He looked at it and said, “This is bad news.”
But the good news was that he responded to what he saw. He saw things that were wrong, and he took those things and made them right.
It is the same thing with us. Priests take the Word to God. God gives the interpretation, and then God sets things in order, bringing revival.
When we talk about revival, I do not know what kind of pictures you get in your mind. Maybe people hanging on lampshades, swinging, speaking in tongues, and things like that. That could happen. There is nothing wrong with that if it is from God.
But revival means that life is breathed in. If you are dead—if you drown or something like that—you can be revived. How do you get revived? They clear out what is in you, and then they breathe life into you.
That is what happened in Josiah’s time. Through the Word, he saw that things were wrong. He started on the inside. He looked inside and said, “Look at the things we have in the temple. These things do not belong here. Let us get them out of here.”
When he got the inside cleaned out, he started looking around and said, “These things are around the perimeter. These things are wrong too. We have to get rid of these.”
It went all the way outside, so the whole land of Judah came under this work.
Then, if you go any further, he celebrated Passover. The Word brought him right back into the gathering of all the people together. That is what the Passover was: everybody was supposed to come to Passover.
He sent out to everybody—even the people in Israel who had been taken away captive. Anyone they could find, they brought in and said, “Let us celebrate the Lord’s Passover.”
The ministry of the priest was to have the Word, take it to the Lord, let the Lord put authority behind the Word, and bring about what He wanted to do, which was to give life to His people.
Let us look at one other example, in Joshua 3.
Beginning with verse 1:
And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to the Jordan, he and all the children of Israel; and they lodged there before they passed over.
And it came to pass after three days, that the officers went through the midst of the camp;
and they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it.
Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.
And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves: for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.
And Joshua spake unto the priests, saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the people. So they took up the ark of the covenant, and went before the people.
And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.
And thou shalt command the priests that bear the ark of the covenant, saying, When ye are come to the brink of the waters of the Jordan, ye shall stand still in the Jordan.
Then, beginning at verse 14:
And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, to pass over the Jordan, the priests that bare the ark of the covenant being before the people;
and when they that bare the ark were come unto the Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water—for the Jordan overfloweth all its banks all the time of harvest—
that the waters which came down from above stood, and rose up in one heap, a great way off, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan.
And those that went down toward the sea of the Arabah, even the Salt Sea, were wholly cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho.
And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan; and all Israel passed over on dry ground, until all the nation were passed clean over the Jordan.
The priestly ministry here was to carry the ark and to go ahead of the rest of the congregation.
I do not want you to get the idea that there are just some official people who are meant to do this as believers today. Wrong. We are all meant to be priests. But this shows us the ministry of the priest.
They were to carry the ark. The ark is sometimes called the Ark of the Covenant, but I want to look at it as the Ark of the Testimony, because we hear the word testimony.
As a group here, sometimes I think we hear things and just say, “Okay,” without thinking about what they mean. When John was on the Isle of Patmos, he said that he was there for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus. What does that mean: the testimony of Jesus?
Look at 1 Timothy 6:13. It says that Jesus before Pilate made the good confession, or testimony—He witnessed to the good confession.
Then look at John 18:36-37:
Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My kingdom not from hence.
Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king.
I believe the testimony for which John was on the Isle of Patmos was that Jesus was King. That was a crime, because in saying that, you were saying there was a kingdom greater than Rome.
The testimony of Jesus is what Ernie was talking about last week: the kingdom of God within you. It is the government of God in you. You are saying that there is another King, and you do His bidding.
That was the testimony that put John on Patmos, because he could not go the way of the king of the world. He was no longer in that king’s realm. He owed allegiance to another King.
The priests carried this testimony. What was the testimony? The testimony that the Lord was King in their lives. That is the bottom line of it.
They responded to everything as He wished them to do.
In carrying the testimony, you can see when someone carries it. I want to tell you something: it is not a burdensome thing to carry the testimony. Those priests had to carry that ark on their shoulders, but we carry the testimony in our hearts.
The testimony we are to carry is that we are yoked with Him. We abide in Him, and He says, “My yoke is easy.” People can see that, and they can recognize it.
Those who carry the ark, or carry that testimony, are followed. People follow that because they see something in it. They see an authority in it.
When those priests came to the water, those priests were not magical men. It does not even give us the names of the priests who carried the ark into the water. You would think we would at least have their names, so we could say, “Oh yeah, it was Matt Blanchard, one of those priests who put the ark in the water,” and we would all say, “Oh, man.”
I do not like that at all. They were ordinary people. But where they went, they went with the authority of God. When they stepped in the water, you saw the authority: God worked. The water piled up, and everyone else went on by.
