Okay, thanks.
Okay, you guys just have to move a little bit more that way, just because I want to see—I want to see everybody. I do not want anybody to get beyond my stereophonic scope here.
Let us look at two passages of Scripture this morning. The first one is in 1 Corinthians 14.
As you know, chapters 12, 13, and 14 in 1 Corinthians speak about ministering in the assembly. Chapter 12 deals with a number of spiritual gifts given to brothers in order to minister in the assembly. Chapter 13 speaks about the need for all those gifts to be bathed in love for them really to have impact. Then chapter 14 deals with some of the practical aspects of serving one another in the body.
So, in that respect, there is a section here—a couple of sections—on speaking. Let us begin with 1 Corinthians 14:1.
Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but to God; for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries.
But one who prophesies speaks to men for edification, exhortation, and consolation.
One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself; one who prophesies edifies the church.
Now I wish that you all spoke in tongues, but even more, I wish that you would prophesy.
Greater is one who prophesies than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may receive edification.
Then let us go down to 1 Corinthians 14:26.
What is the outcome then, brethren?
When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation.
Let all things be done for edification.
If anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be by two, or at most three, and each in turn; and one must interpret.
But if there is no interpreter, he must keep silent in the church and let him speak to himself and to God.
Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment.
But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent.
For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted.
And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets; for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.
Then let us look in Romans 12. Jack, would you just take the volume down a little bit on this? Since we are just a small group, I do not think I need quite so much zing in there. That is good.
Romans 12 is another practical section on speaking and serving. Let us begin at Romans 12:3.
Through the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.
For just as we have many members in one body, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith;
if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching;
or he who exhorts, in his exhortation;
he who gives, with liberality;
he who leads, with diligence;
he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.
These two passages, when you put them together, speak about something that only God can do: namely, the transference of grace into gift.
Every brother has the grace of God to serve. Some brothers have this grace expressed in a gift.
Now, this is important. I thought everybody knew this, but last night I shared with the young people, and it seemed like some had never heard this before. The words grace and gift are very closely related.
The Greek word for grace is charis—C-H-A-R-I-S. It means grace. Grace means not only God’s love for us, though undeserved. Grace is also used by Paul frequently as an enabling that comes from God.
Grace is Jesus in your life, giving you strength to do something. So even though a person is weak, by the grace of God he can serve, and God’s strength comes through. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” It is grace that makes us what we are. It is Jesus in us who enables us to do anything.
Now, charis becomes charisma. From charis to charisma. There are two more letters on the word grace, and that gives you gift. What are those two letters? M-A. It is just a neuter ending put onto what was a feminine word, charis.
What it implies is that grace has become tangible. Grace has become a product. Grace has become a thing. Now, do not take that wrongly. What it means is that grace is supplied in a tangible way.
I used the example last night because we were sharing with the young people. Let us just say that our brother Kenny were sick. We love our brother Kenny. That is the grace of God. We are praying: “Oh, God, You know we just love our brother. We just want to see him healed and touched. Please help him,” and everything. This is the grace of God, and we are all praying together.
But somebody who has charisma says, “I am Jesus’ hand, and this is the grace of God supplied to Kenny.” He touches him, and the healing goes through. This is God’s wonderful thing.
It is all God’s doing, but He uses a sort of horizontal web for us to help one another, and that is why He gives us gifts. All that did was make the grace of God tangible.
When somebody has a healing gift, he basically has Jesus in him, and Jesus functions in him sometimes by giving him the ability to pray for people who may be healed. Others receive a gift of prophecy. Others receive the gift of miracles. Others receive the gift of faith or discernment of spirits. All of this is the grace of Jesus made tangible.
With long enough experience in the assembly, we begin to understand that brother so-and-so has a certain gift. But it all started out as grace, which is where we want to start out here this morning.
Here is the deal: you will never know if you have a gift if you do not exercise faith with the grace that you have.
In Romans 12, notice what Paul says:
Just as we have many members in one body, and all members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us—
Here is grace in your life and mine—enabling in your life and mine—but it expresses itself in different ways. This becomes the ma, the charisma, the gift that comes out. Whatever your grace supply line is, do it according to the measure of faith that you have.
In 1 Corinthians, we saw Paul defining the gifts in chapter 12—prophecy, speaking in tongues, discernment, and all of this. Then suddenly, in chapter 14, he says:
Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
Then in verse 5: “Now I wish that you all spoke in tongues,” which means, by the way, that all the Christians there did not speak in tongues. The evidence of being filled with the Spirit is not that everybody speaks in tongues. It never has been, and it never will be.
