I’d like for us to turn this morning again to Acts 1.
I shared, I guess it was last month now, this burden that I’ve had upon my heart. I’d like to read some Scriptures out of Acts first of all, Acts 1.
The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach.
We know that Luke is the author of this book also, and what he is referring to is his Gospel, and how in the Gospel he shares all that Jesus began to do and teach. As we have been studying the book of Acts, we are seeing all that Jesus continues to do and teach.
We continue on down into Acts 1:8.
But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
How the Lord’s heart has always been for the whole earth. He had a glorious group there in Jerusalem, but His heart was not just for those in Jerusalem. As it has been throughout all the ages, His heart is for the whole world. He desired that these would go forth from Jerusalem, declaring His glorious gospel and His glorious kingdom to those in the remotest parts of the earth.
We could turn now over to Ephesians 3. This is Paul’s second prayer in his letter to those in Ephesus. Ephesians 3—we will just pick up at the midpoint of the prayer, in verse 17.
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
Note the inclusiveness of that: to comprehend with all the saints.
Finally, out of the book of Revelation, chapter 5, we see a new song being sung in the heavenlies. Revelation 5:9–10:
Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof:
For Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation,
And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth.
Lord, we thank You that, as we come to You today, we thank You for the precious privilege we have of gathering around Your table, of remembering You, of testifying of You and Your victory at Calvary.
And Lord, as we come to Your word, we thank You that You have made provision for this time too. Lord, by faith, we want to enter into all that You would have. By faith, we enter into the anointing: that anointing for speaking, that anointing for hearing, that anointing for understanding, and the anointing for the application of Your word within our lives.
Lord, we do not want to be here today simply to gain knowledge about You. We have a desire upon our hearts to know You in a fuller and greater measure. Lord, reveal Yourself unto us as we consider Your word. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.
The burden that was upon my heart when I shared last time, and which has continued, is that as we see the wonderful privilege that we have of gathering here in the locality of Richmond, Virginia, we can be very thankful for that—very thankful for all the Lord is doing and for all that He has done.
We see His wonderful faithfulness in joining us together with many precious brothers and sisters here, and we are thankful for that. But the burden of my heart is that, just as we are thankful for that, we would also see that we are part of a great work that our Lord is doing.
He has been doing this work, and we are entering into this great work in the generation in which we are living, in this time upon the earth. We have the privilege of being part of the great work that our Lord is doing on the earth in this day.
He is continuing to do and teach through His body. This was not something that just ended in the book of Acts. That book of Acts, as we have said, never ends. All that the Lord started there when He set foot upon this earth, He is continuing to do. We have been called into this great work.
I just have a desire upon my heart that we could see this wonderful privilege, and that the Lord would expand the eyes of our hearts to be able to take in and see the greatness and the vastness—the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth—of this work that He has called us into.
As we shared before, when we start talking about this great work, it is hard to really define it. At times, when we try to define the things of the Lord, we end up confining them or limiting them.
We even see Paul, as he writes in many of his epistles, having difficulty trying to express the fullness of Christ and all that the Lord is doing. He speaks of the church, the house, a family, sons, a body, and a bride. All of this is trying, in a way, to describe and help us get a grasp of the call of the Lord upon our lives.
Maybe we could summarize it in one way and say that this great work that the Lord is doing is preparing a people to be His eternal companion.
Now, when we speak of this matter, sometimes Paul describes it as the church, the house, or the family. Let us be clear: he is not saying, “You are like a body,” or, “You are like a house.” You are. We are the house of God. We are the body of Christ. We are the family of God. We are not merely like a family.
He is not using these in an illustrative way merely to draw a picture. He wants us to enter into the reality. The vastness of this work is so magnificent, and the manifold wisdom of this work is so vast, that it cannot be presented to our limited minds in just one way.
So Paul says, “Yes, you are a house of God. You are living stones, and you are being built together. You are precious stones. You are a family. We have fathers, sons, and children. You are the body. We have many different joints supplying.”
The Lord is wanting us to see that this great work goes far beyond just our individual lives. It goes far beyond just our lives here. Even though this is a tremendous work that the Lord is doing upon the earth, as He expresses Himself throughout the world in so many wonderful localities and in so many ways, there is one church—the universal church.
But the character and nature of that church are represented and testified to through various localities. When we talk about the character and nature of the church, what are we speaking of? We are speaking of Jesus Christ.
When one looks at the character and nature of the church, what do they see? Whom do they see? It should be the life, character, and nature of Christ expressed through His body.
That is the desire of our hearts, both here as we gather and in many localities upon this earth: that when people come within our midst, as we continue on in the Lord, we would be that testimony unto Jesus Christ—that Christ would be seen.
