Though I am more comfortable singing than speaking, just to get warmed up, we’ll start out singing.
This is a song that the Lord gave me some time ago. I’m not a musician. I’m a nurse anesthetist; I do anesthesia, and I enjoy singing. I enjoy worshiping the Lord, but strictly speaking, I’m not a musician. So, when I say the Lord gave me a song, that’s quite a miracle.
A song to sing—
Oh, what a blessed thing,
To sing a song from my heart
And, what’s more, dear Lord, seeks for You,
Brings more joy than Thy heart can contain.
May the song I sing, O Spirit—
Holy Spirit, lead us to the Lord,
Into the presence of the living God.
For this is where we desire to dwell.
O Jesus, Holy Spirit, lead us to the Lord,
Into the presence of the living God.
This is where we desire to dwell.
Well, that’s my burden this morning: that the Holy Spirit would lead us to where the Lord is dwelling, to His dwelling place. Most of my burden is for the house of God. And I’m not a speaker either, so—well, we’re going to talk about that, Herb. You just wait there, buddy.
But as we were singing that song, I wanted to take one opportunity to address any who are here who may not have had the Lord Jesus come into their hearts. He desires for you to come and dwell with Him. He is the Lord of glory. He is the great I AM.
If you haven’t asked the Lord into your heart and you’re here today, I want to extend to you an invitation from the Lord Himself, the Lord of glory, to receive Him into your heart.
I have a little story about that. One of the doctors downtown—I was giving him a ride to work one day, and he said to me, “Keen”—he’s from India. My past, I was a mish kid. My parents were missionaries, and I grew up in India. He’s an Indian, so there was a relationship there, and he felt comfortable talking to me.
He said, “Keen, somebody once told me I need to be saved. What does it mean?”
And I was kind of like, “Oh…” I was so embarrassed that I really didn’t have anything to say to him because, I mean, he was really a nice guy. He was a great guy. But here he was saying, “Somebody said I need to be saved. What does that mean?”
So I mumbled some things and talked to him a little bit, but it just didn’t seem like there was any power to it. It didn’t seem like it came out and grabbed him, or embraced him with the love of the Lord.
After that, I thought about it for a while. What does it mean to be saved? What does it mean that you need to be saved? I mean, if you’re a good person, isn’t that good enough? Good people go to heaven, right?
Well, no, they don’t.
This example came to me, and I’m looking forward to the day when the Lord gives me a very large magnet—a positive force with a big magnet.
To me, God is the most positive force in the universe—all plus, for those of you who are science majors. All plus, all positive; nothing negative.
As long as there is a little plus in any one of us, what happens as we approach that positive? Positive things can’t get close. It just pushes you right back. It can’t happen.
As long as there is something in you that says, “I’m good enough. I can handle this,” that’s just going to drive you away.
But what happens if you had a large magnet here and put one little electron negative charge out there? Wow—right to that positive source, so tight you could never pull it off. And what happens to that negative charge? It becomes positive with the charge that’s there.
So what does it mean to be saved? It means to be delivered from yourself.
The Lord Jesus died on the cross that we might have life. We don’t have life apart from Him. If you think you have life today and you don’t know the Lord Jesus, you’re in darkness. You need the Lord to open your eyes to see.
I hope this little example would show you that principle of what it means to be saved. We need to be saved.
If there’s anyone here who wants to know Christ and wants to talk further, please talk to me after the meeting. Or, if you want to say something now, if you want to give your heart to the Lord right now, have it over with and can’t take it anymore—if the Lord’s working in your heart, let’s do it now.
I don’t need to speak here this morning. If the Lord wants to take in a harvest, let’s do it right now. But if you want to wait, or you’re embarrassed, or whatever, don’t hesitate. Don’t go home today without talking to somebody about Jesus.
He is your Savior. You cannot approach God. You cannot come before God without knowing Him.
