Our Father, we want to bow before Thee, and we want to thank Thee for all Thy loving grace toward us. We thank Thee for what we have tasted of Thy salvation, Lord.
And as we come to Thy Word, we thank Thee, dear Lord, that Thou hast not left us to ourselves, but Thou hast given to us that dear Person of the Holy Spirit, Who can lead us into all the truth and make real the things of the Lord Jesus Christ, glorifying Him.
And we want to tell Thee, speaker and hearer together, that we are dependent upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit as we turn to Thy Word. We thank Thee, Father, that there is an anointing which is ours in the Lord Jesus, which includes every member of the Body.
Together we take hold of that portion for every one. We stand into it, Lord, that every one of us may meet with Thee in Thy Word. There may be something for every one of us, from the youngest to the eldest. There may be something, Lord, that will be meaningful and relevant, and be an imparting of Thyself to us.
May Thy Word dwell in us richly, Lord, in all wisdom and knowledge. And we ask it with thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I want this morning to take up just one point further in what I began to say on Thursday evening, about this whole matter of reigning.
You remember, on Thursday evening, for all those of you who were present, I introduced this subject, which is a very complex subject indeed, about—really, I do not know how to entitle it—called to reign, called to the throne, ordained, or however you like to put it. It is the heart of the matter.
We cannot go over that. I can only suggest, for those of you who were not there, that you get the tape of that study. But my problem has been, in these few weeks, to try and cover the subject adequately in a way that would be meaningful and relevant to all, and that is very, very difficult.
You see, what we have really said is this: that the original purpose of God in creating mankind was that man should rule and reign, should administer the government of God, in union with God. Man should take that position of sovereign power, if you like, over all the things God created.
It is very interesting that God planted a garden and placed man in it. It was there that man was told to dress, or cultivate, and keep—or guard, watch, observe, care for—the garden. Earlier, He had said to man that he should replenish the earth and subdue it.
In other words, he was to start with the garden, learn the first lessons in dominion in the garden, and from the garden he was to go out to the whole earth, and then there was more.
Surely the Lord’s plan was that once man had learned dominion over natural things, physical things, in union with God, he then should go on to spiritual things and should learn how to reign with God, as the New Testament says, in the heavenlies.
Now, we know man’s fall. We know there is no difference, no distinction: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Instead of man having dominion, things have dominion over man. Man is himself now not above, but underneath. He is possessed by the physical, possessed by the material, governed by the natural. He is himself a slave.
He is not having dominion over all things. He is not reigning and ruling. The wonderful thing is, as we saw on Thursday evening, that God gave to us the Lord Jesus Christ as the second Man and the last Adam. In Him we see God’s complete answer to this whole mess.
In the Lord Jesus, we see Someone in union with the Father, doing all things from the Father in Him, really working the works of the Father, speaking the words of the Father, doing the will of the Father, reigning in all things above the things of time and sense, and ruling even the things that were unseen and invisible.
It is a wonderful picture we have of the Lord Jesus as Man, in union with His Father, reigning and ruling long before He came to the right hand of the Majesty on high, long before He took the throne of God as His rightful place. Before God enthroned Him at His right hand and gave all authority and power into His hand, both in heaven and on earth, Jesus was ruling in His character, in His spirit, in Himself.
He was being trained, and the Bible says that He was perfected through sufferings. That is, that He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Not that He was imperfect, but He came to the full place of maturity.
Because even if mankind had never sinned, there would still have been the need of training. Do you think that just because a person is pure and sinless, they can sit on a throne and govern a whole portion of the universe? You may have got another thing coming.
People seem to think, “Oh, the only thing that matters is to get sin out of people. Once you have got sin out of you, people are perfect.” Not at all. That is only the beginning of the matter.
Once you have dealt with sin, and a person knows forgiveness, and they know something of holiness and something of walking with God, you have got to train them. They have got to go through situations which enable them to have an understanding as to how to rule. Do you understand what I mean?
One person can reign and rule from a book, from theory, but it is only when you start to face, in practical circumstances, the situations you learned in the book. You have learned all the theories.
