And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done,
and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword.
Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying,
“So let the gods do to me, and more also,
if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time.”
And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life,
and came to Beer-sheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there.
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness,
and came and sat down under a juniper tree:
and he requested for himself that he might die, and said,
“It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life;
for I am not better than my fathers.”
And he lay down and slept under a juniper tree;
and, behold, an angel touched him, and said unto him, “Arise and eat.”
And he looked, and, behold, there was at his head a cake baken on the coals,
and a cruse of water. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again.
And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him,
and said, “Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee.”
And he arose, and did eat and drink,
and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights
unto Horeb the mount of God.
And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there;
and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said unto him,
“What doest thou here, Elijah?”
And he said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts;
for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant,
thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword;
and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
And He said, “Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord.”
And, behold, the Lord passed by,
and a great and strong wind rent the mountains,
and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord;
but the Lord was not in the wind:
and after the wind an earthquake;
but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
and after the earthquake a fire;
but the Lord was not in the fire:
and after the fire a still small voice.
And it was so, when Elijah heard it,
that he wrapped his face in his mantle,
and went out, and stood in the entrance of the cave.
And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said,
“What doest thou here, Elijah?”
And he said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts;
for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant,
thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword;
and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
And the Lord said unto him, “Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus:
and when thou comest, thou shalt anoint Hazael to be king over Syria:
and Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel:
and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou anoint
to be prophet in thy room.
“And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth from the sword of Hazael
shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu
shall Elisha slay.
Yet will I leave Me seven thousand in Israel,
all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal,
and every mouth which hath not kissed him.”
Father, we have gathered here in Thy presence this morning, conscious of our need of Thee. We thank Thee, beloved Lord, that Thou art wonderfully able to meet us through Thy Word.
We commit ourselves now very simply to Thee, Lord. We stand by faith in that anointing which is ours for speaking and for hearing, that this may be a meeting with Thyself, Lord, and that Thou wilt be able to communicate to us something of the burden on Thy heart, writing it indelibly by Thy Spirit in our hearts.
O Father, we give ourselves to Thee with praise and with thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
This morning, I want to come to a fourth phase in God’s dealings with His people: the phase of recovery.
When we looked at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, we saw some of the fundamental things about true kingship. When we looked at Moses and Joshua, we saw a redeemed people going over into the land in order that they might possess their inheritance and inherit the promises.
With David and Solomon, we saw the heart of God’s purpose: coming to the throne, reigning with Christ, if you like, in order that we may build the habitation of God in the Spirit.
Now we come to this fourth phase of recovery. Things have gone wrong. What God has worked toward from Abraham, through Moses and Joshua, through the judges and Samuel, through David and Solomon, has now been lost.
Indeed, a terrible division has taken place among the people of God. Ten tribes have seceded from the other two and set up their own house of God in a place called Bethel. They have set up great golden calves—one at Bethel and one in the north at Dan.
They have their own priesthood, which is not according to the mind of God. They have their own kind of worship. They have mixed with the worship of the Lord the worship of Baal, fertility cults, and all other kinds of evil.
There are a number of lives I want to consider, but the first life I want to look at this morning is the life of Elijah. He belongs to the northern kingdom.
He was not even in the southern kingdom of Judah, which at least held to Jerusalem, which at length recognised the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, and which at least had a priesthood and Levitical ministry according to the mind of God.
In the northern kingdom, all was backslidden. All was in decline. It was a time when first love had become cold, when error and evil had begun to take over.
At such a time, God raises up men and women who are to overcome, and Elijah is one of them. In the midst of all the departure, all the contradiction, all the confusion, all the darkness and error, God raises up a man who exhibits in himself, in his life, his character, and his ministry, all that God wanted for His people.
Elijah—Eliyahu—means, “My God is the Lord.” In the midst of all the decline, his very name testified to the fact that the living God was his Lord.
Here was a man in the midst of a people alienated from the house of God, with their own hotchpotch of worship—something divorced from the truth, with much that was true mixed up with much that was error: an unholy mixture of things, part world and part heaven.
Where could he turn? Where were there companies of people with whom he could find fellowship? He himself says, “Lord, I, even I only, am left. I am the only one who serves Thee.”