We thank the Lord for the wonderful way that He brings us together. But why does He bring us together? We talked a little bit last time about how He has brought us together from so many different places. Not only has He brought us together from many places, but He has opened so many doors and windows for us to see this great work.
We have talked about various places, and we will touch a little more today on the wonderful contacts we have. In a sense, this is not unique just to us here. When you visit other assemblies, you find that in a similar way the Lord is doing a work.
Our brother Phil is here from Ponte Vedra. They have contacts with orphanages in Mexico and brethren in India, with touches throughout the earth. We were in Mattituck, New York, a couple of weeks ago, and they have touches in Ukraine and contacts and relationships there.
So, this is not something unique just to us here. It is something the Lord is doing amongst His assemblies to show us the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of His great work. He wants us to capture this.
But why? Why is He wanting us to see this? What is the real issue? I think we can summarize it in a few sentences: it is to enlarge our vision, to help us get beyond just our individual selves, and to help us get beyond our locality.
So often this word vision becomes so elusive that we have no concept of what it even is. People say, “You have got to have vision. You have got to have vision.” Well, what are you talking about?
As we see the Lord tangibly doing things here and throughout the earth, we begin to say, “Oh, that is vision. I understand. I am beginning to see what the Lord is doing.” So it enlarges us, and it continues to increase our faith.
There are many things that would cause our faith to faint, and we could draw back. But as we see the Lord in His wonderful faithfulness, we are strengthened. Wednesday night, we had a brother share how he had just returned from the United Arab Emirates. In that whole country, there may be only thirty or forty believers, and they cannot even all gather together. Yet a few at a time can gather, and they are going on.
That is an encouragement and a strengthening of our faith to go on in these days, because we see the Lord moving and working.
We share this also to expand our burden and capacity for prayer. Throughout our whole lives, we have this desire as we consider prayer. The disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Whenever the Lord was teaching His disciples, He was always trying to broaden them in this whole matter of prayer.
It is amazing how, even when our brother read the Lord’s Prayer, that was intended as an instructive way of teaching us to pray. But it is a tragedy within Christianity that, instead of bringing instruction to broaden our prayer life, we so often turn around and let it limit us to praying only that prayer.
When the Lord teaches us things, it is always to show us broadness. What is it? It is more of Himself. When we talk about enlarging our vision, we are seeing more of Christ. When we talk about increasing our faith, it is His faithfulness and His life within us. The capacity for prayer is knowing Him in a fuller and greater way.
He has this desire. He wants this, and these matters are so interrelated. You can talk about enlarging your vision, increasing your faith, or increasing your capacity for prayer. The Lord is desiring that we grow in Him and mature in Him. He puts us in these situations so that the fullness of His life can be expressed.
As we touch on this matter of enlarging our vision, we need to see that even though He is doing a great work here, it is only a part of the great work that He has been doing and is continuing to do. It is essential that we see this work.
There is a precious Scripture in the Old Testament, in the book of Judges. The people had gone in and conquered the land. They had settled in the land, and they had won this mighty victory through the book of Joshua.
And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord, that He had wrought for Israel.
The Lord had done a great work, and those people had seen the Lord and His great work. Joshua passed away, and those who had been involved in that work passed away.
It is very tragic as you come down in Judges 2:10. So often we talk about the next generation, and this verse is one reason we have such a great burden for people to really enter in, see the Lord in a fresh way, and know the Lord for themselves.
And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, that knew not the Lord, nor yet the work which He had wrought for Israel.
To me, one of the keys in this verse is that it was not simply that they did not know the Lord. That in itself is tragic enough. It is not only that we want and desire that all would know the Lord, but they did not know the work of the Lord.
The Lord not only wants us to know Himself; He wants us to know what His work is. What is He doing? What is His heart? What is His purpose? He is calling us in this day to see and to come into this great work that He is doing.
As we do that, the Lord’s life is manifested. We become a people of purpose—not so much for what we are doing, but because His work and His life are testified to and expressed through our lives, both individually and together. That is the real desire.
The church of Christ in this hour has a tremendous opportunity to testify to the Lord and His work. The world at this time is shaken. There is a realignment going on throughout this whole earth.
But who is the One who never changes? Whose work is steadfast and unchanging? The Lord wants us to be a people who would testify to Him—not with some cheap, sloppy agape type of thing, but with a reality.
When people touch a reality—that you are in peace—that is a wonderful testimony. When soldiers are in the military, those who know the Lord are naturally a testimony to others.
I thank the Lord how it was shared Wednesday night in prayer that soldiers are being baptized in the desert over there. They are digging holes and filling them with water, and people are getting baptized. Praise God that the Lord has those people there to testify of the glorious gospel.