Priests, in some way, are forerunners. I am not going to say “overcomers,” because that has become a buzzword. Even “forerunners” is hard, because you think they are out there in front of the crowd. But in a sense, it is true.
Somebody has to take up that ministry so other people will see it and say, “Yes, let us go that way.”
These priests were not saying, “We hold it, not you. Stay back.” It is more like, “You want to hold it too? Come on. Let us hold it together.”
That is what the Lord is after. In the Old Testament, there was a set of priests. But in the New Testament times in which we live today, we can all carry the ark. We are all made to do that. We are all provided for it.
They went ahead, others saw it, and they said, “We will go through.” It brought them to the place where God wanted them to be.
Why am I saying all this? First of all, I believe—and I am not being critical; please do not think I am being critical—I believe the Lord has begun to shake something here in Richmond, to be very personal.
He is trying to do something. He is not shaking it like a child takes one of those little Christmas balls, shakes it, and sees the snowflakes and says, “Oh, how pretty that is.”
He is shaking it, first, to shake some things off. But I think, in another way, He is saying, “Wake up.”
Some of us have had things going on autopilot. We have lost some people who were of priestly stature.
It is not for us to bemoan those things. When God allows something to happen, He always has good in mind when He allows it.
What can be the good He has in mind? He wants priests. He wants us to be functioning in our priesthood.
We are all supposed to be priests. You might ask yourself, “How can I be a priest?” I just told you earlier: it is God’s will. That is one way.
Let us go to 1 Samuel 1. I know Samuel was not technically a priest; he was a Levite, but not of the priestly family. He was not one of Aaron’s sons. But the things we are going to talk about are principles for priesthood.
What does being a priest have to do with me? Let us look at 1 Samuel 1:10-11.
You know the story. Elkanah had two wives, Peninnah and Hannah. Hannah had no children, and she was always grieved when they went up to the house of the Lord to pay their vows. We do not know how long she was grieved, but we know that she was grieved because she was barren.
And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore.
And she vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of hosts, if Thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of Thy handmaid, and remember me, and not forget Thy handmaid, but wilt give unto Thy handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.
Life was given to you for this purpose of being a priest. That is why God gave you life. That is why you were saved: so you could be a priest unto God.
It is His purpose for you. That is the importance of it. What does being a priest have to do with you? That is why God gave you life. He wants you to be a priest. He wants to see the life He has given you before Him.
You will notice that a transaction was made here. She said, “If You will, I will. If You give me the life, O God, I will give it back to You.”
God heard her, because if you read the rest of the chapter, her countenance changes. She knew this was of God. She could go out from there, and I bet Peninnah, who had been putting her digs in here and there, was amazed and wondered, “How come she is not doing the usual thing?”
Something happened, and Hannah knew she had this life in God.
When she went to give the life back, Elkanah, her husband, said, “You do not have to do this, Hannah. Pray about it. Make sure.” How hard it must have been to do that.
Samuel may have been five years old when he was given, because we do not know how long weaning was. Sometimes it is said that, in biblical traditions, children were weaned for five years.
But as life was given to us by God for this purpose, we also need to understand that we were given back to God for this purpose.
You might think, “What do you mean, we were given back to God?” What do you think Jesus has done? It is not just that He died and rose again. In rising again, He brought us all to God and said, “Here they are.”
This was the joy that was set before Him, so that He could endure the shame of the cross: presenting us to His Father to be priests.
It was as though He said, “If I do this, Father, You mean Billy, Your brother? I will do it, because I know it brings You joy, and that will make Me happy—bringing You joy.”
We were given back to God for that purpose: to be priests, to function in that capacity.
How do I work out the work of a priest? What prepares me? Go to 1 Samuel 3.
Now the boy Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli.
What prepares me to be a priest? You do what has been given to you. It is just that simple. You do what has been given to you.
I do not know what a five-year-old can do as a priest, but you know what your children did when they were five years old for you. You might have sent them to do this or that, and they did it.
Samuel, to begin with, was a gofer. You know what I mean: “Go for that, go for that, go for the other thing.” He did that. He simply did the things he was supposed to do.
That is what prepared him to be a priest: just doing what he was given to do.
What are some of the things we are given to do? We need to do the following things on a daily basis.
We need to read the Word. We need to read it. We need to study the Word. That is something we can do. That is something we are given to do.
This is all simple. I am helping you. It is simple. It is not a complicated matter.
I think sometimes we think God is like Einstein. He is going to give us a complicated math problem, and we are going to look at it and say, “Oh, I got a D in algebra.”
We think God is like that. How wrong we are.
What does it say? If you ask for a fish, will your father give you a stone? Or a snake—is it? If you ask for bread, will he give you a stone?
Do you think God is going to ask a child to do a man’s work? Think about that.
