Could we bow in just one further word of prayer?
Lord, You have given us authority to lay down our lives. And Lord, You have given us authority to take every thought captive to You.
And Lord, right now by faith, we subject all that we are to You. We bring all things into subjection under Your feet.
Lord, we thank You for the honor and the privilege of gathering in Your name. Lord, we know that if we gather in Your name, You are here in our midst. But Lord, in a greater way, we are with You in that heavenly place before Your throne.
And Lord, we want to hear You and see You and know You and have our hearts captured. Lord, will You do that for us in a measure today? Lord, we want to see. We must see You, Lord.
Lord, we thank You for that empowering of Your Spirit. The anointing has been poured upon our Lord, the Head, and come all the way to the hem of the garment. And Lord, we know we are at least the hem in the Body—maybe the lowest—but, O Lord, it has come to us as grace.
And Lord, by faith we do stand in it for speaking and hearing and encountering. O Lord, do speak to us. Your servants listen for Your voice. In Your precious name, we ask. Amen.
I’d like to read some Scriptures. We’ll begin in Genesis 17, and I will read through verse 12.
Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty. I am El Shaddai. I am the Almighty God. Walk before Me, and be blameless—perfect, complete, mature.
“And I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.”
And Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, exalted father; but your name shall be Abraham, father of a multitude. For I will make you the father of a multitude of nations.
“And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and your descendants after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant: to be God to you and to your descendants after you.
“And I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”
God said further to Abraham, “Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised.
“And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of a covenant between Me and you. And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout their generations.”
And I will just read verse 1 again:
Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty. Walk before Me, and be blameless.”
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
My God, in whom I trust.”For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper
And from the deadly pestilence.He will cover you with His pinions,
And under His wings you may seek refuge;
His faithfulness is a shield and a bulwark.You will not be afraid of the terror by night,
Or of the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.A thousand may fall at your side
And ten thousand at your right hand,
But it shall not approach you.You will only look on with your eyes
And see the recompense of the wicked.For you have made the Lord your refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place.No evil will befall you,
Nor will any plague come near your tent.For He will give His angels charge concerning you,
To guard you in all your ways.They will bear you up in their hands,
Lest you strike your foot against a stone.You will tread upon the lion and the cobra;
The young lion and the serpent you will trample down.“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name.“He will call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.“With a long life I will satisfy him
And let him behold My salvation.”
And just verse 1 again:
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.
Again:
For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.
Watch over your heart—or guard your heart—with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.
Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.
Well, the last time I was speaking, day before yesterday, we considered this matter of the Lord’s appearing to Abraham when he was ninety-nine years old, after he had first seen the Lord forty-four years before in Ur of the Chaldeans.
His whole life was a process—an ever-unfolding revelation from the Lord. He began to follow the Lord, and he began to know the Lord, and he knew the Lord more and more.
And it should be that way with us, you know. We think, “Well, then we will see the Lord face to face, and we will know even as we are known.” Hallelujah. Amen for that.
But I think somehow that in eternity there is an eternal revelation and unveiling of this eternal God. Can you imagine something like that? I cannot imagine it.
In this world, we know things. We come to know them, and then we move on to the next thing. “Okay, that’s old news. Give me something new.” But it is not meant to be that way for the Lord’s people—His new creation. Not so among us.
There is a tendency among Christians to see something, to get hold of something, and then think that is enough for us. Then we go with that. But the Lord, just as with Abraham, is always wanting to reveal Himself to us more and more and more.
Abraham saw the God of glory. Then he gained more insight when he saw that, even when he went to Egypt to escape a famine and got in terrible trouble, the Lord could handle not only the famine but Pharaoh, and bring him out of Egypt with even more than he had.
The Lord could lead him into battle against kings and give him great victory. Abraham did not have to rely on Pharaoh or anyone else to make him rich. He would not even touch a sandal thong, lest anyone other than God should increase him.
Then the Lord spoke to him in that wonderful way and said, “You are going to have a son, a descendant coming from your own body.” He was probably eighty-five years old when this happened. “It is you. It is not going to be someone born in your house. It is going to come from your own body.”
But the Lord did not tell him that it would also be through Sarah. Probably there was something known to us as the biological clock kicking in him. “I’d better get to work. I’m eighty-five. Before too long, it will be impossible for God to do something like that.”
So Sarah and Abraham agreed, and they took the Egyptian slave girl, and he had a child through her: Ishmael.
Ernie pointed out for us yesterday that from that time it was thirteen years until the Lord spoke to him again in the record of Scripture. Thirteen years. You wonder how he kept waiting: “What is wrong? What is wrong?”
