I want to teach you another chorus tonight. And the Lord forgive me for my voice, but that’s okay.
In Revelation 19:6, the last part of verse 6 and the first part of verse 7, is another chorus. I rejoice also that the Lord is bringing His people back to singing the Scriptures.
We sang just a few moments ago, as an offering of worship to the Lord, this chorus: “Hallelujah.” You hear the word hallelujah used repeatedly within the circles of God’s people. It can be used in a number of different ways.
It can be used, as we saw earlier, as a way of worshiping the Lord, because it literally means, “Praise Yah.” What is Yah? It is an abbreviation for the Lord, Yahweh. So hallelujah means, “Praise the Lord.”
It can be used as an act of worship to the Lord. It can also be a shout of victory: “Praise the Lord!” That is really the sense of Revelation 19, where it says:
Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him.
Now, that is the words of the chorus. I hope we can—let me get a drink of water—we know it. Does anybody know that one? “Hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.”
Good night—or night sweet? Did I say nine? I’m sorry; it is Revelation 19:6.
You see it now? Verse 6 and the first part of verse 7. You sing this twice:
Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.
Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
And give the glory unto Him.
Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.
Okay, now let’s sing it together.
Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.
Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
And give the glory unto Him.
Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.
Amen.
Two Scriptures tonight: Ephesians 3 and Colossians 1. I think that the Lord is going to hold me to at least an hour tonight, because I don’t believe this voice is going to hold out much longer than that. Some of you are saying, “Well, praise the Lord.”
Ephesians 3, beginning with verse 1:
For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—
if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you;
that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief.
By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ,
which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men,
as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit;
to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body,
and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,
of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me
according to the working of His power.
To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given,
to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ,
and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery
which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things;
in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church
to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
This was in accordance with the eternal purpose
which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord,
in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.
Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory.
And then in Colossians 1:9-12:
For this reason also, since the day we heard of your love in the Spirit,
we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask
that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will
in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,
to please Him in all respects,
bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;
strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might,
for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience;
joyously giving thanks to the Father,
who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
Can we pray, please?
Father, we thank You that You have assembled us here tonight. Lord, already we have had the opportunity to sing of Your glory and Your grace, and to sing of the fellowship that we have with You and with one another.
We thank You for the presence of Your Holy Spirit. We thank You, Lord, that You promised that where two or more have gathered together into Your name, You would be there in their midst. So, Lord, we bow our knees before You tonight, bow our hearts before You, and declare You as Lord over our meeting and over our time together.
Lord, how we thank You that, as You made Your journey here on the earth, You gathered disciples around You and taught them. Lord, You have called us to be Your disciples, and we gather around You tonight and around Your Word. We ask, Lord, through the teaching ministry of the body of Christ, that once again You will speak words of truth to our hearts.
Lord, we choose to stand against ourselves. We are not interested in human information, human words, and human teaching. But, Lord, we are interested that You may come tonight by the Spirit of truth and liberate us into more of Your light and more of Yourself.
So, Lord, we cast ourselves upon You and take for our portion that anointing that was poured out upon Your head and ran all the way down to the hem of the garment. Lord, we take our place tonight in that garment, and we receive the anointing that we need, both for speaking and for hearing.
For, Lord, we desire that our time of sharing around Your Word would truly have eternal effects on our lives and eternal effects upon the kingdom of God in our own generation. So, Lord, we rest in You and in the ministry of Your Holy Spirit in our midst to be our Teacher. In Jesus’ name, amen.
We have been sharing the last couple of weeks regarding the need for revelation in our lives. God really has the desire in His heart that you and I should allow our lives to be governed by the light that the Holy Spirit is faithful to bring to us.
We saw last week that where there is no revelation, as it says in Proverbs 29:18, where there is no vision, the people perish—they are unrestrained. Our own translation of that verse is that where there is no revelation, the people make a mess of things.
It is an absolute necessity on the part of God’s people that we find ourselves in a place where we are receiving revelation from God on an ongoing basis. It may be that in some areas God would show something to persons He has put in the body of Christ, because you notice there in Ephesians 3 that He showed this mystery to the apostles and prophets.
Yet, through the ministry of those whom God raises up in this way, we can come to see something more of the light that God would have us possess. And yet that should in no way hinder you and me in our own personal responsibility before God.
If you are going to grow up into Christ in all aspects, it means that you are going to have to learn for yourself how to receive revelation from God. It is not enough simply to read books or receive from other people’s ministry, or whatever other way you may receive. That is not to make light of those things at all, but that in itself will not equip you for the work God has called you to.
We need to learn to have a personal relationship with the Spirit of truth. You need to know the Holy Spirit as a Person. He is not an “it”; He is not a power. He is a Person. You need to know Him as a personal reality in your life, to come and take the things of Jesus Christ and make them real in your life.
Even as we share tonight, the matters that we will be sharing about require that we be faithful to get before the Lord and ask Him to open the eyes of our understanding, so that we will be able to comprehend with all the saints what these matters are.
We are not interested in just trying to convey information that we read someplace else, then come here to speak to your minds and try to transfer that information to you. Information received that way will be of no value to you in the long run.
But what we do trust, even if it is only a small amount, is that whatever revelation God has granted to us, we can share; and in doing so, trust the Holy Spirit of God to make it revelation to you too. When that takes place, it will transform your life.
What I have to share with you tonight has been a real transformation in my own life. For the first thirteen or fourteen years of my Christian walk, I was in a very strong evangelical denomination—the largest evangelical denomination in the States, the Southern Baptist denomination.