Can you imagine such a situation? Can you imagine yourself in such a situation: such departure, such backsliding, such decline—and not only backsliding, but the positive introduction of evil and error?
Can you imagine yourself living in the reign of a king called Ahab, one of the most evil kings of Israel, with his even more evil wife, Jezebel? Behind Ahab, the real power of the throne was Jezebel. There is no doubt about that. She masterminded the policy of the throne; she determined the course of events.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be one child of God, one servant of the Lord, in the midst of such decline and mixture, with the whole course of things being determined by demon-possessed people?
What is the lesson that we learn from Elijah’s life? There are many things that we could consider if we had the time. One thing is this: he was a man of like passions with us.
James 5:17 says:
Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth for three years and six months.
So many people say, “Oh dear, I wish I were a Watchman Nee. If only I were a Watchman Nee, or a Martin Luther, or the apostle Paul.” My dear friend, all of these were men of like passions with us.
The essential difference between the overcomer and the undercomer—the defeated one—is simply this: Elijah was a man of like nature with us, and he prayed.
That is the difference. If you knew Martin Luther, you would find him with as much flesh and blood as you, and with all the failings to which you are tempted. You would find the same with John Wesley, the apostle Paul, and our brother Watchman Nee.
They were all human beings, of like nature with us, subject to the same temptations, weaknesses, accusations, and sense of condemnation. But the difference was that they went ahead in prayer.
They would not allow things simply to remain in a mess. They prayed in the name of the Lord. Elijah prayed that the heavens would be shut, and they were shut for three whole years. Then he prayed again, and though the answer tarried, finally the heavens opened and the rains came.
But that is not the supreme lesson of Elijah’s life. Consider another lesson from 1 Kings 17. You remember how he went and tarried by the brook Cherith. Later, when the brook dried up, he went to Zarephath and stayed with a little widow woman.
What was the great lesson there? Before there can be a contest with the powers of darkness, before the prophets of Baal can be defeated and destroyed, there must be a hidden life with God. Elijah knew something about that.
There was nothing sensational or dramatic about living in a gorge, a ravine in the desert, by a little brook. I have often been to Cherith—Kerith in Hebrew—and seen that deep, majestic ravine in the wilderness of Judea, and the little trickle of water that is the brook Cherith.
There he stayed until the water dried up, and God fed him with ravens. Now, I have often said that it must have taken great faith in Elijah to receive food from ravens. Anyone who knows the habits of ravens might find the food they bring rather questionable.
It would be harder still when you remember that ravens are among the forbidden birds in Leviticus. They are not kosher.
Here was a Hebrew prophet, a man faithful to God, having to stay by a little trickle of water while an unclean bird brought his food.
Do you know what the lesson is? The Hebrew root for the word Cherith means “to cut off” or “to cut down.” That is exactly what God did with this rugged, tremendous personality called Elijah.
God took him into the desert, made him live by a little trickle of water, and fed him with unclean birds. He cut him down.
All Elijah’s big ideas of popular ministry, influential ministry, changing the whole world, and being something in the service of God—God started cutting down, and cutting down, and cutting down.
Dear child of God, if you and I want to be overcomers, if we want to be in any work of recovery, if we want to be instrumental in this ministry of recovery, God has to cut us down. We have to know what it is to be crucified with Christ. We have to know what it is to be broken. There is no other way.
Once God has taught you this and you have really settled the matter that He is dealing with you, then it is easy to settle down as though there were nothing more. But there came a time when the brook dried up.
It is very interesting that Elijah did not pray over that. He did not say, “Now, Lord, give me water. I remember Moses praying over the rock, so I will find a rock somewhere in this gorge and pray over it in the name of the Lord.”
In his spirit, he knew that the water drying up meant it was time to move on. So he moved on to Zarephath.
At Zarephath, Elijah found a little widow. God had already spoken to her about the prophet coming and told her that she was to look after him. He found her gathering a few twigs.
She was about to cook her last meal for herself and her son, and then, she said, they were going to die. Elijah said to her, “Give me to eat first.”
Now, what would you have thought if you were a mother in a time of famine lasting several years? You have a few twigs, a little flour, a little oil, and you are about to bake one last cake for your only son. Then a great, rugged man comes and says, “I am the servant of the living God. Do not eat that. Feed me first.”