But he kept working too, because the Lord had called him to follow Him. So he was raising this young man, the heir, perhaps even feeling good about this work that the Lord was doing. “Maybe the Lord is not speaking to me because I am on the right track. Maybe He will just come to me when I need a little correction.”
Then, when he was beyond the age that a man could have children, Ishmael was thirteen years old—the age of being adopted, actually, of being placed as a son, the bar mitzvah that man mentioned.
The Lord appeared to him here in a new way. In Exodus 6, the Lord says to Moses, “I did not reveal Myself to them by My name, the Lord, but I revealed Myself to them as God Almighty.”
God is after the individual, and He cannot get the corporate reality He desires unless He has the individual. He is after you and me.
If we are twenty, thirty, or forty compromised Christians meeting together to know the Lord in the Body of Christ and to let Him build His house among us, that will be the measure of the house: the measure of Christ in the Body.
Oh, but if He can get us, then we can be a source of life—rivers of living water to all the saints. This is the Lord’s way. Yes, He is looking for the corporate, but He is looking for that one. And that one is you.
The One is speaking to you this morning and throughout this whole conference. Now, if you have known Him for thirty years, He is speaking to you. If you have just come to the Lord, He is speaking to you: “Let Me have My way in your life. Let Me do everything that I want to do in you, this eternal weight of glory.”
Eternal—I cannot think of it. I cannot think of eternity. First of all, I am a little creature of time. What is eternity? It is not a long time; it is something else.
Is this weight of glory something that lasts for eternity? Yes. Is it something that perhaps has this ever-increasing nature of eternity to it? Yes.
And the Lord wants to work that in this little life, if I will simply allow Him to. There are some hindrances. There are lots of places in me that He wants to replace with Himself, that will come to glory.
And I am the type of person who would murmur and resent it: “Not this. Not this, Lord.” But by His grace, we will exercise this authority that He has given us to lay down our lives.
Well, He comes to Abram and says, “I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be blameless.”
Really, today I want to talk about that second part: “Walk before Me and be mature; come to fullness.” Walk before Me.
Abram, at this point, is as good as dead, Paul tells us—and Sarah also. Sarah was doubly barren. First, she was a barren woman for her whole life. They had been trying and trying and trying, and they did not have fertility clinics. In her case, it would not have helped if they had, because the Lord was doing something.
Can you imagine the anguish of her soul from the time of Abraham’s call until the time when she was ninety years old and actually had Isaac? This desire was in her.
How often in the Scriptures the Lord brings something that seems like the curse of God—barrenness. Everyone could see it and say, “If a woman is barren, we know what the problem is with you. Somehow, in your heart secretly, you are not really following the Lord. Otherwise, He would bless you. He would give you a house full of children.”
Quite often the Lord’s work looks exactly opposite to us. We are always judging according to the outward appearance of things. But the Lord knows the heart. He really knows the heart.
He was working in Sarah, bringing her to the end of herself. She was not only barren in her body, but then she became too old anyway. Abram was too old anyway.
Then the Lord said, “Now, I am going to…” He was telling Abram all this in this wonderful revelation of circumcision: the removal of the flesh from the place where a man bears fruit.
“I am God Almighty, and I do not need any help from you. I am going to make you fruitful, but I am going to do it. It is not going to be the work of your flesh.”
“And by the way, Sarah, according to My promise, is going to have a son.” All we can do is look at this work of His. For thirteen years, for fourteen years, from the circumcision: “What about this one?” “Not My work—your work.”
The removal of the flesh from where a man produces fruit. If you belong to the Lord, you cannot be fruitful except by His Spirit, in the work of His Spirit.
You know, Abraham had two notable things that he did. I have talked to Abraham—he is one of my heroes. He may not come here and say it, and I do not think he would. I think he was a man of great humility because he knew the Lord. Anyone who really knows the Lord will come through humility.
When he was eighty-six, he did this thing in the power of his flesh and begot Ishmael.
Then, when he was ninety-nine, the Lord came to him with supernatural, spiritual enabling—spiritual gifting, if you will, or a type of it—for fruitfulness. The reason, the purpose of this, was to beget Isaac, the promise. Abraham did it, and the Lord blessed.
Now years later, when Abraham was one hundred and thirty-seven, Sarah died. Perhaps he was lonely. He took another woman—Keturah—and began to have offspring. You say, “I thought he was as good as dead.” Yes, but the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.
Once the Lord had touched him, it was his. And the first notable son of that union was Midian.
Now listen: it is not enough just not to do something completely in the flesh. Even if the Lord has given you spiritual gifting, that gifting must be under the headship and direction of the Holy Spirit, or you can use it to produce something that is not the Lord.