But some did. Some prophesied. Some had other expressions of the Spirit’s life in them. Then Paul says, “I wish that all of you spoke in tongues, but even more, I wish that all of you would prophesy.”
It is almost as if anybody can who has the grace, takes the grace, uses faith, and starts to speak. Of course, it does not always turn out that way, but this is the starting place.
How do you know if you have the gift of prophecy? Do you just sit there one day, hear a voice breaking through the upper room, and it says, “You are a prophet”? No.
What happens is that you stand up like any other brother, and you share, and you share, and you share. After a while, people say, “You know what? There is more than just the grace of sharing. There is a gift.” That is how we find out.
So here is the deal: it starts by faith. You know Jesus lives in you, and now by faith you are willing to give it a shot. If you have honest brothers and sisters around you, they will not allow you to take too many shots if it is not turning into a gift.
We always have this problem. It is a twofold problem, and it may be the two sides of the same coin.
Here is one problem: brothers, by the grace of God, I tell you, do not think too highly of yourself. This is just grace in operation. Whatever grace God has given you, do it by faith, and do not think you are a big shot.
Some people have a problem with this because when they get hold of it, they become bigger than they are. They want to be bigger than they are. They have seen the preachers on television, and suddenly your brother here, who has been helping with the chairs and welcoming people, is wearing cufflinks, you notice.
His normal voice has taken on a whole new depth: “Brothers and sisters.” You say, “Well, what is going on here?” He is thinking more highly of himself than he ought to think.
Our voice in prayer ought to be pretty much the same as the one we speak with, you know what I mean? Our voice in speaking ought to be pretty much the same. You just want to be a real person. When the grace of God comes through, but somebody thinks more highly of himself than he ought, or wants to be something, it actually gets in the way of the Lord really coming through.
On the other hand, we have just as many people on the other side of the coin who have the grace of God in their lives, but they do not have faith because they are insecure and afraid.
More than likely, every time they take their step of faith, it is wonderful. The whole fellowship is exhilarated. “This is so great. You shared such a wonderful thing.” Then three years later they pop up again.
What has happened to them for three years? They have been saying, “I do not think I will have that this year. I think it is just me. The other brothers are better.” It has nothing to do with that. You exercise faith. That is all.
Some people are fearful, and the Lord is usually pushing them in. Some people say, “Give me the handles of the Roscoe, and I will just take over.” The Lord is always saying, “Sorry, buddy. Back off, back off.”
But this is all the Lord’s doing. Paul says, “Here is a godly desire: desire to edify and encourage the brothers and sisters.” You should desire that. Every brother and every sister desires it, we know that. But they are not all allowed to speak.
On that note, let me just say something. Yes, there are some sisters who would grab hold of this roster if you let them.
It has been known in church history—and in my own history on Long Island—that a woman took over the pulpit. She never left it. She eventually became the pastor of the church. It started out as a fellowship. Something went badly wrong there.
But I do not want to get on that. Let me take it back a step. We have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in us because we are all priests. We are priests unto God, and we are living stones. So we all have grace.
On a broader spectrum, brothers, I want to exhort all of you and encourage all of you. When we come to the worship time on Sunday morning, you need to be the first ones in. You need to be living-stones brothers. That is where it starts, before you even get here.
Consider how frequently you pray and worship in the worship meeting, because you want to be full of grace. As soon as the brothers take the lead in worship, the sisters can come, right? Yes, no problem.
But if the sisters have to carry the preponderance of the worship time, then, brothers, we are not stepping forward with the grace of God that we have in us.
Do not say, “Oh, I cannot pray eloquently.” Please, do not. Just pray graciously, and it will be a blessing for us.
Brothers, I do not know why you asked me to come here. I am going to help with some practical things and everything, but if I could just encourage you, I think it is time to step forward in faith.
I think the Lord wants some of you to take that little step and say, “Okay, look, I am willing to exercise the grace of God and be faithful.” Then we will see with time. Do not get self-conscious about it, but we will see with time if there is a gift there. That is the only way we are going to know.
That is why it is so precious that we have assembly life together, because this is more likely to happen in a natural way in our setting than in any other way.
There are ways that we begin. In an ideal situation, a brother gets saved, finds the grace of God overflowing in his life, and the first thing he does on some occasion in assembly life is share his testimony.
That is usually the first sermon anybody preaches. Naturally speaking, it should be. It is your best sermon, by the way. How the Lord saved you is your best message.
If I may say, this was Paul’s best message. If you gave him one shot at any group of people, guaranteed, Paul talked about how he got saved. That was his best sermon. Your testimony is your best sermon.
That is why you sit here like a bump on a log, but then you travel down to Emporia or Roanoke Rapids, to that little group, and you share your testimony, and everybody thinks, “There is one.”