Would you not say, “Good gracious! You think you are from God? You demand the food of my little son? Never. You are no servant of the Lord. You are no testimony to God.”
But she went. She baked her little cake, set it before Elijah, and watched him eat it.
Perhaps in her heart she wondered, “Will he give it back? Is he testing me?” Some of us are like that. We say, “Now I will lay down my life,” imagining that the Lord will give it back very swiftly. “I am very interested in so-and-so, but I will let him go. I will let her go, because I am sure the Lord will give back twenty-four hours later.”
It does not always happen. Sometimes we watch the servants of the Lord eat our last meal. It is gone.
But then began the miracle. The cruse of oil never failed, nor did the barrel of meal. There was always a little meal at the bottom of the barrel.
Some people think that if God gives you a car, He must give you a Cadillac. Everything must be marvellous, absolutely wonderful, and overabundant. But there are times when God keeps only a little meal for us.
Why did He not give it all in one great provision? Why did He not fill the barrel to the top? Every day, she looked in the barrel and found just a little at the bottom. Every day, she gave that little first to Elijah, then to her son, and then to herself. Every day, there was more.
What is the lesson? Again, we have it in the name Zarephath. The Hebrew root means “melting place,” the refining place, the place of the furnace and crucible.
Everyone who is going to know anything about overcoming has to come to their Zarephath. If you try to bypass that, if you try somehow to evade that phase of God’s dealings with you, you will never come to the place where God can use you.
Then, of course, we come to the amazing contest that for many people is the high point of Elijah’s ministry: Carmel.
Carmel means, in Hebrew, “vineyard of God.” It is a picture of what had happened to God’s vineyard. All kinds of evil had entered it: Baal worship, false gods, immorality, and all the things mixed up with the fertility cults of the Middle East.
Here was one man standing in the name of the true God. One man standing uncompromisingly for the truth of God, and unflinchingly for the purpose of God for His people.
What a contest it was: four hundred against one, one against four hundred. Behind the four hundred stood the throne of Israel, Ahab, and that even more evil woman, Jezebel.
Jezebel must have thought, “Who is going to win this battle? Four hundred to one. We will see the finish of that Elijah.”
It is a very interesting contest. Elijah allowed the prophets of Baal to work first. What frenzy! They jumped up and down, calling and calling and calling. Not a word came from heaven. No fire fell on their altar.
Then they thought they were not devoted enough or zealous enough. So they cut themselves with knives and lances throughout the whole day. Still there was not a word from heaven.
Then Elijah said, in effect, “Now it is my turn.” He dug a great trench around the altar, filled it with water, and poured water over the altar. He made it as hard as possible.
He set up twelve stones—not ten—because Elijah refused to recognise the division of the people of God. In spite of all their divisions, they were one people before the Lord and in the Lord.
At the time of the evening sacrifice, he prayed. Where was the evening sacrifice offered? Not in the so-called house of God at Bethel, nor in the northern kingdom, but in Jerusalem.
As the evening sacrifice was offered in Jerusalem, Elijah prayed to the God of heaven that He would answer by fire. God answered by fire. The whole offering was consumed, and all the water was licked up. The people cried:
“The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God.”
The prophets of Baal were destroyed. Would you not be thrilled if, somehow, we could have such a Carmel in our day? When we think of all the mixture among the people of God, all the decline and backsliding, all the need for recovery—would we not be thrilled to stand in the vineyard of the Lord and see these things destroyed in the name of the living God?
But, dear child of God, that is not the greatest lesson of Elijah’s life. The great lesson is in the passage we read.
No sooner had Elijah seen that great triumph for God than word came from Jezebel: “So let the gods do to me, and more also, if thy life is not as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.”
That great, rugged man of God, who had known the discipline of God and the power of God, fled for his life because of a woman. Can you believe it?
He had stood before the king again and again, but Jezebel merely sent him a message, and he fled for his life. He was deeply depressed. He flung himself down under a juniper tree and told God, “All I want to do is die.”
Then the angel of the Lord came and cooked for him, and woke him. The Lord is very, very gracious. Sometimes He helps us go the wrong way. Remember that.