Our prayer, too, is that these would not merely be foxhole salvations, but solid salvations. That they would come back and continue to walk with the Lord, that they would know Him and His work.
As we enter into this, you see how this matter of vision, faith, and prayer is interrelated. We separate them to talk about them, but in reality you cannot separate them. The more we see of the Lord, the more we are strengthened. Our response is naturally to praise, our prayers become broader, and we continue to grow in seeing Him in that fullness.
We share, too, about how this is not only to enlarge our vision but to increase our faith—the faith that increases and continues on in spite of what we see, so that we are not distracted in this day and time.
There is a wonderful testimony in the book of Nehemiah. As Nehemiah was back there rebuilding the wall, there was this motley little crew. Most of the nation of Israel was still in Babylon, but the Lord opened the door for those who had a heart for Jerusalem, the place where His name would dwell, to go back.
A remnant went back and was dwelling there, and they were building this wall. The enemy came and said, “Nehemiah, come on down off the wall and talk with us.” But Nehemiah said, “Oh no, I am not coming down.” They wanted him to come to Ono, and he said, “Ono, I am not going to Ono.” That is just to wake me up.
But it is a wonderful testimony. Nehemiah was a man of faith. He had vision, and he was exercising his faith. If you looked at this wall, nobody would have described it as a great work. In fact, it was being described as burned-out old stones. “A fox could jump on this wall and knock it over.”
The world was degrading what Nehemiah was doing, but Nehemiah said, “This is a great work,” because his eyes were not upon the physical. He had seen the great work and the call of the Lord.
At times, we will be mocked in this day and time—those who are really standing for the Lord. We are saying, “Oh, this is a great work,” and they say, “Huh, you are just a motley little crew. Who are you?” But the Lord is saying, “No, you are part of a great work.”
If we can see that the Lord has called us to enter into the greatness of this work, it strengthens our faith. As we hear of people throughout the earth who are also involved in this great work, that continues to strengthen our faith.
It is a wonderful way that the testimony is concluded in Nehemiah. The wall is finally built:
And it came to pass, when all our enemies heard thereof, that all the nations that were about us feared, and were much cast down in their own eyes; for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God.
Some translations say, “with the help of our God,” but in the Hebrew it is by our God. So often we think God helps us. Well, He does help us, but this is a testimony only to Him.
If you look again at the physical, had God put any bricks or stones on top of each other? Who had physically built the wall? Nehemiah and the people. They were sweating there. They were laboring together. There is a beautiful picture of people working together to build His testimony.
But who, in the end, gets the glory? Who receives the credit for doing it? Does it say they could see that this work was accomplished by Nehemiah, all the people, and God? No. The testimony and the glory go to God.
That is the desire of our hearts, brothers and sisters: that whenever we are involved in serving the Lord, He would receive the glory, the recognition, and the honor that are due to Him. That continues to increase our faith.
As we consider this great work that the Lord is doing, it expands our capacity and our burden for prayer. We read three verses when we were together last time, and we will look at them again.
In Mark 11:17, the Lord is talking about His house being a house of prayer:
Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations?
He desires there to be a breadth to our prayer life, not only individually but corporately together. Our eyes would be off just ourselves and our needs, and we would be praying for the nations and for what He is doing.
This is also reiterated in Ephesians 6, the wonderful chapter on spiritual warfare:
With all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.
There is a breadth that the Lord desires us to enter into in prayer.
What are we talking about when we speak about increasing our burden and breadth for prayer? In a simple way, as we gather to pray on Wednesday nights, let us take the conference as an example.
As we pray for the conference here, which we need to be responsible to pray for, we need to remember, too, that there is a conference this summer in Santa Barbara and a conference in San Francisco. They are other gatherings that we know of.
So, after we pray for our conference, we can also say, “Lord, in a similar way, we remember the brethren in Santa Barbara.” That adds another circle, a breadth, to our prayer. “We remember the saints in San Francisco preparing.” That adds another breadth to it.
It is not taking on a whole extra burden. We pray for what the Lord has put upon our hearts, but we say, “Lord, teach me to pray.” If He teaches us, He is always wanting to expand us in a fuller and greater way.
Every other conference is going through many similar things. Each conference also has unique matters, but in every conference you want people’s hearts to be prepared. You want the speakers to be prepared. You want adequate provision for children. There are similar things in which we can hold one another up, as well as unique things.
Let us ask the Lord to help us expand our prayer life. We know, not only individually but together, there is this beautiful verse in 1 Peter 5:
Resist him, steadfast in your faith, knowing that the same sufferings are accomplished in your brethren who are in the world.
People are going through similar situations, similar experiences of suffering, and similar experiences of testing throughout the world. We need to continue to try to remember them as we pray in these days and in this hour.