I remember years ago, to illustrate, a lady who was the finest children’s nurse, or health inspector—I do not remember what it was, but it was something along that line—in the whole area. Everyone spoke of her. When anyone was in trouble, they whistled her in, and she gave all the advice.
She was an unmarried lady, but she was able to tell them exactly what they should do and was always very helpful. Then, rather later on, she got married.
And then, believe it or not, she had her own baby, and the whole thing went to pieces. She just went to pieces. The one who had been the perfect helper everywhere, an adviser and counsellor, kept on saying at the time, “You see, I do not know. It seems to be different.”
People have got the idea that somehow or other, just because you are saved, just because you have been brought into union with God in Christ, just because you are holy and walking with God, and you know what it is to be justified, that then, willy-nilly, you will be able to sit on a throne and govern in the kingdom that is to come. It is nonsense.
That is why God’s choicest saints go through the most inexplicable suffering. You look through church history, or look around you, and you will find that those who are marked out because of their desire to go the whole way with God—those who really have seen this matter—you know the things that come into their lives. They are totally inexplicable.
Circumstances come to them that just cannot be explained on the natural, and cannot even be explained spiritually, apart from this fact: that God wants the very highest and best for that person, and is prepared to bring them into situations which they cannot understand, in which their only way through is in union with God.
Sometimes they have no explanation up here, but in union with God they go right through the situation. Now they come out on top.
Here is a most wonderful thing: when God does something like that in a person’s life, it is forever. You never lose it. It is one of the most wonderful things that God can do: if you go on with Him, you never lose what He has given you in a dark place. It is eternal treasure.
It has gone into the city. It is part of that gold, precious stone, or pearl out of which that city, the Bride of the Lamb, is being produced. It is eternal.
We tend often to think of the city on the intimate side, of just blessed union and intimacy with Christ. But we forget that a city is a centre of government, a centre of administration, a centre of life. There, as it were, everything is administered.
That is why God calls the Bride of Christ a city: because it is a place of government. God at last has not only got the Bride for His Son, which is wonderful in itself, but He has found someone who, in union with His Son, is able to administer the divine government in all the ages that are to come.
And do not think that this little age or two of time is everything. There are the ages of the ages. Think of that.
You think this last age of two thousand years has been too much, huh? Well, you just wait for the ages of the ages. I will be with you. I will remind you, after we have gone about through two of them. “Alfred, did you remember you used to think what a big thing that old age was?” It will be a pinprick.
Yet, in this little age in which you and I are—and let me get this clear—in some of the other ages before this age, when, for instance, Abraham was, or David, or Solomon, or Isaiah, or Daniel, or Zerubbabel, or Nehemiah, or whoever else, those ages in which they were were a little span of time, one lifetime within an age.
God did something in those lives in which He trained them for eternal government. Because if you cannot learn to reign here, if I cannot learn to get on top here in Christ, I shall certainly not be able to reign there. That is the dilemma that God has.
Now, all I want to do, really, having said that, is this: when we look all the way through Scripture, we find that Christ is the sum, the basis, the heart, and the circumference of all the work of God. He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, and everything.
God’s aim is to sum up all things in Christ—Ephesians 1:11. Or again, that Christ may be everything in everyone—Colossians 3:11. That is God’s aim.
Whether you begin at Genesis or go to Revelation, you find the whole Bible is summed up in Christ. Then you find that God has redeemed a people: this mankind that God vested so much in, that fell into sin, that was alienated from God, that has become constitutionally such a different thing from what God intended it to be.
This mankind, through Christ, God has reconciled to Himself, made one with Himself, saved; and now He wants to bring them to the place where they reign, not in the eternity to come, but now on earth.
He wants that Church of His to rule in the community, to rule in society, to sway things nationally and internationally, to dictate the course of events, to see that the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven.
It is not that He wants us to be presumptuous or arrogant, and we can get unbalanced. Many people get unbalanced in prayer in this matter. Rather, in union with Christ, under the headship of Christ, in a sensitive, reverent fear of the Lord, we are to really govern things for God in the name of Christ.
Now, that is the purpose of God. But we know very well that whenever we turn in the whole of the Bible, we find that the majority always fail. Every time that God starts with something, it is wonderful and glorious and marvellous, and before long, before a generation or two has passed, it slides away.