So often we look at a gifting in operation and say, “Oh, well, we can see there is something of the Lord there.” Well, there may be. But what is behind it? What is the aim of it?
Here is Ishmael, the fruit of his flesh. Here is Midian, the fruit not of his flesh, but of gifting apart from the Lord’s direction.
Whenever we do that, be sure to know that the work of man in the flesh will always persecute the real work of God. It will always come back.
One hundred and sixty-seven years after Abraham begot Isaac, Joseph’s brothers threw him in a pit. Reuben was trying to think how he might deliver his brother, because he really wanted to do that. But before he could find a way, his brothers lifted up their eyes and saw a caravan coming—of Ishmaelites and Midianites.
They sold Joseph, who was the real deal, the man of God, into slavery to the Ishmaelites and the Midianites. If Reuben had only had a little more time!
But He is El Shaddai, is He not? They meant it for evil; God meant it for good.
He brought Joseph to the throne and preserved his whole family. He took them to a place where God multiplied them, and then, as a nation, He brought them out.
Because He got the men—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—He could get the nation, the kingdom, the priesthood, the house of God, all the things that speak of the corporate. When He got those individuals, He could get the corporate.
But let us not rely on the Lord coming after us, cleaning up the mess. The Lord has called us not to be those who make a mess, if possible, but those who would simply follow the Lamb wherever He goes.
Whatever He does, you can do. Whatever He says, you can say. Be in fellowship with Him and under His headship, knowing His work deep within us: Christ our life.
This revelation of the Lord—to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; to us; to everyone who has ever known the Lord—is always unfolding. I think of the Lord’s disciples.
The whole time they were with the Lord, the revelation of who He was kept unfolding. On the first day, Andrew went to find Peter—this is in John 1—and said, “We have found the Messiah.”
Then, after He called Philip, Philip found Nathanael and said, “We have found the One of whom Moses and all the prophets wrote.” Nathanael said, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
Then, when the Lord came and said, “I saw you when you were under the fig tree,” Nathanael said, “You are the King of Israel.” This unfolding revelation—they had seen Him.
I am thinking of this moment in Matthew 8, Luke 8, and Mark 4. Everyone knows the story. The Lord Jesus is going across the lake in the boat with His disciples.
The Lord goes to the stern and sleeps on the cushion. While He is there asleep, at rest in His Father, the waves begin to turn and stir, and there is great danger.
Before this, they had not only made these declarations concerning one another, but they had seen the Lord turn water into wine. They had seen Him heal the dying boy from Cana, cast out unclean spirits, heal Peter’s mother-in-law, heal many, and cast out many demons.
Those demons even cried out, “We know who You are. You are the Son of God. You are the Messiah.”
They had seen Him heal a leper. A paralytic was let down through the roof, and the Lord met that man and forgave him, and he went away walking. They had seen the man with the withered hand restored. The sick, the oppressed, the diseased, those with torments, demons, epileptics, and unclean spirits—all were under His authority.
He came down from a mountain with power coming from Him, and all were healed. They saw the encounter with the Roman centurion: “Lord, just give the word.” He gave the word, and it was done.
They saw Him raise the dead son of a widow. And now here they are crossing the Sea of Galilee, and this great danger comes up.
There arose a great storm—a great shaking in the sea—a fierce gale of wind. The waves were breaking over the boat so that it was already filling up.
“Save us, Lord! We are perishing!” They went back and woke Him: “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”
He said, “Why are you so timid, you men of little faith?” Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Hush. Be still.”
Then they were saying to themselves, “What kind of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him? Who then is this?”
He commands the winds and the water, and they obey Him. Who is this?
Later on, of course, Peter says, with great revelation from the Father, “You are the Christ.” This revelation unfolds and unfolds and unfolds.
The one I like is at the very end of the Gospel. It came from Thomas, who had not been there when the Lord first appeared. Thomas said, “Unless I put my finger into His hands and my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
Then suddenly the Lord was in their midst. “Peace. Thomas, come here. Put your finger here, and put your hand here. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
And his confession—what I think was the final one—was, “My Lord and my God.”
This is what it is for us. Now, we know that He is your Lord and your God. I hope you know that. Do you know that? The Master?
But it should be for us until the end of our lives, and then perhaps for eternity, this unfolding revelation of the Beloved.
May the Lord do that for us. May He give us not a little place where we would say, “The old is good enough,” but may we be so close to Him that He might continually be revealing Himself to us.
“Walk before Me and be blameless.”
As I was meditating on this, I thought that walking before this One, God Almighty, is a heart matter. It is always a matter of the heart.