All right, from here on out, I’m preaching to the choir. Again, I don’t know whether this is going to be long or short. I had one brother say, “Just keep it short.” I had another brother say, “Just pour out your heart, brother. Get the burden across.”
I don’t know if it’s going to be short or long, but my burden basically is on this matter:
Watch and pray.
The genesis of this message was a Friday night meeting where we were fellowshipping around Matthew 26, the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Lord spoke to His disciples.
I think most of us know the story: how He went and took them to the garden and said, “Wait here while I go a little further.” He took Peter, James, and John a little further than the rest and told them, “Stay here. Watch and pray.” Then He went a little further and prayed.
As we were fellowshipping around this, it dawned on me that that was the night before the crucifixion. The night before the crucifixion, the Lord was asking His disciples to watch and pray.
If there is an event in history—if time were a continuum, the timelines you’ve drawn in school—there is one point that acts as a fulcrum. That point was the cross.
The night before the crucifixion, the Lord was asking the disciples to watch and pray. At this point in time, all of history was sort of in the balance. It says in the Bible that everything was in Him, for Him, and by Him, and everything is held together by Him.
Here, for just a moment, the Lord of glory went down. Jesus the Son was separated from God the Father. He said on the cross:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
The whole universe could have come unglued at that point in time. For three hours, the Father and the Son were separated.
But right there, that is a firm foundation. It looks kind of wobbly the way I’ve drawn it, but let me tell you: it is secure. All of eternity past and all of eternity to come was redeemed in that moment in time.
All who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved and go on into eternity to come.
This was on my heart as we were sharing about that. Then the other thing I was thinking about that Friday night was, if that was the night before the crucifixion, before Calvary, what night is this?
I got to thinking, and pretty quickly it came to mind: I think it’s the night before the rapture.
Now, I’m not a Bible theologian, and I don’t do a lot of reading—me and books. If I were a real scholar, I’d have become a doctor, but I’m a nurse because I don’t do books very well.
But it seemed to me that the rapture was what was coming. So I started to think about it a little bit more, and I thought, “Watch and pray—that’s somewhere else in the Bible.”
I went to look to see where else it says, “Watch and pray,” and I found it in Mark 13.
I appreciate the water. Those of you who grew up in India, brothers back there, know we always enjoy water in India, don’t we?
Mark 13, starting with verse 1:
And as He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples saith unto Him, Teacher, behold, what manner of stones and what manner of buildings!
And Jesus said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down.
And as He sat on the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him privately,
Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign when these things are all about to be accomplished?
And Jesus began to say unto them, Take heed that no man lead you astray.
Many shall come in My name, saying, I am He; and shall lead many astray.
It goes on to describe events that lead up to Mark 13:26:
And then shall they see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory.
Then Mark 13:29 says:
Even so ye also, when ye see these things coming to pass, know ye that He is nigh, even at the doors.
I want to describe this scene a little more. Here are the disciples with the Lord Jesus. They had just come out of the temple and gone up on the Mount of Olives.
The Mount of Olives has a whole bunch of significance. It is a neat place to realize all that is going to happen there.
In Acts 1:12, this is the place from which the Lord ascended into heaven as the disciples watched. It was from the Mount of Olives.
And it is Zechariah 14:4 that tells us the Lord will return to the Mount of Olives.
The night they went to Gethsemane after the upper room, where did they go first before they went to Gethsemane? The Mount of Olives. It says it was His custom to do so. Oh, the Lord loved this mountain, the Mount of Olives.
So here they are, sitting on top of the Mount of Olives, having come out of the temple. The disciples ask Him, “Lord, look at that temple. Isn’t it gorgeous? Isn’t it great?”
And the Lord says that there is coming a day when not one stone will stand upon another. What He is beginning to tell them is this: here He is sitting, the reality. He is the temple of God. He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily, dwelling on earth.
Here is the reality looking at the type, or the shadow, of that which was. He is saying to them, “When that’s destroyed, these are the things that are going to be happening before I come again to the Mount of Olives—the end of the ages.”