And then what does God do? He takes up a man, or He takes up two men, or He takes up a few, or He takes up a small group, or a remnant, as it is called. Through that one or two, or that group or remnant, He, as it were, does something into which He brings all the others.
I called it, however you like to call it, the overcomers. However you speak of them, they are an advance party, an advance working party. They are harbingers.
You remember, we said—I think I found out an almost amazing thing about the word harbinger. Originally, it was someone who went ahead to find the lodgings: a harbinger. That is really what the overcomer is.
The overcomer is not someone who says, “I am something. I have had the experience with the Holy Spirit. You should, really. I will give you a book. Or maybe I will get Brother So-and-so to help you.”
But, I mean, there is such a superiority. Not only that either: some people get an experience of holiness. Oh, my! Once they have got an experience of holiness, they cannot bear anybody else who has not. You know the whole idea: “Oh, dear, dear, dear, how poor. How poor they all are. They do not know the deep things.”
Of course it costs to know the deep things, you know. There is a kind of superiority that comes with the whole overcomer teaching. It was never meant to. The people who originally saw it were not superior in any way.
Unfortunately, one of the side effects of this teaching has been to produce a kind of atmosphere of the elite, of a kind of superior group, of a kind of inner circle. My dear friend, there is no such thing as that in the kingdom of heaven.
The four-and-twenty elders exist to serve us. Anyone who is in the government of God, whatever it is, exists for us. They will lay down their lives for us. They have proved it.
Most of them have laid down their lives for us. Those early twelve apostles, as far as we know, all but one laid down their lives for the Church.
You see, the whole point is this: they are only there because they have proved that they can lay down their lives, not once, but again and again and again and again. There is no idea, “I am here. I am the Reverend So-and-so. I am Mr. So-and-so. I am this, all that. I am an overcomer.” Not at all.
The people are there in order to serve you, and the only idea they have in that position and ministry is to be able to serve the whole Body of Christ and to serve the Lamb and the Lord God.
Now, of course, I want really to talk about some of the elements of this, because I think it is tremendous. There is so much about it. We find it in the lives of different men. It does not matter where we turn.
One of the first great lives, the fountainhead of almost everything in the Bible, is Abraham. Abraham teaches us one thing about the overcomer. Do you remember what God said to him?
In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
There was nothing about something being elite. People seem to think, “Why did God choose Abraham? Why did He not choose somebody else? How did He settle on Abraham?”
But God selected Abraham. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham whilst he was yet in Mesopotamia, in Ur of the Chaldees, and said, “Get thee out.” Why? Because God was going to make that man a forerunner. He was going to make him a pioneer. He was making him an advance working party.
He was going to do something in Abraham’s life that meant forever afterwards the people of God would enter into something that God did in Abraham. He established something in Abraham. He established a principle in the life of Abraham that was never again to be lost in the work of God.
That is what happens with every overcomer. He establishes something in their life. He establishes something in their fellowship together. He manifests Himself. He lays a foundation that is never again taken away.
I find, of course, the supreme thing about Abraham is faith. When you come to the matter of overcoming, you are right there. That is exactly what it says in 1 John 5:4-5:
For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world:
and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.
And who is he that overcometh the world,
but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
Now, will you please notice three things? First of all, “whatsoever is born of God,” not “whosoever”; that whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.
It is perfectly true to say that whosoever is born of God overcometh the world, in one sense. But whatsoever is very important, because what it means is this: if you are going to be in the overcoming, if you are going to know ruling and reigning with Christ, it must be of God.
Everything in your life must be of God. Its origin must be in God. No flesh, no flesh. None of your own conceptions; not self-manufactured Christianity, not self-produced service. It will all be destroyed when God starts to work with you.
But you have got to begin with God. Is that not exactly what God did with Abraham? What are the things that sum up the life of Abraham? Well, there are three again.
The first thing is this: the whole meaning of Abraham’s life was the land. God said, “Into a land that I will show you.”
But in the whole of his life, he never possessed an inch of that land, except the parcel of ground called Machpelah in Hebron, where he buried Sarah, and where he himself was buried. That was the only portion.