You go somewhere else, and sometimes God gives you a kick. Like poor old Mac—you know Mac’s story. About the time Mac first felt heart palpitations, he went down to Brazil just to attend the conference. Some brother could not come because of some circumstance—I cannot remember the whole deal—and they said, “Okay, Mac, we want you to teach in the afternoon.”
His whole life flashed in front of him. He made sure his will was in order. I mean, it scared him to death. Up to that time, he had just said a few words here and there occasionally. Then God just went—
As a matter of fact, brothers, most of you, if I could take you to Russia right now, would be evangelists. Because, by the grace of God, you have Jesus Christ, and that is all you need to preach out there.
There is the second way the Lord begins to take grace. When we exercise faith and use it, it is in preaching the gospel.
I wish that all our assemblies had more opportunities for gospel work, because it is where most men cut their teeth. You share the things you have seen and heard. You share the truth about Jesus Christ. It is very simple.
It takes fifteen minutes to share a gospel message, and people get saved. We should be doing this regularly because this is the way men really develop: by preaching the gospel.
It is a wonderful thing—going out in the park, preaching the gospel. All this kind of thing is just God’s normal way. May the Lord recover that moment.
Some of you probably have some evangelistic gift stirring around inside, and we need to give that opportunity.
You have testimony, you have sharing the gospel, and you also have doing something like sharing before the Lord’s table.
If you have not shared before in this assembly, I would like to encourage you to think along these lines: fifteen minutes is long enough to share something from the Lord.
This is our problem if we get churchified and think we have to share for an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes. Most brothers cannot start out like that. No brother can really start out like that.
They will share fifteen minutes of life and forty-five minutes of death.
As all of you know, I started out that way. I started out in the conventional church, and I was, quote, “called into ministry,” so I had to share in a Baptist church. I only had to share about forty minutes.
So I shared fifteen minutes of life and twenty-five minutes of death. I found an illustration from Charles Spurgeon, took them around the woods to my favorite little axe to grind, did different things, made them feel guilty for a while, pulled the strings, and called the invitation.
But by the grace of God, we only have so much life. Listen to Paul: do not think you are a big shot. Share according to the proportion of your faith.
There is some life in every brother. I am telling you, any brother here could stand up and share for five minutes, and you have life to share for five minutes. I know that is true. Fifteen minutes is good. Half an hour, you are getting out on the border.
If you have to share an hour, life grows in you as you exercise it. I am not saying that some of you do not have a ministry that could last more than an hour and still be living. But that is something that has developed.
If you have not come in on this kind of thing, do not think, “Oh, I could never do this. I mean, share an hour on Sunday mornings.” Do not think about that.
Think about sharing in a fellowship group. Think about opening up and sharing at the Lord’s table. Think about sharing your testimony in a living way, so people get to know you. Think about fifteen minutes.
This is where I am coming from: we can all prophesy, Paul says, and in order, and God gets the glory.
In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul sums it up in verse 31:
You can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted.
There are two sections there, right? We can all prophesy. That means you and me. We are talking about prophecy in this general way; we are not talking about the gift of prophecy.
When we look around, we have men like Stephen Kaung and Lance Lambert. Now we are talking about prophecy. Those are prophets. There is a difference between the gift of prophecy and a prophet.
I think they are interesting reversals of the coin. This is just my understanding. Stephen is truly a prophetic teacher. Lance is a teaching prophet. There is a little difference. I do not know. It is not important if you understand that distinction.
They have been approved over the years. But you should have heard Lance when he was a new Christian. He was only a preacher, just a gospel preacher. That was all he knew. Back in the early days, he preached the gospel.
My start was a terrible start. My poor father-in-law—two months after I got saved—we went out to a Baptist church, and he was the speaker that night. But because I was newly saved, he asked me to share my testimony.
That took forty-five minutes. It was my first time ever speaking. I lost complete track of time. When I got through, he said, “Well, we have no more time for me to speak, so let us—”
But thank God they gave the invitation, and some people got saved. I was just all over the place. I had no track of time. You get caught in something, and you have no idea. Finally, I saw people going—
They started out terribly. I just blew the whole service out of the water.
We have Kenny and Jerry here. Now they are old veterans, but in their early days, I bet those old sisters were really praying hard in the back.
I want to use a word which the Bible uses all the time. Let me make a further distinction here: we are not saying, “Become a teacher.” We are saying, “Be willing to preach.”
A teacher is a gift of God that the Lord raises up, and there are specific aspects to it. Let me put it this way.
There was a brother up on Long Island years ago. One of the first times Brother Stephen ever came to Long Island, this brother had the privilege of picking Stephen up at the airport.