Then you go to Mark 13:32-33:
But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
That light bulb went on big in my head when I was wrestling with the question, “What night is this?” Here it is: the same night before Calvary, He says to the disciples, “Watch and pray.”
The night before He returns, after He has told them what is going to happen and everything that will be going on, what does He want us doing? Watching and praying—the same thing.
It amazed me that the call had not changed. Before Gethsemane, it was as though the Lord saw it coming and said, “Watch and pray.” Why? Look at Mark 13:36-37:
Lest coming suddenly He might find you sleeping.
And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.
The same thing that happened to the disciples in Gethsemane, He is warning us about here. They fell asleep when they were asked to watch and pray. What is our danger? Falling asleep.
So, Herb—wake up.
I was asked to give this message some time ago, and things happened, conference came, and it got put off. I was kind of hoping they’d just forget about it. I thought they had.
Then during conference, I heard Christian Chen say something about the next event to happen being the rapture. I thought, “Oh, maybe I wasn’t so crazy after all.” I don’t know the sequence of events and things like that, but when I hear someone like Christian Chen say it, I think, “Whoa, okay, maybe.”
So when they called and asked me to share on this topic, I was glad for the opportunity to say this. I really do think it is a call to us today. In the darkest hour, the night before the dawn gets very dark. The Lord is calling to us and saying, “Watch and pray.”
Romans 13:11 says:
And this, knowing the season, that already it is time for you to awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed.
Isn’t that interesting, saints? Our salvation is nearer than when we believed. You know He is not talking about initial salvation there. He is talking about some other kind of salvation.
Our salvation is nearer than when we believed. We believe we’re already saved, right? So how is our salvation near? I think He is talking about our salvation from this world. Our deliverance from this world is nearer than when we believed.
Again, the same thing: Paul says, “Time to wake up.” It’s time to wake up.
The thing that is trying to divide us, the thing that will get in our way, the thing that will keep us from watching and praying—over and over again, the Lord, Paul, and the Holy Spirit say that it is sleep.
You could say the enemy is an anesthesiologist—or a nurse anesthetist. We do the same thing, pretty much.
Let’s break this down into two things: watch and pray. Let’s look at watching first, in Matthew 26.
You don’t have to turn there. I am just going to run through the sequence again: from the supper, to the Mount of Olives, to the garden, to the Lord’s word, “Watch and pray,” to sleep.
It is the same there as it is in Mark 13. In Mark, He was talking in the temple. He went to the Mount of Olives with the disciples, spoke to them about the end times and the things to come, and then said to them, “Watch and pray, for the time is near.”
When you see these things happening, know that it is near, at the door.
I think sometimes we need to be convinced that we are at the door. I think we really don’t realize that we are at the door.
Honestly, when I was preparing for this yesterday, I was ready to go. I was like, “Lord, take me now before I have to do this.”
How many of you saw this? This is the Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial page. This was Wednesday, July 10. That was just this week. How many of you saw this? Raise your hand.
Amazing, wasn’t it? This is “A Cloud of Witnesses: The Saints’ Testimonies to the True Parents.” I did not read the whole thing. I couldn’t take it. I just scanned it and started to think, “What in the world?”
Then I read the small portion under number one, Christianity. It says, “Jesus: Reverend Sun Myung Moon, you are the Second Coming who inaugurated the Completed Testament Age.”
That’s where I stopped. I said, “Oh my gosh.” I’ve heard of the spirit of antichrist, and you know the Antichrist, but I had never, ever heard someone actually say that they were the Christ.
And this one—that’s what I read here: “You are the Second Coming who inaugurated the Completed Testament Age.” My goodness, that boomed in my heart. This is that hour. We are at the door.
The other thing that made me realize again that we were at the door was something our brother Christian Chen shared with us at conference.