You would think, “What a fool. He spent his whole life—one hundred and seventy-five years—wandering around, doing nothing. What has he got to show for it?”
Now, dear friends, do not you think that is what we all want to ask people? We say, “What have you got to show for your life? What have you got to show for your faith? What tremendous success have you got? Come on, show us. Show us. Let us see the big evangelistic campaigns. Let us see all the results.”
“If you have got faith, we want to know it.” Not Abraham. If you had a quiz, Abraham would say, “Now Abraham, come on. Where are all these lives that have found God through you?” Abraham would say, “I do not know of any. Just my family. We have even kicked Hagar out.”
The only Egyptian amongst them, they had kicked her out, and Ishmael. You would say, “Abraham, it is very strange. God said, ‘In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ It does not look as if anyone has been blessed.”
You know, it must have been very tough for Abraham. He must have wondered whether it would be better to go back to Ur of the Chaldees and get an evangelistic mission going.
Surely he must have thought, “Somehow or other, I have misunderstood the mind of God. He called me. He said, ‘In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed,’ and I have not got a thing to show for it. Where is this land that He told me He would give me?”
He said, “Look as far as you can to the north and the east and the south and the west. All this will I give thee.” Abraham died and never saw a bit of it, except what he bought with cash. That is all. Just a little plot.
Another thing about dear Abraham, we could say his whole life is summed up in, is, of course, the question of the city. It says he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God; but he never lived in a city in the whole of his life.
The only time he ever lived in a city was Ur of the Chaldees, which God told him to get out of.
If you said, “Abraham, now just wait. Let us keep this clear: by their fruits ye shall know them. God said to you—you say you are looking for this city. I mean, man, you must be crazy.”
“You have been living for so long. There are so many years you have had. I mean, not just ten years, Abraham; we will give you ten years. But if you do not show some of the goods in ten years’ time, we really begin to question. Where is this city that you have gone out to look for? You are living in tents, looking for a city. I do not understand it.”
But, of course, the third thing about Abraham’s life was his seed. You know, God kept on talking about seed. He said, “In thy seed.” But Abraham had no seed. Ishmael—and they kicked Ishmael out.
When a man gets to ninety-nine years of age, you would think that he must be perhaps a little deluded. I would think he was one of the nutcases we are always praying may be delivered of.
Oh, dear, I was so tempted last week when I was taking that Scripture from the Song of Solomon. Unfortunately—and it is a cross to me, sometimes—my sense of humour, my eye saw the next verse, and I wanted to laugh hysterically, for it said, “I am come down into the garden of nuts, to view the green plants that are there.”
I wanted so much to say to you all last week, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled.” Well, that is an aside.
But really, when you think of Abraham saying, “In thee, in thy seed, shall all the families of the earth be blessed,” but Abraham had no seed—if he had twelve children, if he had the normal number of children that they had in those days, which was round about that number anyway, we could have said, “Well now, one of them, of course, we see it.”
Even now we wonder how all the earth is going to be blessed, Abraham, since there does not seem to be anyone yet blessed through you. But he did not have a son when he was ninety-nine years of age, and when Sarah was ninety. I think that is something. That takes some believing in a person.
You see, what God was proving is this: now listen, whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.
There was something that God had revealed to Abraham, which apprehended him, which gripped him. Although he had nothing to show for it, although he had no physical, material success, he was gripped by something which God had shown him—a vision of God, a revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ to his own heart—and he could not go back on it.
He could not go back on it, even when he fell into sin and went into Egypt. Still, he went back and built the altar where he had originally departed from the Lord.
Again and again, when he succumbed to common sense and conceived a child through Hagar the Egyptian—though that was a curse in many ways upon his life to this day—still, he could never forsake the Lord. He had seen something.
Now, do you begin to see what I am trying to get at? Ishmael may have looked very much like his father, but the problem was he was not born of God. He was born of common sense, the flesh, worldly wisdom, the wisdom of this world, and it could not overcome the world.
Paul says in Galatians 4, “Cast him out, cast him out, the bondwoman and her son, for they cannot inherit.” They cannot inherit the promises. It is a hard word, is it not?