Many circumstances are the same, though there are those who live in countries that may be more difficult than others. May the Lord expand our capacity.
Again, to bring it down personally, it is like when a mother is praying for her children. I am not trying to lay extra-heavy prayer burdens on people. But as we pray for our children, we can simply say, “Lord, I remember those mothers who are trying to raise their children in some other parts of the world.”
Maybe you have a contact. Maybe you know someone in a difficult part of the world or someone going through a difficult situation. It is just adding another circle to our prayers. “Lord, I remember those mothers in Iraq.” How would you like to be a mother in Iraq right now?
Whether they know the Lord or not, we are talking about the preservation of their children, so that hopefully one day they would come to know the Lord. As they are liberated, hopefully the gospel can go in.
It is not taking on extra burdens. As we pray for our work situations, we can remember people in other situations throughout the earth. Even though our economy is tough, there are people in some pretty tough economies around this world. They would laugh at our unemployment rate when they think of twenty or thirty percent unemployment.
It is just remembering people, getting a little bit beyond ourselves and remembering others, so that we can be expanded in the Lord if He would teach us.
I want to take a second and look at some of the different places with which we have contacts, because through these contacts we have been able to gain a breadth. It expands us and increases our vision.
We are thankful, as we shared last time, that many of these contacts have come through the family conference, many through the tape ministry, brethren from other assemblies visiting here, and people from here visiting other places. There are many different ways in which we have these contacts.
If we look again at this map of the world, all of the darkened countries and places represent locations with which people within this little group have either direct or indirect contact.
As I said, our brother just returned from the United Arab Emirates. A sister just returned from Borneo. A sister is getting ready to go back to Papua New Guinea. We have a family in the Philippines. We have contact with France in a very living way. The Lord is using that.
Is this all just by coincidence? I think it is a tremendous responsibility we have, brothers and sisters. The Lord has opened these doors. Again, it is His burden, and His burden is never heavy. It is a privilege we have to see the great work.
I thank the Lord for some of the young people who have gone to different places to share the Lord and the gospel. You can see the impact it has upon their lives. As we see people going throughout the earth, it is a tremendous thing that we, just a little group here in Richmond, Virginia, can have the privilege of joining in prayer throughout the earth for this great work the Lord is doing.
There are some whom we pray for on a regular basis as they have gone places, and we cannot mention them all. We have a brother and sister we know who just got back from Cuba. They had been in Cuba for two months, thank the Lord.
You get an email from them, and the Lord has met them and encouraged them. They have been able not only to share the gospel but also to strengthen the brethren. It is a wonderful testimony that we could have the privilege of standing with them.
As Americans, most of us cannot go to Cuba, but since they are Canadians, they can go freely. The Lord opens doors for them, and we can stand with them. We can pray not only for the gospel, but also for the tremendous need for teaching to go forth.
We have seen on the news this week how the Cuban government is starting to clamp down more and more on those whom they call dissidents. They call them political dissidents, but generally that gets translated to mean religious dissidents too. They would never say that they are clamping down because of religion; they always say it is a political issue.
The Soviet Union never had any religious prisoners; they only had political dissidents. Let us not be tricked by the phraseology of some of these countries.
We thank the Lord, too, for the work and the exposure we have had to the work He is doing in Russia. We had our brother Yuri here a couple of weeks ago. I would like to meet him one day somehow; I have never met him, but I hear all these things about Brother Yuri.
It is wonderful that we can hear what the Lord is doing there. We also know brothers who are serving the Lord in China. Here again, wherever you are talking about, there are similarities in the way you pray: the desire for the gospel to go forth, whether you are talking about Cuba, Russia, or anywhere in the world.
There is a prayer burden for solid teaching. They need solid teaching in all of these places. They need those who can show them what God’s heart and purpose are. They have specific needs too, but we can join with them in prayer that, in all these areas, there would be those raised up to serve the Lord.
I just received an update from the situation in Russia, and it is a very precious testimony. This is speaking of the group Yuri is with. I think many of you have heard of the Bible school with which they are involved there.
Last June, we sent out ten teams of four Bible-school graduates each: one team to a central city in a Muslim province, and one to a central city in a pagan, idol-worshiping province. Since June, they reported to me that their meeting in the pagan city now numbers twenty to thirty, and the one in the Muslim province numbers thirty to forty. Praise God for both open doors and faithful working. They tell me the hunger in these provinces is high because they have almost no churches in these places, not even the Orthodox. They are hearing about Jesus for the first time.
Praise God that there are believers willing to go right into the middle of idol-worshiping places, right into the middle of a Muslim area, and simply testify of Jesus Christ. They share His life, and people touch a reality there.