I think the Lord has given me four descriptions of the heart that He would give us, and of the heart that we would keep and guard, and therefore walk before this One who is all in all and come to fullness and maturity:
Those who walk before Him and become mature will have a seeing heart.
Everyone in this room who belongs to the Lord Jesus has a seeing heart. I know that because the Lord had to give you a seeing heart in order for you to receive Him.
Someone did not simply come to you and say, “Jesus is the Son of God, and God raised Him from the dead,” and you believed apart from the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit causing your heart to see, you would say, “That is ridiculous.”
If you were Jewish, you might say, “That is the weakest thing I have ever heard of—that the Messiah would come and die. Weakness.” If you had a Greek mind, you might say, “Raised from the dead? Foolishness.”
But somehow, one day when you heard it, the Holy Spirit came into you and said, “This is the truth.” And you knew that it was the truth. You saw, you believed, and He saved.
Now, is the Lord who met you in that way and gave you sight not willing to come to you again and again and open your eyes? What have we been praying for all the time before this conference, during this conference, and even now? That we will have seeing hearts.
Do you think that if Moses had never asked the Lord, “Can I see Your glory?” the Lord would have said, “Oh, by the way, you have not asked, but there is something You forgot to ask. I cannot show you My face, but I will let you see My back. You can survive if you see that much—barely”?
No. But there was something in Moses. James says, “You have not because you ask not.”
What a good and right and proper thing it is for the people of God to be asking and continually asking, “Lord, show us. Reveal Yourself to us.”
Do you think Moses would have learned the Lord’s ways if he had not said, “Now, Lord, show me Your ways”? He found favor in the Lord’s eyes. What more is there?
I am in a room full of people who have found favor in the eyes of God. I know it because of your faith. He had mercy upon you. His grace has come to you. You have been born again, washed in the precious blood, and you are headed for heaven—or whatever it is that the Lord has in store for us that we call heaven.
What favor the Lord has given. “If I have now found favor in Your eyes, teach me Your way, that I may be pleasing in Your sight.”
Walk before Me, and come to fullness. Moses had a seeing heart, and that seeing heart was yearning to see more of the Lord.
Can you imagine that the Holy Spirit wants to do something in you and something in me, and that when He does it, it will actually make us pleasing in the sight of Almighty God?
I am not talking, of course, about being washed in the blood and having His righteousness imputed to us. I am talking about works that God has prepared beforehand, by His Spirit, that we should walk in them—that He would do a work in us so that we should actually know His ways and walk and live before Him in a manner pleasing to Him.
Is that not what the Father said of the Lord Jesus? When the Holy Spirit came upon Him as a dove: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And again, when the glory of God radiated from within Him: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Somehow, knowing His ways and walking in a way pleasing to Him has to do with coming to glory. And how we need to see Him.
You have a seeing heart. Now ask Him. Ask as an individual. Ask as a company of believers. It is our birthright to behold our Lord.
Do not say, “I have seen so much. We know the truth of this and the truth of that. The Lord has brought us out of captivity in Babylon and brought us back to His city and His building site. Hallelujah. We have it all.”
We see, and He wants to reveal so much to us. It is a matter of the heart, brothers and sisters. Do you have a seeing heart asking? He loves to give good gifts to His children. He will give it to you. He will show us more and more and more.
Now remove a veil if there is a veil there—if there is disobedience, unbelief, or some sin that the Lord has spoken to you about. Perhaps there is something you say, “Lord, I know You have given me this, but stop this.” Everyone has this. Everyone has this resistance.
I can testify. The Lord asked me for something more than ten years ago, and my first response was, “Look, Lord, You do not see? I have proper doctrine. This thing is okay.”
About fifteen or twenty seconds into that, I thought, “What in the world are you doing? Oh Lord, if You want it, yes, You can have it.”
That was the grace of God, because normally it would be fifteen or twenty years—or at least fifteen or twenty minutes—of wrestling and trying to figure out how I could keep it.
“Oh Lord, do You want it? Here, Lord. What else do You want? Lord, take that too. Here is that thing. Let me remove it, and Lord, in the void that is left, fill it up with Yourself.”
A seeing heart.
The Lord wants to bring us into this relationship of walking before Him, God Almighty. He would give us, create in us, a hidden heart.
I read in Psalm 91:1:
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
Now, if you want to abide in the shadow of the Almighty, you cannot get there merely by going to the Almighty and wanting to abide there. If you do that, remember that friend I told you about two days ago?
Oh, he abided in the shadow of the Almighty. It was so easy, because he had this thing in his mind: he knew how sovereign God was, and then everything he did in his life was the will of God.