This brother had been a Christian two years. He was filled with the Lord, and he thought God had called him to be a teacher. He was driving Stephen back from the airport, and he said, “Stephen, I have this burden. I think God has called me to be a teacher. I am studying my Bible. I am reading G. Campbell Morgan. So, brother, what do you think it takes to be a teacher?”
Stephen did not even bat an eye. He said, “Twenty years.”
This brother had eighteen years to go. What are you going to do? He thought he was called now.
What Stephen was saying was this: it takes eighteen or twenty years for you to become so engrossed in Christ that He interprets all of Scripture. Then you are a balanced teacher.
You can open the Bible anywhere, and Stephen is going to preach Christ. That is why he did that wonderful series. One of the heritages he has left for the church is what he did here over the years: that Seeing Christ series.
There is a teacher. He can see Christ in the whole thing. You and I have not gotten that far yet. Our view of Christ is wonderful, but it has not drawn in all the Scriptures. There are still some parts of Habakkuk that we do not quite have fitted in there yet. Do you see what I am saying?
A teacher has to be balanced by nature. A preacher does not. I do not mean a preacher can be crazy, but that is why I have always fitted better as a preacher than a teacher: I am not always balanced. I am burdened.
A teacher, however, lays out the whole groundwork. Stephen always lays out the objective side, the subjective side, and then he hits the thing, and you realize where he has been going.
He lays forty minutes of groundwork before he will dare touch any prophetic thing with application, because he wants to be balanced. Even when you hear him speaking about end-time things, he starts out this way: “Some people say this, and some people say that. It could be true that there is a double rapture, and it could be true that all go out in one.” He gives the pros and cons.
There is a teacher. You are not going to catch him way over on one side taking some extreme position.
Look at 1 Timothy 1. Paul is, of course, a quintessential teacher. In 1 Timothy 1:5, there is a very revealing verse as he urges Timothy to teach.
Notice 1 Timothy 1:3 and 5:
I urge you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men.
But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
There is a teacher. He is covering all the ground. He is concerned with a person’s conscience, to keep it pure. He is concerned with love from a pure heart among the saints. This is the goal: a sincere faith.
A teacher has this very balanced, thorough approach. But as you are beginning to speak, do not try to be a teacher. Do not try to do that, because either everybody has heard it before, or you are way in over your head.
I am just giving practical advice. That is why you notice these things that are kind of scary in James 3:1. I hope all of you read that before preparing for your message this afternoon.
By the way, this afternoon is going to be on a voluntary basis. I am not going to force you. If you are here today but did not prepare a message, I am not going to ask you to come up anyway.
We are going to be together this afternoon in fellowship. Those who want to share can share, and we will fellowship together about it. That is what is going to happen, just so you know.
If you are not prepared, do not feel that you had better escape or you will be called upon. You will be caught with your pants down, you know. No, it is not going to happen.
James 3:1 says:
Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.
It is true. If you are considered a teacher in the assembly and you are not balanced, there is a judgment involved.
This is why a teacher and a shepherd go together in the list of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. A shepherd needs to be concerned with the balance of the whole assembly as much as anything else.
The Lord has a rich supply. He has apostolic teaching, prophetic ministry, and all this kind of thing. But shepherds and teachers need to make sure that we are getting balanced provision.
If we are all getting deeper life, deeper life, deeper life, we also need some gospel, some gospel. The shepherds say, “You know what? We need this resource. Let us ask Brother Ed Miller to come in because he will share with us the grace of God.”
They have a sense of the balance and protection of the flock overall. That takes somebody with teaching wisdom, someone who can sense whether there is balance in the whole thing.
Otherwise, a fellowship can become lopsided—really heavy over here and really weak over there. It is not that teachers and shepherds have to maintain the balance themselves, but they know how to obtain the men and the things necessary to keep the whole thing balanced.
So we are not going to be teachers unless God gives us that gift, which we will find out down the road. For right now, preachers.
This word preacher has come into disrepute because down here in the South, we have so many preachers around every street corner. But it is a word used more than one hundred times in the Bible. It is a good word. Let us not throw it out.
When somebody says, “Ah, he did a good job teaching,” say, “No, I am a preacher.” I know nobody here would dare admit you are a preacher. I know you would not. You just could not do it, could you?
What is a preacher? Let me keep it general now. The word preach in the Bible is used most of the time for euangelizo, which means to preach the gospel. That is where we usually translate it as preaching the good news: “They went everywhere preaching the good news.”
But what is a preacher generally? A preacher is fulfilling what we just read in 1 Corinthians 14. He is somebody willing, by the grace of God, to share something the Lord has put on his heart.