Most people with any contact or exposure within the Muslim world say there is a tremendous void there. There is a Muslim façade on the outside, but there is an emptiness within the hearts. People are looking for a real answer.
When people see Jesus Christ, there is something they cannot deny, and it touches them. May the gospel continue to go forth.
I thank the Lord for the wonderful way He allows us to have all these contacts, and also for people to go and visit places. One of the wonderful ways we have been able to have so many of these contacts is that, for many years now, there has been a conference in the Far East. Another conference this coming December has been announced.
These are opportunities to go and meet brethren from other cultures and assemblies, and to hear of the wonderful faithfulness of the Lord. As we go to these places and hear of what the Lord is doing, it has a way of teaching us many lessons. It has a way of showing us things of the Lord.
One thing it does is show us how big our God is. We can read in Ephesians about the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of all this. I am thankful that God is so much bigger than my small concept of Him.
It is amazing how I can make God so small at times, and then we go and see how big He is. It is wonderful.
As we have these contacts with brothers and sisters, we have the tremendous privilege of putting into practice so many spiritual truths. We can talk about maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, but then people come to a conference and are doing things differently than we are. How does all this work?
Ephesians 4:3 says that we are to be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. That word unity is used again in Ephesians 4:13:
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
As we look at these two verses particularly, we need to remember that we are one. We maintain the unity because, when we are born again, we are one. We are one in Christ, and He has made us one.
It is not something that we have to create. We are one body and one family. He has brought us into that, and He has a call upon our lives to maintain that unity.
Ephesians 4:13 talks about attaining to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. This word knowledge is not merely intellectual knowledge; it is a knowledge that comes out of full experiential knowledge.
Right now, I have a partial knowledge of Christ. You have a partial knowledge, and all our brothers and sisters see in part. We have different experiences. I have an experience in one part, you have an experience in another part, and others have many wonderful experiences in the Lord.
But there will come a day when our knowledge will be full. We will all have the same knowledge. Our experience will be full. It will be the fullness of Christ that we are all experiencing.
This is why we need each other so much right now, because we all see only in part. One of the greatest dangers, as you look back through church history, is individuals or groups who thought they saw in total. No. We all see in part.
May the Lord continue to teach us how we need our brothers and sisters. Praise the Lord, there is that one day when we will all see in fullness and experience in fullness. But now we have this wonderful opportunity of preserving the unity of the Spirit.
Even in taking the Lord’s table, it is amazing how many different ways there are to do it. We have the cup and the loaf, and then we use individual cups. Some places have only one cup. Some places use spoons. The bread goes by, then spoons go by, then the cup goes by. You take a spoon. There are many different practices and many different interpretations.
But what is the issue? Is the issue the way we take the table? The issue is that there is one cup and one loaf, and we are remembering our Lord and His death until He comes.
We can get so hung up on the practice that we miss the whole truth and reality of what the Lord is trying to say. That is the wonderful thing about being exposed to different brothers and sisters who have different experiences and practices.
We go to different cultures, and we see how different meetings are. If you went to a meeting in Brazil, we would have been a pretty dead group to them this morning. No matter how much you sing, stand, and clap, we would be a pretty dead group.
But if you went to a group in some places in the Far East, we would be a pretty lively group. Is it an issue of right or wrong? No. It is an issue of the Lord’s life being expressed through those gathering unto His name.
We do not try to follow a pattern; we try to follow the Lord. When we see the Lord’s life being expressed in different ways, we say, “Oh yes, that is a beautiful way that it is expressed.” It is a beautiful way when it is expressed in silence, and it is a beautiful way when it is expressed with much more activity.
Even the way you dress can be significantly different in some cultures. If you go to a hot, equatorial climate, do you think everybody shows up with coats and ties, fancy clothes, and women in long dresses? No, they are dressed for their climate.
Sometimes the dress in some of these places can be a little shocking, but it is warm there. It is just a different way. We look so much at the outward, but the Lord is looking at the inward. He is wanting us to experience more and more of the breadth of that.
Diversity is normally uncomfortable to us. We like to be with those who are more or less like us. We do not like diversity because it makes us uneasy and uncomfortable. But praise the Lord: in His diversity, He brings diverse people together so that the diversity of His life would be expressed.
Then we have the wonderful opportunity to practice maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. As He brings us together and allows us to see others, we can allow the Lord to work within us.
Sometimes, as we have these other experiences, it is uncomfortable. There is actually a tension there, and you are feeling pressed in. But what happens? That tension presses us into the Lord and changes us into His image.
Who gets changed? We get changed. We get broadened. We are exposed to more of Christ.