Sleep? “The will of God.” Overeat? “The will of God. Thank You, Lord.” A loose lip? “Well, God’s will.” Bitterness toward a saint? “Well, it was determined before the foundation.”
So easy to abide in the shadow! But you do not abide in the shadow of the Almighty by merely going there.
The psalmist tells us:
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
Now listen. The Lord is the Almighty. It is a revelation that we receive, and frankly we cannot comprehend it. It should cause us to fall down and worship in holy fear.
But the Lord has put us in a world where He is also the Most High, and there are other highs. There are other powers and principalities. There is the flesh, there is the world, there is the enemy, and there are all these things coming against you, coming against the Lord, and coming against what He is building.
We have responsibilities. We cannot look at our responsibility and say, “I would rather be fishing today, and I think it is going to be God’s will, because if I do it, it will be the will of God.” No, no, no, no, no.
He who dwells in the secret place. What is this secret place? Do you not want to go and dwell in the secret place of the Most High? Well, that sounds like that is open to me.
God has created you body, soul, and spirit—or, as we should say, spirit, soul, and body.
Salvation comes to us. We always say, “Are you saved?” “I am saved. Praise the Lord, He saved my soul.” Well, one day I could say that in the complete meaning of it all: “He saved my soul.”
But what He did instantaneously when you believed Him and were born again was save your spirit. His Holy Spirit came and took up an eternal dwelling place in your spirit. Your spirit was made alive, and He is there forever. It was instantaneous, and you were saved by faith.
Also, just as instantaneously, when He comes back—or when we have an encounter with a Greyhound bus or some other misfortune—at the resurrection, this mortality will put on immortality. This body of flesh will be transformed into a body like our Lord Jesus’ body: an immortal body, instantly saved bodily.
So we have a salvation at the beginning—instant; a salvation at the end—instant; and in the meantime we have this matter of our soul.
This soul that the Lord loves. Did you know that the Lord loves your soul? He is not trying to destroy your soul. He loves your soul.
But something has happened to me. I will speak autobiographically here. Maybe not something so bad has happened to you, but something has happened to me. I was born of my father Adam.
Instead of Adam’s soul coming into right relationship with the living God by eating of the tree of life, instead of his soul coming into that place of submission under the Holy Spirit in his spirit—so that, as the psalmist says, his soul could magnify the Lord—he partook of another life, and I inherited it from him.
That life says, “You do not want to be under someone else, do you? You can be as God. God is trying to keep you down, under Him, subjected.”
“You can be like me. I wanted to set my throne above the stars of God and to ascend. You can be like God. You can be your own little god. Much better than being bondslave—or loved slave—to this One who has lied to you, by the way. You will not die.”
That is what I inherited. Adam probably thought he was gaining some independence. I do not know what he thought.
Sometimes we think, “Oh yes, what a wonderful thing to be independent.” That is what the world sells you continually: “Be your own man. Your own woman. Independence.”
There is no independence. Once you take that route, you find that you are a slave of sin. Seeking to be independent, but this body of sin has the principle of sin in it; and if I have no place to go, I am under its tyranny.
Then the Lord came to me and revealed Himself to me and came into my spirit. It was as if He said, “Now, Don, you have a lifetime. Why do you not spend this lifetime coming to Me? Come to Me.”
“How often, Lord?” “Now. Let us do it on a continual basis. Why do you not come to Me continually?”
“But Lord, if I do that, there are a lot of other things that I really love that will have to go by the boards.” He says, “Well, let us compare them to an eternal weight of glory. Let us compare those things that you love so much and that you are so infatuated with to an eternal weight of glory.”
Here I am holding to this bowl of pottage. He says, “If you put that down, you could have a birthright and reign with Me for eternity.”
That is so good. He is a long way away, you know. That was, I guess, the thinking, because any right-thinking person would say, “Oh Lord. Lord, yes.”
Unto Thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.
O my God, in Thee I trust.
That is the proper place for the human soul: to be lifted up before the Lord, to be His servant, and to allow Him to be magnified through you and through me.
To dwell in the hidden place. There is another place we can dwell—not so hidden. It is easily found. It is just in the self-life. It is full of selfishness and pride.
I say it everywhere I go, and I will say it till the day I die: our Lord Jesus is not selfish, and He is not proud. This is the work of the enemy.
Linda and I have read a book. Phil gave me a book, and I thought, “Oh, thank you.” He said, “You might want to read it while you are here.” I said, “I have to speak a couple of times in Pasadena and then come here. When am I going to read a book?”
But somehow we read the book. Linda read it aloud to me. We do that a lot. It was a book by C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces. I do not know how many of you have read it.