Sometimes He helps us go in the wrong direction. Do not think that simply because you are going one way and God is gracious to you, you are necessarily going in the right direction.
Sometimes the Lord helps you go in the wrong direction because He knows that there is no other way of reaching you until you have come to the end of yourself. You have to come to your Waterloo.
Finally, after forty days and forty nights, Elijah came to Horeb. Then the Lord asked him, “Elijah, what doest thou here?”
Elijah replied, “Lord, I am the only one left. I have been faithful to You, but the children of Israel have cast down Your altars and forsaken Your covenant. I am the only one left.”
The Lord told him to stand outside the cave. Then there came a tremendous wind that rent the mountains and broke the rocks. But God was not in the wind. He was behind it; He was using it; but He was not in it.
Then there came an earthquake that shook the whole mountain range. But God was not in the earthquake. He was behind it and using it, but He was not in it.
Then there came a fire that burned up everything. But the Lord was not in the fire. He was behind it and He was using it, but He was not in it.
Then came a still small voice.
In the Hebrew, it is simply the sound of silence: the sound of stillness, a thin, small sound—not a human voice.
When Elijah heard that, he bowed down. Then the Lord said to him, “Elijah, what doest thou here?”
It is interesting that Elijah was not moved by the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. That was his ministry. His ministry had been wind, earthquake, and fire. “The God that answereth by fire, let Him be God.”
When the Lord came with wind, earthquake, and fire, Elijah enjoyed it. It was like divine power. “Oh Lord, this is wonderful. This is thrilling me, Lord.”
But when he heard the still small voice, he broke down.
My dear friend, the great lesson of Elijah’s life is an ear to hear the Spirit.
It is very easy, when you have known something of wind and earthquake and fire, to think that this is the great thing about the ministry of recovery. But it is not.
The key to all recovery is to hear the voice of the Lord.
Look at Revelation 2:7:
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh—
The same word is repeated in Revelation 2:11, 2:17, 2:29, 3:6, 3:13, and 3:22:
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
Do you get it? The key to overcoming is to have an ear to hear. It is not that you should have a ministry in which hurricanes fall and demonstrate power. It is not that you should have a ministry with earthquake-like consequences. It is not even that you should have a ministry of fire and power.
Above all, the most important and essential thing is to have an ear that knows what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Otherwise, you will get into a mess.
“What doest thou here, Elijah?” It was not difficult for Elijah to know when the Lord told him to go to Cherith, or to Zarephath, or to confront Ahab, or to shut the heavens and open them again. It was the voice of the Lord that brought him into confrontation with the prophets of Baal.
Then the Lord said, “There are seven thousand, Elijah, who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” How could there be seven thousand unless there were seven thousand who had an ear to hear what the Spirit was saying?
Most of us go by sight. We go by feelings; we go by the outward and the external. If we see what appears to be blessing, if we see people getting excited, if we see people being converted, then we go by that.
Dear family of God, our great need is to see people converted. Our great need is to see the house of God built. Our great need is to see the things of God recovered in purity and power.
But behind it all is this one great essential: to have an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Turn to Exodus 21:5–6:
But if the servant shall plainly say,
“I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free”;
then his master shall bring him unto God,
and shall bring him to the door, or unto the door-post;
and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl;
and he shall serve him for ever.
Why through the ear? Why bore his ear with an awl? Why not bind his ankle? Why not bind his hand? After all, is it not the hand that does things, the hand that carries things, the feet that go where they are sent?
But what is the point of having feet if you do not have his ear? If you say, “Come,” and he has no ear to hear, he will not come. If you say, “Go,” and he has no ear to hear, he will not go. If you say, “Do this,” and he has no ear to hear, he will not use his hands.
The great thing about a servant is not that he has blue blood, a pedigree as long as your arm, or descent from some royal family. It is not that he has a university degree or great qualifications. The great thing about the servant is his ear.
The one great thing in service is to have an ear that hears what the Master says.
Exodus 29:20 says:
Then shalt thou kill the ram, and take of its blood,
and put it upon the tip of the right ear of Aaron,
and upon the tip of the right ear of his sons,
and upon the thumb of their right hand,
and upon the great toe of their right foot.