He said that there are 1,800 prophecies in the Bible. Of those 1,800 prophecies, if you remove repetitious references, it narrows it down to 737 prophecies.
Then, if you take independent prophecies and categorize them into five major prophecies, he said there are 590.
Christian Chen, as I understand it, is a university mathematics faculty professor, isn’t he? Am I correct? Anyway, when he says these numbers, I don’t think he is just quoting them out of a book. I think the brother went and counted them himself.
I bank on these numbers. I don’t think you will find an error here.
Of the 590 major prophecies in the Bible, 570 of those prophecies have been fulfilled. That leaves only 20 prophecies to be fulfilled, of which the last one is the new heaven and the new earth. So there are actually only 19.
Then what he said after that was that the next one, as he understands the Scriptures, is the rapture—the rapture of the saints. So that’s how we are at the door.
Now, back to watch and pray. The enemy’s tactic is sleep, and we talked about anesthesia. I would like to share a few little anesthesia anecdotes.
You could say that at the end of the day, the disciples were tired—physically tired. They had a good meal, they had heard lots of teaching, they were confused, they were at the end of themselves, and it was late at night. Naturally speaking, it would be very easy to fall asleep.
What about us? Is it naturally speaking very easy for us to see ourselves as justified in falling asleep? We’ve been working hard. We’ve been doing a lot of stuff. It’s late. We’ve heard a lot. It is easy.
I think you see Jenna’s eyes getting heavy over there just now, just thinking about it. Sorry if you’ve been up late. You haven’t been up as late as I have.
It is justifiable, but the Holy Spirit has been sent. The disciples didn’t have the Holy Spirit; we do. The Holy Spirit is here to help us, to enable us to wake up and take strength.
Now, that’s no excuse for not living correctly.
How do anesthesiologists put people to sleep? Number one: gas. We put the mask over your face, turn some gas on, and in a few minutes, guess what? You’re asleep.
How about the enemy? What is the air that you breathe spiritually? We sing a song, “The air that I breathe, Your holy presence living in me, Your very word.” What is the air that we are breathing?
Is it the world’s air? Is it the enemy’s air? Guess what? If it is, it is putting you to sleep.
If you’re falling asleep now, it’s okay. Don’t worry, you go on to sleep. If you’re tired, guess what? You’re going to go to sleep. Don’t worry about it. The Lord is able to wake you up.
What is another technique anesthesiologists use? We just stick a little needle in the vein and push a little medicine. Guys, five seconds.
I love putting young people to sleep. These guys come in like, “You can’t hurt me.” But it’s true. Young people—it’s amazing to them, because if you’ve never been rendered powerless, you just can’t believe it.
I tell them, “Okay, now I want you to start counting backwards from one hundred, and let’s see how far you can get.” And they say, “One hundred…” and they’re gone.
That is how we do it. What about the enemy?
It is interesting to me that we are willing to take a little pain in the hand for the greater good of not feeling surgery and going to sleep. But how does the enemy get us to take a little pain? How does he get access to our veins—that life in us?
The same way: a better good. Are you willing to bear a little pain? Are you willing to work a little harder if you can have a Ferrari? Will you lay your life down for something else? Will you do anything? Will you hurt?
Drug abuse is a real big thing. Why do people hurt themselves? Because they want to feel better.
So if you’re feeling bad enough, even as believers, if you’re hurting and the enemy is offering you something good, maybe you ought to try it. But then he gets access to you.
Once he gets that vein, five seconds—it is up to the head, and the head is asleep. You’re out. You’re no longer watching and praying. You’re gone.
Let’s look at one more. I had fun with this part.
This is a syringe. It’s not a needle; it is a little plastic tube. But I am going to do a little experiment here and suck up some of this water.
With this one syringe, if I fill this whole thing up, I can put you to sleep. But with just one tenth—one cc—placed in the correct spot in your back, I can render you powerless from the chest down and make you paralyzed. I can cut off your leg and you won’t feel it.