It is a very interesting book, though a difficult read if you are not too practiced. But she read it aloud for me, and aloud it was great. It helped her read it too, because he can be sort of wordy and not so forthcoming. You have to sort of smell, “What is he saying here?” He does not just give it to you on a silver platter.
At the end of this most wonderful person’s life, who did all these wonderful things, supernaturally, she was unable to see that everything she had done had the stain of self-love and selfishness and pride in it.
Everyone around her would have praised her: “Oh, the best queen we ever had. So selfless.” She wore a veil everywhere. She was not attractive. But it was all self, self, self—and she saw it.
Lewis leaves you hanging somewhat, but I think the gist is that she was healed from this and came into a wonderful relationship with the Lord. It was a retelling of a Greek myth, and he changes it around.
But you see, everything that comes out of us is just Ishmael, or at best Midian, or something worse. The Lord is after that which He does.
The only way we can get it is to come and dwell with Him in the secret place, and it will cost you something. Every time you turn and say, “Now, Lord, I am going to come into spirit with You and be there,” it is difficult.
It is easy just to hang out and let your passions flow like rivers through the sky. Easy to do that. But to turn and say, “Lord, I am Yours. My time is Yours. My attention is Yours. Now, Lord, here I am, dwelling with You in secret”—that costs something.
Look at the Song of Solomon, chapter 2, verse 14:
O My dove, in the clefts of the rock,
In the secret place of the steep pathway,
Let Me see your form,
Let Me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet,
And your form is lovely.
Did you know that when you want to dwell in the secret place with Him, He does not merely tolerate you? He does not say, “Well, here she is again.” His heart is right there.
“Let Me see your form. Will you please come to Me? I want your attention. I want your fellowship. I want your exclusive time. Let Me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet. Your form is lovely.”
I have thought about that for years: the steep place. It is difficult. It is in the cleft of a rock. It is steep. Can you imagine trying to negotiate a steep place?
Let me ask you a question. Is it steep going up, or is it steep going down? Both are difficult to negotiate—a rocky place, very steep. You can turn your ankle, fall off, whatever it is. It does not say, does it? It is a steep place.
Christ in you, the hope of glory, in your spirit deep within: speaking, leading, drawing, correcting.
For me, you are in Christ, seated with Him in the heavenly places. God has seated us in the heavenly places in Christ. Ephesians 2 says that.
And in Colossians 3:
If you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is.
It is steep downward, in you; and it is steep upward, to the throne. There should be balance in this, brothers and sisters.
Some people try to know the Lord exclusively within them. Others say, “That is too mystical for me. I am going for the throne. We will just pretend we are there.” It is not pretending.
In spirit, as real as He dwells within you, we are seated with Him. It is reality.
If you do not seek the Lord in your spirit, you will not be led. I believe the Lord leads us from within. He speaks that still, quiet voice, if we are listening: “This is the way. Walk in it. Stop that. Turn to Me. Do not talk about that.”
But if we only seek Him deep within, I think maybe we will be misled. Some people go continually into some sort of Christian mysticism, and within yourself there can be many other things there.
There He is in us, and we are in Him. Oh, that we would dwell with Him, the Most High, in the hidden place, the secret place of the Most High.
It is costly to dwell there with Him. You have to deny yourself. But the Lord has given us this hidden heart that we might live this hidden life with Him.
It is very practical. Do not think that in the morning you have to leave your quiet time with the Lord and say, “Well, Lord, it was wonderful. I was so happy, Lord, to share that song with You. But now I have to go out in the real world, where that boss is going to crucify me again today, or with my wife, or whatever. I will meet You again here tomorrow morning. I had better make it six-thirty; this is too early for me.”
Oh, how practical this life is that we have been given—this secret place of the Most High. Do you know that you can go through your day and do everything that you have to do, do all your responsibilities well, and not leave that place?
You can change diapers. You can wash dishes—although it never happened to me. But someone told me. No, you can do all the mundane things of life, I will just be honest, and never leave that secret place.
When you find that hidden place with the Lord, turn to Him. He is there, saying, “Come to Me.” A hidden heart.
No one will walk before God Almighty without dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. When you find that you are there, and if you are dwelling there, then all the good of His sovereignty is for you.
The third thing is the yielded heart.
Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
Because we have sought the Lord and are dwelling with Him, there is still the possibility of having our own agenda. Oh, He has the agenda, brothers and sisters—the agenda, the only agenda that we need to agree with Him.
Oh Lord, this heart can be so independent.
In Psalm 91:2 it says:
I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
My God, in whom I trust.”
There is one in submission to the Lord. “Lord, You are my refuge. All my trust is in You. You are my place of safety. Lord, what You are doing, that is what I want to do.”