Is it not interesting? The first thing upon which God puts the blood is the ear.
Dear child of God, have you got the blood of the Lamb upon your foot before your ear? Have you got the blood of the Lamb upon your hand, upon your thumb, before your ear? Then hear me: you are of no use to God.
There is no point in having blood upon your foot and upon your hand if it is not first upon your ear. God must have your ear.
Leviticus 14:14 speaks of the cleansing of the leper:
And the priest shall take of the blood of the trespass-offering,
and the priest shall put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed,
and upon the thumb of his right hand,
and upon the great toe of his right foot.
Why? Because the reason you got into sin is that you did not listen to the Lord. Before your hand did something, before your feet did something, your ear failed to hear.
Then the oil is put upon the ear, the thumb, and the toe. Blood and oil, blood and oil, blood and oil.
We not only need to know what it is to be justified and saved; we need to know the gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit. And He begins with our ear. The oil comes upon our ear. Suddenly, our spirit and our heart begin to hear the voice of the Lord. Then comes the hand; then comes the foot.
Do you begin to see how important this whole thing is?
Psalm 40:6–8 says:
Sacrifice and offering Thou hast no delight in;
Mine ears hast Thou opened:
Burnt-offering and sin-offering hast Thou not required.
Then said I, “Lo, I am come;
In the roll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do Thy will, O my God;
Yea, Thy law is within my heart.”
“Mine ears hast Thou opened.” Literally, the Hebrew says, “Mine ears hast Thou digged,” or pierced.
This is a Messianic psalm. The Lord is saying to the Father, “You have got My ear. I do not want to go out free. You have My ear. You pierced it. I delight to do Thy will, O God.”
You see how important this matter is. The beginning of all backsliding, individually and corporately, is dullness of hearing.
It does not matter where you turn in the Bible or in the history of the church since Pentecost: every departure, every decline, every fall into error, every deadness, has started with dullness of hearing.
Men ceased hearing the Lord. They began to go by routine. Instead of having an ear for what the Spirit was saying, they began simply to go along the track they had established. They got into a rut, and then it was easy simply to continue with the momentum and routine.
Dear child of God, never think that we cannot fall into that trap. It has happened again and again and again in the history of the church.
The key is the ear. Every time God has done something in the history of the church, it has been when He has gained the ear of a man or the ear of a few and spoken.
It was Martin Luther who heard the Lord and became an Elijah to destroy the prophets of Baal in his day. It was others who heard the voice of the Lord and, though they gave their lives, through them something was recovered for the people of God which, by the grace of God, has never been lost.
They were men who had an ear to hear what the Spirit was saying to the church.
Our time has gone, but perhaps it is better simply to give ourselves to another group of men—some whom we know and some whom we do not know by name—who gave themselves to a costly ministry of travail, that the purpose of God might be fulfilled.
Jeremiah. Ezekiel. Daniel.
We know Jeremiah as the weeping prophet. We speak of someone being a “Jeremiah,” meaning a mourner. We only need to read the prophecy of Jeremiah to see the kind of man he was.
He certainly had an ear to hear what the Spirit was saying. Because of that, he had pain. Vision always brings pain.
The idea that you can see something from God without pain is nonsense. When the apostle Paul was caught up to the third heaven and heard unspeakable things, a thorn in the flesh was given to him. He besought the Lord three times that it might depart from him.
Vision always brings us into pain. Jeremiah was always arguing with the Lord: “Lord, why have You made me a man of contention? Why do You tell me to do this? I will not speak any more to this people.”
Then, the next moment, he would say, “It is like a fire in my bones. I cannot help it. I have to go.” He was an overcomer.
Jeremiah was a man in days of terrible backsliding who saw something and heard something from the Lord, and who entered into a ministry of travail.
Ezekiel was the same. Jeremiah ministered before and at the beginning of the captivity. Ezekiel ministered during the exile, actually in Babylon.
Ezekiel was a remarkable man. He began to gather the people of God into what we now call synagogues. He led them in worship and taught them the Word of the Lord. But it cost him everything.