Just this much, right here in the back, and you are rendered powerless.
What about the enemy? That is called regional anesthesia. You’re awake, but you’re numb. You don’t feel a thing. It doesn’t hurt. Go ahead.
What about the enemy? Does he numb you? What does he love to numb?
I think about the heart. He loves to make our hearts numb so that we don’t feel.
You get into body life and you get to rubbing each other and living with each other. It gets painful sometimes. Maybe you’re willing to take that shot right to the heart because it is easier to be numb.
You can still move. You can do your arms anyway. But your heart can’t feel. Can you watch and pray? Can you bear one another’s burdens if you’ve got a numb heart? I don’t think so.
One more. I like this one too. With children, we often use this route: just give them a drink, right down the mouth.
They have not had anything to eat or drink since midnight; they are thirsty. We say, “Want a little juice?” Oh, they’ll take it.
They drink that juice and, in five or ten minutes, they are either asleep or so happy and carefree that they go playing with you down the hallway to the operating room.
What about the enemy? Does he use that route? I think very much so.
Let us look at Philippians 3:18. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, speaks about brothers and sisters in Christ who have become enemies of the cross of Christ:
Whose end is perdition, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.
Whose god is the belly. In other words, they only serve that which satisfies them and are not willing to bear the work of the cross in denying themselves anything. They just love to get back—just me, me, me. Whose god is their belly.
Can this render you powerless to watch and pray? How about when you have a full belly? What do you like to do? I like to sleep.
If you’re satisfied, I like to sleep. Give me good meat and potatoes and bread and Sunday afternoon football, and I’m out.
So if he can feed you in that way and make you satisfied, you’re out. You’re asleep. He won.
One more thing about sleep, and then we’ll go on to prayer. All the examples I have used so far are with us awake. What about the parable of the virgins in Matthew 25:1, the parable of the ten virgins?
What does it say? They all had oil. That means they are all believers. They are all Christians. They all had oil, right? But they all fell asleep.
As I understand this passage from what I have been told, this represents those who have died in Christ. They are gone. They are dead. They are asleep. It is done. It is over.
But when the Lord returns, who rises first? The dead in Christ rise first, to meet Him in the air.
Five of them have enough oil; five do not. The five that have oil go to the marriage feast of the Lamb. The five that do not have oil are left here to sell and buy more oil. They are still going, just not right away.
So what does that say to us? It says that before we sleep, we have some dealing to do. We have some transacting to do to get oil.
What is oil? Oil is that which supports the light. What is the light? The Lord Himself. We need to have that within us. We need to be investing in that which supports the light of the Lord.
How do we do that? The mechanism, the communication device for transacting business, I believe, is not a cell phone, but prayer.
How else are you going to communicate to the One who has the oil, to let you buy some oil? He has the oil; you want it. How do you get it? Pray.
That is the communication. That is the transacting. You are talking to Him about it. You are doing business. You are getting oil—buying and selling.
That leads us to this matter of prayer. Before we sleep, we need to transact if we want to go to be with the Lord, if we want to participate in that wedding feast of the Lamb, if we want to be part of the rapture. I think we need to be praying.
The first part is watching; the second part is praying. Which is more important: corporate prayer or individual prayer?
I think most of us would say individual prayer. It is more important that I am right with the Lord.
I think maybe that’s right, but I don’t know. When the disciples asked the Lord, “Teach us to pray,” He taught them to pray, “Our Father.” He did not say, “Pray, my Father, my God.” He said, “Pray, our Father.” It was corporate.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, He said, “Peter, James, and John.” Corporate. On the Mount of Olives, He had the disciples with Him.
I think we are all aware of the Lord’s word in Scripture:
My house shall be called a house of prayer.
When the Lord asks us to watch and pray, He wants us to gather to pray for His will to be done. I think what He is after is that we realize it is not just about you and the Lord. It is about us and the Lord.