But listen: you can have a beautiful façade of Christianity and a beautiful façade of many other things, but if it is not of God, if its origin is not in God, it cannot overcome.
One of the most difficult things for all of us is to come to the place where we say to God, “Now, Lord, I want to be one of these overcomers. By Thy grace, whatever it costs me, I want to.” Then God starts to blow up the façade.
We go through almost hell on earth as one after another of our façades, our projected personality, begins to disappear. For the first time, people see us as we really are, and see the kind of person we really are. But God has to start there.
If you are not prepared for that dynamiting operation, then, of course, you can never be an overcomer. For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world. In other words, it has to begin with God.
Jesus is the Alpha. He must be the first letter. It is no good you having the A, B, C, D, and E, and then letting the Lord Jesus come in on F and G. He has got to be the A and the Z—or, as you Americans say, the Zee.
He has got to be the whole thing. He has got to be the first and the last, the beginning and the end. He has got to be the whole. There is no other way.
Oh, dear child of God, what a lesson this is: whatsoever is begotten of God. Abraham did not get big ideas of empire-building. He did not have great ideas of “Rule Britannia,” sort of, and all that kind of thing—pomp and glory.
You see, God kept him very humble. Having shown him something—something born of God, something that was the purpose of God for his life and for his seed—God established in Abraham’s life a principle that is infallible as far as ruling and reigning is concerned: it must begin with God.
It must begin with God. Everything must begin with God. My service must begin with God. I must be called of God. I must be qualified by God. Whatever other training I have, I must know a training by the Spirit of God.
Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.
Then you see the second thing here. It says—and let me read it:
And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.
For once something is born of God, our clammy hands have to be got off it. Oh, my, it is one thing to see something born of God; then the next minute, oh, we are on it. “How can we get this thing going now? How can we really get it off the ground? Now we will get it worked out. We will do it now.”
“This is really, of course, this is absolutely the Lord. Now we are going to come right in behind it. We are going to see this thing get through.”
Now, you see, this is the lesson of Abraham having to offer up Isaac. Do you not think that somehow or other, when God said to Abraham, “Go up unto Mount Moriah and offer Isaac,” anyone who counselled Abraham would have said, “Abraham, it must be the enemy. God never asks you to sacrifice your son.”
“Furthermore, you mean to tell me you have waited until you were ninety-nine years of age before this boy came into being? In fact, you were one hundred when he was born, and you mean to tell me that now God is saying, ‘Kill him’? It cannot be God.”
But Abraham overcame by faith. It says in the Word, “By faith he offered up Isaac,” believing that he would receive him again from the dead. In other words, he was so convinced that God’s Word would come true that, whatever happened, God would take responsibility. Now that is faith. You understand?
Faith to see a thing begin; faith to keep our hands off it so that we do not destroy it all the way through. Oh, what a lesson this is in the matter of reigning.
No man or woman will ever come to divine government, to their place in the divine administration, unless they are men and women of vision. Secondly, they must be men and women who know that everything in their life is of God.
“All my springs are in Thee.” Not in other brothers and sisters, not in a teaching, not even in the Church, not in a movement, not in anything, but in Him.
And thirdly, faith.
Now, when you look at Hebrews 11, does that not make sense? You just look at Hebrews 11, and you begin to see something. Here we have all the great advance parties of history, all the harbingers of history, all the pioneers, the forerunners, the overcomers of history.
Listen. I will just start with Abraham, verse 8:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God.
By faith even Sarah herself received power to conceive. Verse 13: “These all died in faith.” Verse 17: “By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac; yea, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son.”
Whatsoever was begotten of God—it began with God—he that had gladly received the promise was offering up his only begotten son, the fulfilment of the promise.
Even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called; accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a figure receive him back.
By faith Isaac blessed Jacob. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, worshipping. By faith Joseph, when his end was nigh. By faith Moses, by faith Moses—and so we go on.
And what does it say? Hebrews 11:33:
Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions.
Then in verse 39: “And these all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise.” Then Hebrews 12:
Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith,
Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame.
You see, here you have faith all the way through, from beginning to end: faith. Do you not find, dear child of God, that all our troubles go back to an evil heart of unbelief?