Abraham, when he came to God Almighty, prostrated himself as a bondslave.
Paul writes in Philippians, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit.” You know how much I do that is tainted by selfishness and empty conceit? Oh, that the Lord would show me, and continually show me.
It is all right. It is all right, if You will just show me and deal with me and cause this heart to be a yielded heart—a heart in submission to Him.
If you will see Him, have a seeing heart, and have that hidden life with Him in the secret place, He will do this work of exposing your heart and everything that taints it.
He will not do too much at one time. It would kill us, would it not? But day after day He will reveal to us, “Now this is you, and this is Me. Would you put this down?”
“Lord, not my will, but Your will. Your kingdom come. Your will be done.” The yielded heart.
In Numbers 24 there was a man—this is frightening—who had a vision of the Almighty, a prophet of God.
This is Balaam. Israel had come out of Egypt and was nearing the land. Balak did not want them to survive or have any success at all. He wanted to hire this prophet of God, this man who had seen so much, to come and curse them.
The oracle of Balaam the son of Beor,
And the oracle of the man whose eye is opened;
The oracle of him who hears the words of God,
Who sees the vision of the Almighty,
Falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered.
And again:
The oracle of him who hears the words of God,
Who knows the knowledge of the Most High,
Who sees the vision of the Almighty,
Falling down, yet having his eyes uncovered.
How could this man have the knowledge of the Most High, know the Almighty—the One who has all authority, all might, all power, all sovereignty; who has ordered all things in creation and all time for His own purpose—and yet somehow have a different agenda?
First he asked, “Can I go with these guys?” “No.” They were offering him money, and he really wanted what they had. He came back to the Lord, and the Lord said, “Okay.”
He was probably saying, “Hallelujah. Now the Lord and I are really warm. We are on the same page.”
God forbid that we should keep coming to the Lord in something contrary to Him until finally He says, “Okay. If that is what you want, you can have it.” It was Balaam’s destruction.
Seeing so much, yet in this matter of yieldedness, having his own agenda and not having that heart which is so necessary if we are to come to fullness.
Balaam did not walk before the Lord and become blameless. The Lord had called Abraham to have a seeing heart, a hidden heart, a yielded heart, and the last thing—a loving heart.
Psalm 91:14 says:
Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him.
A loveslave to the Lord.
Do you know what I think is one of the most tyrannical verses in Scripture, one of the most oppressive verses in Scripture? It is the Scripture that is always used so lightly whenever there has been some sort of problem:
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
“So it is going to be all right.” Wait a minute. Let me go over it in my mind: “To those who love God.” How much?
I love to sing the songs we sing. They have beautiful melodies, and they make me feel warm and fuzzy inside: “Oh Lord, I love You. I give You everything.”
In these last years, I have gotten to where I cannot sing a lot of our songs. Sometimes I change the words and sing my own little words, because sometimes it is just too much.
Especially the songs that say, “And we will reign with Him through all eternity.” I think that has something to do with hope right there.
If you were to ask anyone in this room, “If you gain the prize, does the crown belong to you?” no one here is so foolish as to say, “Oh yes, I have come to the end of the race. I am an overcomer.”
We say, “Well, I do not know. I am pressing on. God knows that. God knows that. I am forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
I hope. He has given me everything I need to come through. But there is this other contingency: it has to do with my heart. Do I love Him?
Oh Lord, how many times does the Lord come to you and show you your heart, and you say, “Oh Lord, this compromised heart.”
God causes all things—why did He put “to those who love God”?
For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.
No wonder we have not been getting support where I live. The problem is that our heart is divided. It is schizophrenic. It is somewhat the Lord’s one moment and mine the next.
And He says, “Those whose heart is completely His.” Oh Lord.
But I tell you this: if you see Him by real vision of the Holy Spirit, if you are living that hidden life with Him, and if you have learned submission in a yielded heart, you will love Him. You cannot help it.
The life of the Lover is in here. His Spirit has come to be our life.
Have you seen Him, heard Him, known Him? He has captured your heart. He will capture your heart.
I like that verse Dana has in one of his things. I will just mention it: when Jesus lives inside you, He teaches you obedience. Obedience brings submission; submission leads to love.
You say, “Well, do you love the Lord? Do I love the Lord? How do I answer that?”
I think the Lord would probably point to His beloved children, His loved ones, and say, “Well, how do you want to test how much you love Him? What about these?”
He says to Peter, “Do you love Me? Can you feed these? Serve these? Come under these? Humble yourself in the presence of these? Not take into account the wrong suffered from these? Hold no bitterness toward these? Forgive these? Love these? Lay down your life for these?”