Now, we are not open to anything out there. We are talking about being open, expanded, and burdened in the things of the Lord—in what He is doing, in His work, and in His life. It is not embracing everything in an ecumenical way, so do not anybody walk away thinking that.
It is embracing the things of the Lord, embracing the life. What is our fellowship with one another based on? It is not based upon our light, knowledge, or understanding. It is based on life. As we share His life with one another, we are encouraged and strengthened together.
We are all called to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. First John speaks of fathers, young men, and children. Is there a greater call upon some to maintain unity than upon others?
The call is to each one, but I do feel that to whom much is given, much is expected. I feel that the people mentioned in 1 John are not speaking of chronological age, but of the life of the Lord and spiritual maturity.
I think those who have more of the Lord have a greater responsibility before Him to maintain this unity, to set examples for the young men and the children, and to be living examples.
As you look back through church history, there are wonderful people who were examples of not allowing matters of the Lord to divide one another. There is a precious testimony of John Bunyan.
We know John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress, and he was a Baptist pastor in Bedford, England. You can read this in The Pilgrim Church.
John Bunyan’s testimony concerning the fellowship where he met was that, even though it was a Baptist church, they were emphatic in refusing to make baptism the ground of fellowship, or differences in judgment a matter of barring anyone from coming to communion.
Bunyan wrote in his diary:
I will not let water baptism be the rule, the door, the bolt, the bar, the wall of division between the righteous and the righteous. The Lord deliver me from superstitious and idolatrous thoughts that any of the ordinances of Christ and of God should be made the grounds of fellowship. Since you would know by what name I would be distinguished from others, I tell you, I would be—and hope that I am—a Christian.
“I am a Christian.” He knew the value of baptism, but he was not going to allow it to cause division or break fellowship with other brethren.
There is a similar wonderful testimony in the life of Robert Chapman. Robert Chapman, in England during the Brethren period of the nineteenth century, was known as the Apostle of Love.
When he was ministering at Ebenezer Chapel, they had a rule when he arrived that people could not take the Lord’s table unless they were baptized. Now, Chapman felt that if you were a Christian, you could take the Lord’s table. That was his understanding of Scripture.
But for the sake of unity, he did not challenge this to make it an issue. What he did was, through prayer, faithful teaching, bringing people to the Word, and patience—not passivity, but patience—he shared the truth.
Not in an argumentative or merely persuasive way, but he presented it as the Word of God. After many years, the whole congregation came around and said, “We see that anybody who is the Lord’s can partake of the Lord’s table. There is not that condition.”
I share that so we can see how we can allow such little things—our own different interpretations—to separate us in ways that the Lord has no desire for at all.
How the Lord wants us to be one. As we see the vastness of the Lord in His work, then we can come into a greater appreciation of what He is doing.
There is another thing we can see: as we are exposed to other brethren, cultures, and countries, we see made very real how much the Lord calls us to remember the poor.
At times, we can forget this. But the Lord has a call upon the church throughout the Old Testament. What is the book of Ruth? That is remembering the poor. The gleanings of the field were for the poor. That was the provision.
In the New Testament, we see how the Lord desires us always to remember the poor, the widows, and the orphans. He has it upon His heart.
We have poverty in this country, but we really do not know poverty in the way much of the world does. I remember talking to a sister whose brother was visiting from India. They took him over to the housing projects here, looked around, and showed him what they considered poverty.
When they got back, he was talking with the brother who had taken him there, and he said, “Where was the poverty?”
Do you know that if you own a car, even as a teenager in this country, you are among the richest twenty-five percent of people on the face of this earth? If you own a house, you are among the richest fifteen percent of people on the face of this earth.
There is a poverty out there that we do not know about. Those who have been in Russia, China, India, Cuba, Haiti, the Philippines, Brazil, Africa, or wherever—they know there is a poverty out there that makes you cry. It breaks your heart to see the conditions in which people have to live.
We mentioned one night at prayer meeting how, in Brazil, there is a city of Salvador. There are 350,000 people in the city of Salvador. It is in the northern part of Brazil. It was the main center where slaves came over from Africa to work on the plantations in Brazil.
Brazil has a better history in this matter than we do. The slaves were liberated peacefully in the mid-1800s. But in this city there is tremendous poverty.
We were told that, within this city of 350,000, over seventy-five percent live in poverty. This is third-world poverty that we do not see in this country. It is hard. You can see it in documentaries, books, and other things, but when we went there, it just took your heart.
It was not so much feeling sorry for them. It was very humbling to see how the brethren were not complaining about the poverty. They were living above it. They knew they were poor.
I had a notebook computer with me. Many had never even seen a computer. Many of them, if they wanted to buy that notebook computer, would have to work two and a half to three years, saving every penny they made, to be able to buy it.