The Lord gives you a burden, and with that burden He gives you an illustration—maybe out of your own life experience. Now you have something to share.
It does not have to be an hour long. As a matter of fact, most good preaching is probably best at fifteen or twenty minutes. The saints would love you to bits if your preaching was twenty minutes. They would say, “Hallelujah—fifteen, twenty minutes.”
You realize I read Scriptures in 1 Corinthians 14 and Romans 12, and that took five minutes. Fifteen minutes is not an awful lot, brothers.
But if you had a burden the Lord gave you, an illustration to explain it, and then you could wrap it up a little bit, that is preaching.
It does not have to be balanced. You saw something over here; you do not have to go into all this over there. People who are too careful always get tripped up in preaching because they cannot simply say what the Lord gave them to say.
Give us the Lord. If necessary, some of the shepherds may stand up and say, “Now, let us just remember that not everybody stands on their heads when they receive the Holy Spirit,” just to provide a little balance.
Somebody may get emphatic that we all should buy ice cream trucks so we can preach the gospel to kids. Somebody needs to stand up and say, “Well, not everybody has this gift.” Sometimes let the shepherds do the balancing.
The Lord put something on your heart. If you try to balance it, you will mix it down and confuse it in such a way that nobody knows what you are trying to say.
Let us start off real simple. I am talking about preaching from one Scripture.
Stephen Kaung reads all of Haggai 1. You do not need that. One verse is good. Do not try to imitate anybody.
The greatest preachers in the world were men like Charles Spurgeon, and they took one verse. Then they gave an hour of wonderful preaching from that one verse. They just took it and looked at it this way and that way.
I was surprised when I discovered this. One of my favorite men, as far as teachers go, is G. Campbell Morgan. I had read his writings on the Gospels and so on. Then I got his selected sermons—his whole library of sermons that somebody had published.
I opened it up: one-verse preaching. Not the whole chapter. Those Bible studies in the books we have are his expositions, and they called him the prince of expositors. But this man could preach from one verse, which is what he did on Sundays.
He spent twenty or twenty-five minutes on one verse, brought it out, illuminated it, and gave the point. That is powerful.
Do not think we have to read a whole chapter and do all this. A couple of verses—shine some light on them, and you have got it. That is it. What we need to do is give it a shot.
Now we are going to talk for a few minutes about what I call the internal process: how a word the Lord gives you becomes a burden. Then we will take a break, and the second half will concern how the burden is given words.
We go from word to burden. That is the internal process. Then the external process, if you want to put it that way, is how the burden finds words. In and out.
The first process is something we cannot do anything about. It is between you and God. The first, very important step is that the Lord gives you a word. Isn’t that wonderful?
Back when I was a Baptist preacher, I had to speak Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Back in those days, I was good for one word a week. So I borrowed two words a week, probably.
I had books of sermon outlines. I read Spurgeon and tried to copy him. I did all kinds of things because I just did not have that life. I could not hear from the Lord three times a week. I could not do it.
But here is the wonderful mystery: the Lord gives you a word. How does that happen?
First of all, be a diligent student of the Word of God. As you are studying the Word of God, something pops up. That could be the beginning of something to share with us.
You are reading the Bible, and something pops out. Isn’t that a miracle, when something pops out? It is like, “Wow, I have never even seen that.” That might be something that, if you shared it clearly with people, they would say, “Wow. Either we have never seen it, or it is wonderful that you have seen it.”
The other day, my younger son—he has just come alive in the Lord in the last month and a half, and it is wonderful—gave me a call. Every third day I get an email on a Bible question because now he is zooming through the Bible.
The other day he called me and said, “Dad, man, I never realized how much I love the Gospel of John.” I said, “Oh, man, other people love it too.”
He said, “I was reading this verse. Those people were talking and arguing with Him, and then Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’”
He said, “Those liberals, when I was in school, were telling me that Jesus was just like any other man. He could not be like any other man and say something like that.”
He was blown away. If he goes down to his little church and shares it, they will kick him out because the pastor is the only one allowed to share. But you can put something together on that and come in here and just go, “Whew,” because it is yours. The Lord gave it to you.
Maybe you receive something in Scripture. Maybe it is devotional reading. You have read a book by T. Austin-Sparks, something is really stirring, and something is alive there. Thank God we can read wonderful books. They stir us up, do they not?
A third thing: I find, to be honest with you, that a lot of burdens I get in the prayer meeting. When we are praying, in His light we see light. You are down on your knees in the prayer meeting, praying, and suddenly something becomes real to you. Something comes clear.
Sometimes I am struggling over something and cannot quite get clear. In the prayer meeting, while we are praying about something else completely, that thing comes clear. The prayer meeting, or your personal prayer, is a place where a word really comes alive.