Yes, I am feeling worse than when I began. Hallelujah for the grace of God. He can bring us into this place of having a loving heart.
I have only a few minutes. Proverbs says, “Guard your heart.” How? That is this little book: how?
You know, that Scripture—“The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the whole earth”—was spoken to a man who had a heart for the Lord at one time like no other man on the earth. He was a king in Judah.
All the history of Judah, from David until the Babylonian captivity—all the kings, about twenty of them—are compared to David. Only four were said to have followed the Lord like David: Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah.
The first was King Asa, David’s great-great-grandson. In 1 Kings it says that he followed the Lord like his father David.
When Asa came into the kingdom, he really began to serve the Lord. The Lord gave rest for ten years, and then the test came. The Ethiopians came, with Zerah, with over a million men and chariots.
With only half that number, what could they do? They called upon the Lord. They trusted in the Lord. The Lord was their stronghold, their refuge. And the Lord gave them this marvelous victory.
Then the prophet came saying, “Now listen. The Lord is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him.” You can read this in 2 Chronicles 14 and 15.
Is that not most amazing? If you seek Him—if you want to dwell in the hidden place with Him, if you want vision, if you want a yielded heart, if you want a heart that loves Him completely—if you seek Him, He will let you find Him.
It says, when they sought Him, He let them find Him. I love it. Not merely, “They found Him,” but, “He let them.” As if we could do anything without His grace. They sought, and He allowed them to find Him.
Then they made a covenant to seek the Lord with all their hearts, and they were full of joy. That was in the fifteenth year of his reign.
Asa reigned forty-one years, the second longest of any king. He came to peace in his kingdom for twenty years. But something happened in those twenty years.
This king, who had a heart like David, if you can imagine it, did not guard his heart. Somehow, I do not know, he took too much for granted. Somehow, he let something go.
The Lord has given it to you and to me to really watch over and guard our own hearts, because the heart is deceitful above all things. It is like a garden. What a beautiful garden—and the next week weeds are growing all up in it. It has to be cultivated and guarded.
Somehow Asa got distracted and did not guard his heart. Then something happened that I think he never expected: he was attacked.
Not by Ethiopians, not by Arameans or Moabites, but he was attacked by his own people—Israel, the northern tribes. Baasha the king attacked him.
The way he responded was that he went to his own treasury and to the treasury of the Lord’s house, took treasure, and gave it to the king of Damascus. He said, “Now attack this man, and he will stop.” And it worked.
Do not always look and see whether something seems to be working or not. It may not be of the Lord.
The prophet Hanani came to him and said these words in condemnation, because Asa’s heart was no longer completely His:
For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.
“You have acted foolishly in this.”
And do you know what Asa did, with that compromised heart that he had not kept? He threw the prophet in jail. “Oh, shut him up.”
We can shout the Holy Spirit down sometimes. He is a gentleman. And this man, with a heart like David’s heart, failed to keep his heart.
May I close by reading what David did to keep his heart. Oh, that it could be said of us that we have a heart like David.
David had his failings—oh, huge failings. Someone once asked one of the sisters who had been with Watchman Nee from the beginning whether he had any faults. Lance tells it like this: “Faults?” Watchman Nee was a great man, and he had great faults.
But David came through because he kept his heart. Even after failures, he came back and kept his heart. It is given to you and to me to guard our hearts.
Listen to David’s prayers. We have them.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
—Psalm 19:14
Not just taking it for granted: “Well, I am the Lord’s. Of course I will want what He wants.”
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.
—Psalm 139:23-24
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a right spirit within me.
—Psalm 51:10
Everything that we need is in Christ: the seeing, the abiding, the yieldedness, the submission, the love, and even the way to keep our hearts from becoming impure and hard and unbelieving.
Everything is in Him. What a Savior we have. What a Savior we have.
And He says to us:
Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
He says, “I am meek and lowly in heart. Come and take the yoke with Me.”
He is the answer, brothers and sisters, to walk before Him and be blameless. Come. Come to Him as an individual. Companies, His assemblies, come to Him.
In that place of intimacy, we hear His voice. His eyes will find us—those whose heart is completely His—and His voice says:
I am God Almighty, El Shaddai.
Walk before Me, and come to fullness.
Let’s pray.
Lord, what can we say to these things?
Lord, You intend for each of us to come into that eternal weight of glory in Christ. Lord, we ask You, do not let us come short of it.
Capture our hearts, Lord.
Lord, it is that sight of Your face that looked and melted Peter, that face that Stephen saw. Oh Lord, You are so lovely—beautiful beyond description, too wonderful for comprehension.
But, O Lord, get our hearts, that we might walk before You blamelessly. We ask in Your precious name. Amen.