It is about His will, His kingdom, His life. When He says, “How do we pray?” He says, “Pray, Our Father.” It is a corporate prayer.
Most of us say, “Well, we can pray that in our closet. I go into my closet and say, ‘Our Father.’” Sorry, I don’t think that is what He is after. I think He wants us to be together, praying together.
The reason I think He wants us to pray together is because of Matthew 18:20, which says:
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
We take this verse—two or three—and think that is the Lord’s highest. That is the minimum. That is not what He is after.
Let us look at the other verses that speak in Scripture about how the Lord desires a holy habitation of God. It is a house of prayer that the Lord desires.
How many of you live in two- or three-stone houses? Not too many, I don’t think. A house of prayer is a whole lot more than two or three stones coming together.
Now, the Lord is in your midst, but what the Lord is after is a house of prayer—not just a few gathered together in His name praying. He wants a house.
What is in a house? Rooms, lots of living stones. A holy habitation of God in the Spirit. He is after a house.
My house shall be called a house of prayer.
The other thing that some of us do is stay home. Wednesday nights are the time that we meet here to pray concerning corporate issues in the Lord’s kingdom—kingdom prayer.
Some would say, “Well, my wife and I stay home on Wednesday night and pray together. That’s two or more gathered in His name. We get the burdens, we hear what they are, and we pray about them.”
Well, that’s good. That’s great. But it is still not what the Lord is after. Number one, you are no longer two or three. Matthew 19:6 says when the Lord joins you in marriage, you are no longer two but one.
So you are down to your one at home. So don’t go there.
What about some of us who think Sundays—our meeting here on Sunday—is a house of prayer? No.
What we do here on Sunday morning is come to remember the Lord and His death until He returns. We come to give thanks. We take the table. We are not praying intercessory prayers here about Israel, the Lord’s coming, sickness among us, and such things.
This is a special time to take the Lord’s table and thank the Lord for His mercy and grace to keep us throughout the week. That is not what He is talking about when He says, “My house shall be a house of prayer.”
For us here, if this is where you meet, Wednesday night is that time that we meet. May the Lord burden us to be there.
And if you can’t—there is no condemnation in the Lord Jesus. Everybody has their things, their schedules, their priorities. They are innumerable.
But the point of the matter is: what does the Lord call us to? Watch and pray.
That is what I led all this up to, because it is like the night before the rapture. What are we supposed to be doing? We are doing a whole lot of other stuff. I don’t know how much watching and praying we are doing.
Well, number one, I’ll take that back. I know how much watching and praying we are doing, and it is not much. Every home should be represented here on Wednesday night.
If there is a reason you cannot be here, are you getting together with the brothers and saying, “I can’t come on Wednesday night. Can we do it another night? Can we pray on Thursday night? Can we meet on Saturday? Let’s pray every night.”
Is your burden to be a part of the house? The Lord’s house—He says His house is a house of prayer. So why aren’t we praying together? Wednesday night is a pitiful representation.
The Lord says His house is a house of prayer. I am going to go one step further, and y’all can stone me outside later.
I think we all know these things. I am not saying anything you don’t know.
It is not even good enough to go to conferences to pray, to gather with strangers from other places. “Let’s go meet in the coliseum, all the Christians, to pray.” That is not the house of prayer the Lord is talking about. It is not His house.
It is precious saints—redeemed, saved—and no doubt the Lord honors those times, blesses those times, and answers those prayers. It is just not a house. It is a collection of precious stones.
You are not built together. You are not knit together. You are not joined upon joints. There is no cement between you. You do not know them. You are not accountable to them, and they are not accountable to you. After they leave that meeting, who knows what they do?
Where you are accountable, where I am accountable, is here—in the place where the Lord has us meeting as a testimony to Him.
It is here: a habitation, a dwelling where His things are, where He can relax and be at ease. Individuals who are brought together with precious like faith in Jesus, by Jesus, for Jesus—His house.