Think. If God is gracious to you this day, He will trace every one of your present problems to a lurking heart of unbelief.
For instance, sometimes we say, “I do not know. I think I am being hoodwinked. Is it really worth all this discipline, all this being knocked about? Other people I know do not seem to have it. Why should I?”
You see, we can not only compare ourselves with the world; we can compare ourselves with other believers. Then comes the doubt: “Is it worth it?”
And the interesting thing is this: that God never helps us. When we were little babies, God ran to help us. But once we have started the way of learning how to rule and reign, He does not. He will leave us. He will leave us to our thoughts.
“Is it worth it? Is the end really the throne?”
My dear friend, supposing we were to put it all in a nutshell. Just supposing that a violent, atheistic government took our country, and supposing for the first time in many, many years believers faced persecution.
Supposing the challenge was not no church at all, but a puppet church that mouthed ethics and certain moral ideas, that was a conglomeration of all good men’s faith.
That meant that every single person who was out and out for the Lord faced either persecution, prison, or death, or a life of seeming freedom. Then comes to you the question: “Is it worth it?”
Would you really, really be prepared to die rather than deny?
Now why do I ask you that question? Because only faith could give you the victory. Nothing else.
You would not be able to look to circumstances. You would not be able to look to your present situation. You would not be able to look to the comfort and fellowship of your brothers and sisters, since they would all be facing the same problem and perhaps separated from you.
Only faith could give you the victory. And what would that faith be? Not some kind of faith in a set of doctrines, but it would be because you had seen something of the Lord Himself, and you could not go back. You could not deny.
Then, when you have seen something like that, the only way through is to be faithful. You overcome.
Now, I put it in a very extreme form, but I hope that helps you. Pray God that we will not have to face such a possibility. But here you have a principle in overcoming that we call absolute faith.
Everything of God, a man of vision, and what did the Lord change his name to? From Abram: Abraham. Abraham. Abraham.
Why? He changed it from exalted father to the father of a multitude.
And you know, dear Abraham, when he died with one son of promise and twin grandsons, he must have wondered: “Father of a multitude? Is that what God calls a multitude? Three?”
The point was that God was faithful. He would not let Abraham see down through the ages of time that his seed would be like the sand of the seashore and like the stars of heaven for multitude, because He was establishing in Abraham a lesson for us all.
Do you want to reign and rule? God has put you in a humdrum job. God has given you a home. You may feel, “Is that the sphere of overcoming?”
“Surely the sphere of overcoming is to go, sort of like a jet-propelled plane, right round the world declaring the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is overcoming.” No, not at all. Not at all.
I fear that some of us who do go round the world like that are not overcoming. Very quickly, we can be caught up in the whole system of things and lose the inward character.
No, the sphere of overcoming is your home, or your place of work, and our humdrum, routine life as the people of God in Richmond.
Amongst all these very ordinary people that we are, bound together in the Lord, having to stay together, having to go on together, having to learn our lessons together—in your home with all its problems and difficulties, in your office with all its demands, all its challenges—there you and I learn lessons which are eternal.
And the word that our Lord said was this: “Blessed are you”—oh, there was something, was there not?—“because you have been faithful in little, I will make you faithful in much. I will give you much.”
And the Lord help us to understand those words, rendered by the New English Bible in Luke 22:29:
I vest in you the kingship which My Father vested in Me.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, we all really want to be part of those who overcome, those who really inherit, those who come to Thy throne.
Thou saidst, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit down with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.”
Oh, Father, we pray that Thou wilt burn these words into our hearts. For, Lord, Thou knowest the amount of unbelief that there is. Thou knowest in my heart; Thou knowest in all our hearts where that evil heart of unbelief lurks, causing us to compromise, causing us, Lord, to go back, causing us to let go of things that are of real value to Thee.
Oh, God, have mercy upon us, we pray. Open our eyes. Cleanse us from a heart of unbelief. Cause that spirit of faith to come upon us, we pray, and may we be renewed in faith.
May we be those who, having seen the Lord, are ready to go on with the Lord, knowing that the trial, the proving, of our faith is much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it is tried by fire, because it will be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
May it be so, Lord, for every one of us. We ask it in Thy name. Amen.