That is why you need to be faithful in prayer as well. Or you have heard a message, a tape, or even something on the radio while you are driving to work, and something somebody says triggers a word. I am just calling it a word.
This little word, the size of a mustard seed, is perhaps the beginning of a message that the Lord wants you to give.
Or, in your personal experience, you went through something, and usually once you get to the other side, something is clarified for you.
I am saying that, in general, these five ways are how we get a word:
Be faithful in studying the Bible. Be faithful in reading good books; they really do help. In the prayer meeting, be aware when the light shines clearly on something. Listen when you hear somebody speaking, because the Lord usually has some little kernel for you to take home. Or there may be something in your own experience that the Lord has made real to you, and it is yours.
When that happens, may I encourage you about one thing I have learned from experience? Write it down, or you will lose it.
The devil is in the business of smudging your memory, of corrupting your memory bank. I am telling you, he will get in there and insert a virus, and you will forget.
You say, “I read that book, Touching the Throne by T. Austin-Sparks. Man, what a great book. I just read that two weeks ago, but I cannot remember a thing about it. What did I get out of that? I do not know. I just remember the title.”
Like some people who go to movies: two weeks later, they have forgotten the movie. They go back to the same movie and say, “Oh, wait a minute. I have gone—”
But here is the point. Do not get righteous on me now. The enemy does want you to forget some really important things that the Lord has shown you.
I am just talking about a little book, some kind of notepad. I am not talking about keeping a journal. Some people have the discipline to keep a journal. Usually they are too complicated to be speakers, but occasionally it works.
Just be able to write it down so you can remember.
Here is where the work is—an internal thing—and it is a little hard to describe. Once you receive that word, you have to hold it in the light until God gives you a burden about it.
This process of steeping in a word is very important. The Lord wants to add to the word. The Lord wants to bring life from that word. It is like a little kernel, and the Lord adds and adds and adds. But it is a matter of holding something before the Lord.
If you are going to share something—perhaps a fifteen-minute word—a couple of Sundays from now, do not wait until Saturday. It is awfully hard to hold something up for very long.
Just get that word out there. I mean, “Lord, that is a Scripture.” Read it every day. It is only two verses; read it every day. Say, “Lord, what are You saying in there?”
Every day a little bit more comes clear, a little bit more comes clear, a little bit more comes clear. I am talking about holding something, because bringing the burden from the word is very important.
Sometimes the Lord gives us a word, but we do not bring it through into a burden. Then we share it with somebody, read the Scripture, and they say, “Yes, but what does that mean?” We say, “Well, I forgot.”
“Last week, it was really touching me, but actually, to tell you the truth, I cannot remember what it meant. It meant something, though.” That is not very helpful.
This is why it is important, no matter what the beginning point is. Let us say you read a book, and the book really touched you because it was great. Can you preach from that book?
How many times have you heard sermons where you said, “Ah, yes—chapter 12 of The Normal Christian Life”? Make no mistake about it: Brother Stephen knows it was chapter 12.
But the point is this: can you preach from the thing you received in the book? Yes—if you have assimilated it and it has become yours.
If you just copy it, parrot it, or use Watchman Nee’s burden, it is like the exorcist who says:
I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.
Giving truth you got out of a book does not work unless you have chewed it, digested it, seen it, and it has been working in you. Then I do not care if it is the same truth. It makes no difference. If it is living in you, then it is good.
This takes a little time. You cannot just say, “Oh, I like that chapter. Let me write down a rough outline, and I will share it with the brethren.”
Probably everybody who has had to share regularly has done that. People say, “Wow, that was good knowledge.” But there is something missing, because you have to be able to digest it yourself.
If you do not try to digest it—even a book that really touched you—if you do not go back and try to digest it, you lose it.
How many revelations have you lost simply because you did not go back, hang in there, and say, “I have to get this down. I have to walk back and forth. Lord, I had that yesterday. I lost it. Please have mercy. Show me that again.”
There is something there. The Lord just gave you that little word. Are you willing to step out now and say, “God, make this thing real in me”?
There is a process involved. Part of this process is very important, because unless you come through on the burden, you give a half-baked message.
Most burdens, strangely enough, come to us initially in a negative way. I see a problem in the assembly. I want to address the problem in the assembly. I see a problem.
Read the Old Testament prophets. They always saw something as a problem first. So you are onto something, but you are only halfway home until you see the answer, until the answer breaks through.
People come up on Sunday—have you ever been bludgeoned by a half-done message? “Oh, brother, I am burdened for us. We are not praying enough, and the Lord is going to cremate us if we do not start praying more. Let us pray.”