The most amazing thing about Ezekiel is that the Lord told him his wife would die, and that he was not to mourn, weep, or show outward sorrow. He was to wash his face and go on, for it was a sign to the whole house of Israel.
What a terribly hard thing. Can you imagine it? If your wife died—no mourning, no outward sadness, no public grief—because she was a sign that Jerusalem was to be destroyed. That is what it cost Ezekiel.
Dear child of God, be very careful before you say that you want to be an overcomer. God can touch all kinds of things in your life and circumstances to bring you to be an overcomer, that you may know the fellowship of His sufferings.
Then there was Daniel. Daniel gave himself in prayer to the Lord. We know Daniel mostly because of the visions he saw concerning the times of the Gentiles.
Think of it: a man living some two thousand six hundred years ago saw the whole course of Gentile history from Babylon right down to the present day, to the end of the times of the Gentiles, and to the restoration of Israel. Is that not amazing?
We get excited about Daniel’s visions, but we sometimes lose the point. Daniel had an incredible ministry of prayer.
In one place, he says that he spent three weeks in fasting and sorrow. In another vision, he says that he was sick for many days. There are many inexplicable things about this ministry of recovery. It cost those involved everything.
Daniel 9 shows us that Daniel was a man who heard the Lord. How did he hear the Lord? He understood by the books the number of years of which the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah concerning the desolations of Jerusalem: seventy years.
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes,
who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans,
in the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by the books
the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet,
for the accomplishing of the desolations of Jerusalem, even seventy years.
—Daniel 9:1–2
Daniel understood when the captivity began because he had an ear to hear what the Spirit was saying. Only the Spirit of God could have given him that understanding.
Then what did Daniel do? He began to pray that the word spoken through Jeremiah might come to pass.
Most people do not understand that. They say, “If the Lord has said something is going to happen, it will happen anyway. Why should we pray?” But when God has declared His purpose, He calls upon the overcomer to enter into fellowship with Him in prayer, travail, and intercession.
It cost Daniel everything. He prayed three times a day. Yet in all his prayers there was no superiority and no separation of himself from the people.
He did not say, “Lord, these people have broken Your covenant. They have rebelled against You. Forgive them.” No. He said, “Lord, we have broken Your covenant. We have rebelled against You. We have turned our back upon You. Have mercy on us, Lord.”
That is the overcomer: no superiority, no looking down upon others as second-class citizens. He gets right into the whole situation and comes before the Lord as though he were them. That is intercession.
Intercession is not merely praying for people at a distance. It is when God allows you almost to bear in yourself the condition of the people for whom you are praying before the Lord.
Oh, for such a ministry of prayer—a ministry that does not come without travail.
The apostle Paul said in Galatians 4:19:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you—
And elsewhere he says:
I fill up on my part in my flesh that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake, which is the church.
—Colossians 1:24
Have you ever understood that Scripture? Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel had some little experience of filling up in themselves what was left of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake.
Daniel was one who had refused to eat unclean things, though it could have cost him his life. He could have said, “Lord, I thank You for helping me not to eat those things. But all the rest of Your people are doing it.”
But he never prayed like that. That is the overcomer. He thinks of the people, not of himself.
Dear child of God, we need an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
The devil gets very disturbed when people start to hear the Lord. He does not mind you getting into meetings, routine, or religious activity. But once you start to hear the Lord, all hell is let loose.
The devil knows that once God has the ear of His people, anything could happen.
You want to know the key to the American situation? Without hesitation, I would say: if God could get the ear of His people—if God could get your ear—there is no saying what He could do.
Where will it end? I will tell you. It will end at the throne. It will end in the rule.
No one will ever come to the throne of Christ who does not hear what the Spirit says.
It may involve you in a costly ministry of travail. It may bring you into the fellowship of His sufferings. It may bring you into a ministry of intercession such as you have never known in your life before, individually and corporately.
But the end will be the throne, because these are the overcomers.
Oh, Father, very simply, we put all this into Thy hands.
Lord, every one of us needs an ear to hear what Thy Spirit is saying to the churches. Forgive us, Lord, for our dullness of hearing. Forgive us, Lord, that so often we go by the things of sight and sense.
Forgive us, Lord, we pray, that so often we are heedless. Father, get our ear, we pray.
And we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.