The economic condition within Brazil was such that, in the previous April, one dollar would get you two Brazilian reals. In November, one dollar got you four reals. My purchasing power doubled; theirs was cut in half.
It is like walking into work one day and taking a fifty-percent pay cut while all the prices continue to go up. They do not have much to begin with.
It reminds you of Daniel, where the enemy is trying to wear out the saints, or Exodus, where you want more bricks with less straw. Our Lord is doing a great work, but His enemy, the adversary, the devil, is also very active.
We share this so that the Lord would open our hearts to remember people in prayer. There are people out there whom we need to be praying about and caring for.
Another point is that the American way of handling poverty is to send money. In a way, the church has adapted the American culture. Sure, it is helpful to send money, and it is helpful to pray.
But are we willing to share the riches of our inheritance in Christ? One of the humbling things when you are in some of these other countries is how they pray for the United States.
When we were in Salvador, the way they prayed for the United States was because of the riches of Christ that we have. The books we have and the history we have of Christ are, to them, a gold mine. Each one of us has this precious heritage.
So, in addition to money and prayers, are we willing ourselves to give ourselves to this in that sense? I am not talking about everybody suddenly getting up, moving, and going out. No.
We know from the book of Acts that there were those who stayed in Jerusalem and those who went out. It is an issue of having a willing and open heart toward what the Lord is doing, allowing Him to enable us to give in a greater and fuller way, and not just staying within our own comfort zones.
Thank the Lord that there are people willing at times to go out to Haiti, Papua New Guinea, and other places, and allow the Lord simply to share His life through them.
We are very privileged today, because all of our contact with Russia that we have today is because of one brother who happens to be visiting today. I am very thankful for that contact. He was willing to go on a trip, allow the Lord to meet him there, and come back and share a burden.
That is just how the Lord works. He uses one to stimulate another to love and good works. May we be those willing to be stimulated, willing to have that open heart that the Lord can touch.
In addition to remembering the poor, the Lord calls us to remember widows and orphans. One of the very precious things that, as an assembly here, we have had the privilege of knowing and supporting for many years is an orphanage in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
This orphanage started about fifteen years ago. A sister found an abandoned baby on the street. She took the baby in and cared for it. Then other people began bringing her children.
She ended up taking care of fifty-five children, whom she adopted. Now they are taking care of her. She has since married, and she and her husband care for another twenty-five children. So they have about eighty to ninety children whom they are caring for.
It is a wonderful testimony because this sister had never heard of George Müller. Yet when she started this work, she felt convicted never to tell anybody of her needs, but simply to pray and allow the Lord to provide.
There are many wonderful testimonies of how, in the afternoon, they would not have any food at all. She would gather all the children around, they would pray, and somebody would bring beans and rice for dinner. This happened over and over again.
We saw them recently, and a wonderful testimony was that the Lord was providing so abundantly that someone had given them around fifty dozen eggs. It was a huge amount of eggs. So they were sharing them with all the other orphanages around.
They had been given, and they were also giving and pouring out what they had for others.
Anybody who has visited an orphanage knows that, as soon as you walk in, you sense an atmosphere within that place. You know right away whether it is an institution or a home.
When you walk into this place—and many from here have had the opportunity to go and visit—you sense the presence of the Lord. You look at the peace upon the children’s faces, and you know they are at home. You know they are at home.
I do not have time to go into all of it, but if you are interested in more information, it is happyfamily.org.br. It is a wonderful website.
I am very thankful how, over the years, the assembly has been able to support this work and encourage the people there. They feel very close to the assembly here. Whenever anyone from Richmond goes, they are very appreciative of the many times people here have been able to support and pray.
They send out email updates and things like that. If you want to get on their list, you can let them know. But that is just one example of someone throughout the earth who was faithful, and through that we are all encouraged.
Her faith increased my faith. Her faithfulness encourages me to go on in these days.
We know of people from Nepal who have come through, and they work with lepers. The first time I heard of somebody working with lepers, it was a shock to me. I did not even realize that there were still lepers. It shows my naivety concerning the world situation and the needs that are there.
Thank the Lord that He has those there working with lepers. He has people in Bangladesh who are working with widows. Many husbands in Bangladesh abandon their families and go elsewhere to get work. There are people there working with these widows, helping them, training them, and raising them in the Lord.
We are so thankful for that. May the Lord give us that heart to be willing. I do not know whether it means you will ever visit one of these places, or whether you will simply be here praying. But it is an issue of having that willing heart to be of service to the Lord, in the many wonderful ways that He has service being done.
I will go ahead and close, but there is one final story I would be negligent not to share—of the wonderful ways the Lord continues to open doors and show us more and more of the great work He is doing.