Everybody is dead, because everybody realizes the problem. But it is like telling a sinner he is a sinner. So what? Unless you can get him through it. But listen: I have good news for you.
We see things, and we do see things. But the gift of criticism is not in the Bible.
Think of Habakkuk. What was his initial burden? He said, “Lord, why are You letting the Chaldean Babylonians come in and cream us? Why? Why?”
Suppose you got up on Sunday and said, “Brothers and sisters, we are getting creamed by the Chaldeans, and the Lord is letting that happen. Let us pray.” The people would have been gone.
But the Lord had to work him through a process, which we will talk about in the next section, so that he could say:
Though the fig tree does not blossom, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.
The Lord got him through, and he could present the Lord on the other side.
What if Jonah had shared his story when he was in the belly of the fish, or when he was spit out on land? What if that was when he wrote his prophecy? We would only have gotten halfway through.
I hope you see what I am saying. Many times, unfortunately, we do not quite get through to, “Wow, Jesus answers the problem.” All we are left with is a problem that everybody can see and everybody is helpless to do anything about.
But what if you have seen through to something the Lord is showing you? Please share that. It is edifying, not crucifying. It does not condemn; it edifies.
People say, “Ah, that is the way through. Of course, we need to deny ourselves in this,” or, “Lord, we need to rise above this,” or whatever it is. We have seen the way through. Ah, wonderful.
There is a process in which we come into this burden, and we need to get it all the way through, or people will see the problem and not the solution. Do not lift our eyes up to the problem. We have to look away unto Jesus.
Here is a wonderful thing, brothers: the Lord deals with us as He produces something in us. He gives us a word, and it is not always that you will sense this, but so often first He says, “How about you?”
How many times have you had some thought like this: “We need to go out and share the gospel”? Then the question comes: “Are you doing it?”
The man says, “Lord, okay, I have to do this.” So now he has been handing out tracts and doing some witnessing. Then he comes and says, “Brothers, the Lord is speaking to me. We need to share the gospel.”
He is an example of it because the Lord has dealt with him. Fine. But what if you say, “Well, brother, are you sharing?” He says, “No, I am not. I am waiting for you guys.”
How do we get through on any issue? Somebody breaks through in faith, and the Lord deals with him about something.
The Lord has a word, and He gives you this word. It is His carrot out in front of the donkey, and there you are, starting to go after the carrot. Now the Lord has to deal with us.
Brothers, I do not know what to say about this because it is God’s work in you and me by the Spirit. But, as an example, some brothers have a difficult time sharing because they are too complicated. The Lord has to make them simple so they can share.
Some brothers get a word from the Lord, but they are too subjective. When they open their mouths, they go all over the place, but they cannot take a basic line: one, two, three.
What does the Lord do with subjective people, or overcomplicated objective people? Does He say, “I am sorry, they cannot speak”? No. He says, “You need to be dealt with.”
“I have to throw your subjectivity out the window and deal with it so that you can share something beautiful. I am going to train you how to think logically and present your case.”
To the objective person, the Lord says, “Okay, that is out, that is out, that is too complicated. Simplify. Simplify something.” Then, when you share, you share something.
If you are complicated or subjective, and you get up here and say, “I would like to share the word,” and you start crying, okay, that is all right. The Lord says, “If you do that a hundred times, by the hundredth time you will not cry when you get up and say, ‘I want to share a word.’”
The Lord will let you go through boxes of Kleenex. You will learn. That is a subjective person. But He will deal with us.
Here is the problem endemic in the stratified church out there where there are preachers. If the Lord does not deal with us in a message, then our attitude and human nature take over the message, and the Lord goes out.
Many pastors receive a word from the Lord, but by the time they get it through, all you get is their anger, because they are angry men. If you get their anger—their fleshly anger—the Lord goes right out of the message.
Somebody has an axe to grind, and here is his opportunity. Instead of feeding the sheep, he is clubbing the goats. It never works. It never works.
As soon as that anger comes out, the thing goes. I am not saying a burden does not come out in a message and you sense the Lord’s anger. But not our anger.
When the Lord has a little message working in you—maybe it is a corrective thing—and He cannot deal with your anger and get it out, if you cannot share something in love, you are not ready to share.
Do not share something you cannot share in one hundred percent love. You lay your life down for the people you share with, or do not share. If you have an attitude, forget it.
The Lord has to deal with this because we have attitudes. Some people are angry. Some people get up because, if I am just being honest, they want attention.
You have not noticed that? If you do notice it, the Lord goes right out. They start sharing, and suddenly you say, “What are they doing? They are trying to get attention.”
Or here is another one: they want to show everybody how smart they are. Oh, it is the death of a message.