That is what He wants us to be. To be that, we have to watch and pray together. There is no other substitute.
If we don’t, we are breathing the other air. We are getting food from somewhere else. We are getting injected. Our minds are—you know—we are asleep.
What does it take? It takes the mind of Christ.
One more little sleep example. How do you know if you are awake? How do you know I am awake? I might be sleepwalking here and talking in my sleep. I have been trying to rehearse this message for some time, but I could just be asleep.
You can be sleepwalking, walking and talking with your eyes open, having a conversation, and be totally asleep. How do you know you are awake?
The only way you can tell definitively, scientifically, is with an electroencephalograph. They hook you up and see brain waves. Certain brain waves mean wakefulness; certain other brain waves mean sleep.
You can know if a person is awake or asleep by looking at those little brain waves. But how many of you could understand those little brain waves? They are all over the place, if you’ve ever seen them.
It takes someone else to read those brain waves to know whether you are asleep or awake. That is part of what being here is about spiritually. We need one another.
We have precious brothers who understand the mind of Christ. They can see in you, “Ah, yeah, you are asleep, buddy. Wake up.” They can know.
What it takes to be awake is to have the mind of Christ spiritually. You have to have the mind of Christ to be awake.
I had a question that I asked the Lord about the Garden of Gethsemane. It was kind of strange to me. It was like, “So what? The disciples fell asleep.” I have fallen asleep in Wednesday night prayer meetings—I will confess that.
So what? What did they miss? I really did not want to stand up here without having that answer, because I think it matters.
Wednesday night, on the way back home from prayer meeting, I think the Lord gave me a little answer. I don’t know if it is the answer, but it was enough for me.
He said, “They missed out on the opportunity to be of support, to be of comfort. They missed that opportunity to bless Me.”
I want an opportunity to bless the Lord, don’t you?
When we come on Wednesday night, we participate in what the Lord is doing, and it pleases Him. When we don’t come, it grieves Him when we are not participating as He would have us to.
Please, don’t take condemnation away from this. There is no condemnation in the Lord. But if the Lord is calling to us, He is calling us to pray. We need to be together. We need to be praying. Otherwise, we are going to be asleep.
Guess who got the privilege of blessing the Lord? God the Father had sent down an angel to minister to the Lord in the garden. But He wants us. He wants us there.
Colossians 1:28:
Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.
This is what I am appealing to you today: Christ in you, the hope of glory. I am appealing to Christ in you today.
You cannot do this in your flesh. You cannot go home and say, “I am going to rearrange my life, and I am going to come on Wednesday.” Go to the Lord. It is Christ in you that will make a way for you to come and be a part of His house of prayer.
Hebrews 13:22:
But I exhort you, brethren, bear with the word of exhortation, for I have written unto you in few words.
These are just a few words. Bear the exhortation. Don’t be offended. Don’t rationalize. Don’t justify. Just bear the word of exhortation.
I have a few bumper stickers, or logos for T-shirts, in parting. I would like to get some of these made, but I didn’t think of this early enough.
Here is the bumper sticker:
It is not about you.
It is not about me.
It is not about us.
It is about Him.
The cross precedes the crown—or, no cross, no crown. What was gained at Calvary? The crown of life.
Gethsemane precedes Calvary. Prayer precedes rapture. No prayer, no rapture.
What is gained in watching and praying? Escape. That is what the Scripture says. He says:
Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.
What is gained in watching and praying is escape from the temptation to give in to the flesh and be rendered totally useless to the Lord by falling asleep.
Lord, I just thank You for this opportunity to share Your word.
Lord, would You help us to be that house, or that habitation, where You are at home?
Lord, I pray for my brothers and sisters that they would not be taken in by the enemy and rendered useless, but that Your life in them would quicken them.
Lord, by Your indwelling Spirit, would You quicken us—body, soul, and spirit—to be a house of prayer that watches and prays till You return.
Lord, we look to You. In Jesus’ name.