We mentioned at prayer meeting the other week that, when we were in Mattituck, we met some brothers from Ukraine whom those in Mattituck have been serving with and helping for many years. These brothers from Ukraine had been part of the underground church, and one brother had actually gone to Bible school with Yuri in Latvia. It is a small world.
You thank the Lord how He continues to open doors and expose us to more and more. There are some brethren in Chile—that little thin, skinny country down the left side of South America, running all the way down toward the bottom of the world.
Some brethren in Chile had, just last year, heard of some brethren in Brazil. They went over to the cities of Belo Horizonte and Contagem, a city near Belo Horizonte. They met them and had wonderful fellowship.
They were sharing with those in Belo Horizonte that there are about twenty or thirty assemblies throughout southern Chile, with over one thousand people if you combine all these assemblies. But they had no idea, until last year, that anybody else in the world met like them.
They had some books by Watchman Nee in Spanish, and they thought that what they were reading about was simply something that must have occurred in China many years ago.
Then, when they heard that people in Brazil had similar hearts concerning the way they met, they went over and met them. Those in Brazil said, “No, there are people throughout Brazil, throughout the States, and in Europe.” They were in awe of the greatness of it.
To me, what was so precious was a couple of things. One was how it encouraged me that the Lord can continue to move upon this earth in a sovereign way. Nobody had gone there and taught them about this.
The Lord revealed it and spoke to their hearts of His desire, of how He wants them to be a testimony to Him. Then they found some helps and were encouraged.
These brethren were overjoyed to meet new members of the family. They had no idea.
Brother Christian Chen from New York, whom some of us know, went to Chile this past January to be with them. He was so touched by the presence of the Lord there and by the simplicity of these brethren.
There were about eight hundred or so gathered at this conference. Again, many of them were poor, so they had to have a conference at a campground. They brought their tents and put up their tents. They did not have any Winnebagos.
They simply had tents, and they cooked all their meals out on open fires. Some had a little Coleman stove-type thing. It was pretty primitive, but they had such a heart for the Lord.
What was so precious was that someone had gone with Christian and taken a video camera. They had to take their own chairs into the meeting. The place was a kind of big meeting hall at the campground, like a concrete slab with a covering.
If you looked at the video of the meeting place before the meeting, it was totally empty. Then you saw the video of people walking in with chairs, carrying their chairs in, and sitting there.
Again, this was Chile, so they had an hour or so of worship beforehand, with forty or fifty guitars playing Latin music. It was a lively meeting.
Then Christian would stand up and share for two or three hours. They loved it and took in every word, and not one of them fell asleep. He was amazed at the hunger they had for the Lord and for the word of God.
I am going a little bit long now, and people begin to get uncomfortable. We are so spoiled in this country. We are so spoiled. May the Lord work in all our hearts.
I received an email from one of these brothers in Chile. When they conclude their email, he concludes it with his name, the name of his city, and then, “The end of the world,” because it is so remote.
They had felt remote and isolated way down there. That is how they felt spiritually, until the Lord showed them the vastness of His great family and brought them into the great work. He let them see the great work they were doing.
That is really all that I had upon my heart: that the Lord would continue to expand, enlarge, and increase our vision, our faith, and our capacity for prayer.
We could see, yes, He is doing a great work here. He is doing a great work in many assemblies around this world that gather in His precious name. But also beyond that, we could see that He is doing a great work throughout this world.
Would the Lord continue to open these doors for us, that we could see the vastness and greatness of this work, and that we could be encouraged together?
If we see this, our personal lives will be touched. Our personal lives will be strengthened. Our corporate prayer times will continue to grow and be strengthened in a greater way. May the Lord continue to teach us to pray.
The objective of all of this is not that we just have a knowledge of the Lord doing a great work. The objective is that we realize He is preparing us to be that eternal companion: to be mature sons, to be that matured bride, the completed house, and a fullness in His body.
As we give ourselves to Him, He would have that freedom to work within us. In that, He would hasten His return. Let us pray.
Lord, I just think of that hymn, “How Great Thou Art”: “Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.” Lord, not only the physical world, but all the wonder and awesomeness that You have done in lives within this room, with us as an assembly, and with people throughout this earth.
It causes us to fall down at Your feet and worship You, Lord. We thank You that we are part of a great work—an eternal work. We thank You that You first loved us, reached down, and called us, Lord, into Yourself.
Lord, continue to allow us to grow in You. May we not settle down. May we not just be comfortable in our little areas. But Lord, help us to embrace the diversity, the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of the work that You are doing in this hour.
Lord, we know there are many pressures and many things that occupy us and can distract us. We thank You how You remind us that there is one thing that is necessary. Oh, that we would be occupied with that one thing. In Jesus’ name, amen.