We have these little things inside us—these little imps—that just want to get out. You have little voices speaking: “Big shot, this is your chance. Show everybody how smart you are.”
All the saints pick up on that. They say, “Oh, I am hearing some good words, but what is he doing? He is trying to be a Baptist preacher. What is he doing?”
The Lord has to deal with us so that we can simply be ourselves, life can come out, and we are not showing off. We are not angry at people. We are not doing all this kind of stuff.
On the other side, some people share, and the words they share are good, but strange things get in the way—subtler things. “Why is my brother so guilty?”
Why is he so guilty? He is not dealing with the subject righteously because he feels so guilty himself. That leaks out when somebody shares. They are not under the blood about something, or they feel guilty all the time.
If you are going to share the Word of the Lord, you need to be under the blood of Jesus and not stand there feeling guilty about something. A weak conscience leaks out.
Or there is a sense of inferiority. Deal with that inferiority complex before you get up and speak, because when you speak, you are speaking the oracles of God.
Forget apologizing: “Well, I did not have enough time, saints, and I am not really clear about this word.” Well, why are you sharing? Let us have a prayer and go home.
None of this inferiority-complex stuff. Fear, of course, needs to be dealt with, and that is a whole other thing.
We all, by nature, are slanted. The problem is that the Lord is not slanted. We have to be dealt with so that we can share the Word of God, as small as it is, without our slant taking us over.
When I say “slanted,” it is okay. Some people are naturally authoritarian. Have you ever noticed that? They just open their mouths, and there is something about them—authority.
Some people are inclusive. Some are emotional and loving. Some are quite objective and analytical. All this is part of our personality, which the Lord can use if He can put His yoke upon us.
You always have to be careful. Do you know who you are? Do you know what your tendency is? If you had a shot to share right now, what would your tendency be?
Would you be a potential haranguer? Would you be a potential “Let us all love one another”? Would you be a potential “Okay, I have 112 points here”? Or would you be a potential joke teller?
What is your tendency? If you understand who you are, then you say, “Lord, please, I do not want to do that. Keep me from myself.”
Even though you tend to be authoritarian, the Lord can use that. We all have a different portion in the body. We are all made differently, so thank God for the variety we have.
Some people speak authoritatively. Some people speak lovingly. Oh, it is so wonderful—the breadth of the body is so wonderful.
This is why the Lord wants brothers to come in on this thing. He wants to tap into the breadth. You do not want to hear the same kind of stuff all the time.
Would it not be terrible if we had one preacher all the time? Once you get out of that system, you realize, “Wow, how lopsided we were.”
Everybody was a little preacher in the church because all they got was one kind of vitamin—vitamin E. Everybody’s skin was great, but they were blind. They had rickets. They sure had vitamin E.
We have the breadth of the body. We have different attitudes, perspectives, and things learned from the Lord. That is why the Lord wants a broad thing here.
But He has to deal with us. If we are not willing to be dealt with, I tell you, we will not have much future in speaking.
He deals with our nature. If we are careless, He says, “I am sorry, you have to be a little more organized in your message.”
If we are perfectionists, He says, “Look, trust Me. You do not need an envelope full of notes. Trust Me. A couple of notes are sufficient.”
The Lord deals with us, and then He can do His wonderful work. After all, here is what is happening: He is making us part of the word. He is making us examples of the word.
He is dealing in our lives because, as we teach or preach, we are actually writing Christ on people’s hearts. Is that not what we are doing?
People will forget what you said, but they will remember that you wrote something of Jesus in their lives. That is what really makes the difference.
If you shared fifteen or twenty minutes, I do not know how memorable your little message would be. But if they got a sense of Jesus there, they were edified and encouraged. That is what you are trying to do. That is what the Lord is trying to do.
In the end, the Lord has to deal with you so that He can share Himself with people.
The wonderful thing about the Apostle Paul is that he had his own ideas, attitudes, and tendencies, but the Lord dealt with him in such a way that he shared what God wanted him to share.
You see that in his letters. His letters are almost night and day sometimes, but it is what the Lord wanted to say to the people because Paul had been dealt with and had gotten out of the way.
If this happens, a miracle happens. The word comes down inside you and starts to work. Life begins to build, and things begin to expand.
That is part two—the outward side—which we will do after, what, fifteen minutes? I will take fifteen minutes. Okay?
Let us pray, and then we will take a little fifteen-minute break. Then we will share the other half of how it comes back out.
Father, we thank You so much. You have brothers here, saved by grace, filled with grace, with a proportion of faith that they have. Help them to be willing to step forward and share something that You have given them.
How wonderful this would be, and how the body of Christ would worship You if this living expression could be realized. So help us, Lord, as we consider these things. In Jesus’ name, amen.