I do not think so. I do not think God works like that. I think He nurtures, and He brings us to a place of responsibility where He can put more on us. But He starts out small.
Read the Word. Pray. You need to pray.
Yes, pray for yourself. Pray, “Lord, make me aware of things You want me to pray for. What needs to be prayed for? How can I pray? What should I pray for?”
That is one of the things I always struggle with in my prayer life. “Okay, what do I pray for now?” You go through things, and sometimes you just need to sit and wait and say, “Lord, show me. Put something on my heart.”
He will, and you pray for it.
Do not forsake gathering together. Priests are not lone rangers. Priests are together.
You may say, “Well, I have to go home.” Then you are a priest to your family. Your priesthood goes everywhere with you.
I heard that some people came here and made hot cider and hot chocolate for us. They did what was given to them to do. Those things are training for being a priest.
The last thing for training as a priest is found in 1 Samuel 3:4:
Then the Lord called, Samuel; and he said, Here am I.
You know the story. Samuel kept going to Eli and saying, “What do you want?” Eli said, “I did not call you. Go back to bed.”
Then the Lord called Samuel again the third time. Samuel rose and went to Eli, and said, “Here am I; for thou calledst me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord had called the boy.
Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be, if He call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak; for Thy servant heareth.
Have an open ear.
We hear a lot of things. When our Lord Jesus walked on the earth, He said a lot of things. But He always had a little tag on the end when He said something important. You know what that was?
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
I thought we all had ears, did we not? Well, some of us hear, but we do not listen. You ever been in that situation? Somebody says, “Can you come up here?” “Yeah, yeah.” You hear, but you do not listen.
It is the same with us. We hear a lot. But Samuel was able to differentiate. He was able to hear the Lord.
We hear a lot of ministry, and we judge it: “That was good ministry.” “Well, that was the best.” “Oh, that would send you to work.” “Let us not have that guy up again.”
The whole thing is, it is ministry. Ministry can be stored, brought out later, and checked out again.
But when the Lord speaks, you have to do something. When the Lord speaks to you, He is not saying, “Let us discuss this. Why do you not discuss it with your neighbors? Have coffee over it. Talk about what you think about it.”
The Lord is King. If the Lord says something—if He speaks something to you—He is looking for you to do something. He is looking for you to respond.
That is what He speaks for. He does not speak just to hear Himself. He speaks to say, “This is what needs to be done. Do this.” He is commanding a servant.
“Do this. I want to see something happening. You need to do this so this will happen.”
We have to have an open ear. May God open our ears.
The other thing is that we need to obey what we hear Him speak to us. I know somebody might say, “Oh, but we are saved by grace, brother.” I am not talking about being saved from damnation.
I am talking about being a priest. I am talking about having my soul saved. When I hear Him and He speaks to me, I need to obey. I need to obey quickly.
You know how it is when you ask one of your children, especially, “Will you come here and empty the dishwasher?” And they say, “Just a minute.”
Ten minutes later, you say, “I thought I told you to empty the dishwasher.” “I am healthy right there.” Then I wind up emptying the dishwasher, and I get mad.
Brothers and sisters, when the Lord speaks to us, “Just a minute” is not an option. It is not an option.
He speaks for the moment. He speaks to the moment.
Maybe you will not do something in that very moment, but when you answer in that moment, things will be set in motion so that what He wants accomplished further down the line will be done.
That is what He is looking for. Priests are servants. Servants were bought to serve. We have been bought to serve. That is our function here.
To close: when the Lord touches something—or, in our case, shakes something—it cannot remain the same.
Think about that. It cannot remain the same.
Do you remember when you were first saved, when the Lord touched your heart? Did you remain the same for very long?
No. When the Lord touches something, it cannot stay the same. He has a change for it.
We must adjust, or adapt, to what is yet to be, because we are going to be what is going to be.
Brothers and sisters, we are called to be priests. We cannot be the same anymore. We are called. If you hear that call, you have to respond.
Dear Heavenly Father, how I thank You that You want us in Your presence, to be Your priests. You want us to have a special relationship with You, and You want our service.
Lord, how wonderful that is. I pray, Lord, that You would take away the ideas we may have that serving You is a heavy thing, too burdensome, or too much for us.
Lord, help us to see that You call us to take Your yoke upon us, that Your yoke is easy and Your burden is light, and we will find rest.
Father, more than that, it is not just rest that we are looking for. We are looking for fulfillment in our own hearts. Lord, the only way we will be fulfilled is by being in this relationship with You.
Lord, this is what You made us for. This is the very thing You made us for. This is the very thing You redeemed us for.
O God, we want what You want from us. So help us, I pray, and bring about what You are doing here.
Lord, if things are not going to be the same, help us rise up. Help us rise up to be what we are to be, that we may go on as a people together.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.