When I was a pastor in the Southern Baptist church, there were some thirty-five thousand churches in the United States. Since then, that has been eight or nine years ago, so there are probably at least forty thousand Southern Baptist churches in the United States by this time.
But what I am trying to say to you is that, even in the midst of living in that kind of atmosphere, I still found myself most of the time running around like a chicken with his head cut off—not knowing where I was coming from and not knowing where I was going.
Now, this is not me throwing rocks at the denomination that I was in. I am not being critical there at all. It was just my own personal history before the Lord.
Yet a few years ago, God in His mercy began to open up something in my own heart: an understanding of what His eternal purpose is. Notice what Paul says in Ephesians 3:11:
This was in accordance with the eternal purpose
which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What is the eternal purpose of God? What is all of this all about, anyhow? What is God trying to do? Why did He not leave well enough alone?
Everything was okay in the beginning. There was God. He was complete in Himself. He had everything He, in a sense, needed. Why did He not just leave well enough alone? Why did He create a universe and a world, populate it with human beings, and create all the things that are going on as we know them in human history?
Why did God not leave well enough alone? I believe this has truly been hidden from the people of God, for the most part, in earlier days of God’s dealings with people.
Yet Paul in Ephesians 3 continues to talk about a mystery—a mystery that was hidden in God before the foundation of the world, up until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This mystery is now revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we are going to find ourselves walking faithfully with the Lord and involved in things that have eternal value, I think it is necessary for us to have some understanding of what God is all about. What is He doing? What is He seeking to accomplish? What is going to be the final product when God has completed everything and it is all over and done with? What is going to be the end product?
Now, I am going to burst some balloons tonight, okay? So get ready for the noise. I thought for a while that God had called me into the ministry of bursting balloons, but one brother informed me that there was no such ministry in the Word of God. So I had to give up my ministry of bursting balloons.
But what I am trying to say is that we pick up things in our lives and carry them along through life, never bringing them to a place where we examine them in the light of God’s Word. It gives us misconceptions. It gives us a distortion of who God is and what He is really seeking to accomplish.
If we take a sentimental approach to heaven and read Revelation 21 and 22, we get this sentimental view of heaven: that there are going to be gold streets, we are going to run around barefoot on gold streets, float around on clouds, everybody playing a harp, and angels attending to us all the time.
Well, if that is heaven, I do not want to go there. If that is all heaven is going to be, the first million years, I am going to get tired of that.
I do not believe that is what God is after. Ultimately, that is not what God is after. There is something more of reality than merely having gold streets, pearly gates, and all the other things that we traditionally accept as being part of the eternal realm.
I happen to believe that the God who made Himself real in Jesus Christ is a greater God than one who would have stagnant people sitting around floating on clouds for eternity. The God who made Himself real in Jesus Christ is, by nature, a Creator God.
I do not believe He is ever going to change. He is always going to be in the business of creating. He is never going to become stagnant, because it is His nature, His very being, to create. Whatever God is going to be doing in the future, it is not going to become stagnant. It is going to be creative. It is going to be God continuously expressing Himself.
The thing before us tonight is to gain some understanding of what was in God’s heart when He started this whole process. When it says in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” why did He not leave well enough alone? What motivated Him? What caused God to take that action?
First of all, I think we need to make an important distinction. We need to understand the difference between the eternal purpose of God and the redemptive purpose of God.
The eternal purpose of God is eternal. It has always been there and it will always be there. It is eternal by nature. In other words, God is perfect, and when God decides to do something, He does not have to change His mind.
Did you hear me? When God decides to do something, He does not have to change His mind. He is God. That means He is Almighty. He is all-knowing. Therefore, being all-knowing and Almighty, He can do anything He wants to do.
God conceived something in His own heart that He wanted to do, and He set out to do it. That is called the eternal purpose of God, and that purpose never, ever changes. It is the same as it was when God first conceived it. It will ultimately come into reality and fruition.
God is going to have His heart’s desire because He is God. Sometimes in our understanding of God, we make Him out to be a fickle old man who cannot make up His mind. That is not God.
God is God, and we need to allow Him to remain God. We must not form Him in our image. That is what we try to do. We try somehow to take God from who He is and squeeze Him down into a little mold where we can understand Him. In essence, we are trying to make ourselves god and make Him the creature.
But we need to allow Him to be who He is. He has a purpose. God is not just doing something willy-nilly. God has a design. God has a purpose. There is something in God’s heart that He is going to fulfill.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, when you and I gain some understanding of that, it will help us tremendously in our Christian lives. Can you imagine somebody trying to build the Twin Towers without a blueprint?
Would you not call them a number-one fool to set out to build buildings like the Twin Towers without any blueprint? Just say, “Okay, let us get some cement together and some rocks, and okay, let us start building this house.” No blueprint, no plans, no nothing. That would be foolishness.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, God is in no way foolish. God has a plan. God has a blueprint. The beautiful thing about it is that God wants us to see that blueprint so that our lives can be governed accordingly.
He does not want us running out here for ten or fifteen years, involving our lives in something that has no eternal value to it. Do you know we can do that? It is true. We can be involved in good things and have nothing to do with God’s purpose.
I told you I was going to burst some balloons, did I not? But it is true, brother. I do not want that for you, and I do not want it for myself. I want you tonight to take what I have to share with you and examine it in the light of God’s Word. Please do not hear it just because Ernie Hiles said it. Examine it in the light of what God’s Word teaches.
In Colossians 1, Paul’s prayer for those Colossian believers was that God would grant them spiritual wisdom and understanding so that they could live according to the will of God. In Ephesians 5, Paul said, “Do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
God is not trying to hide it. The only ones from whom God hides it are those whose hearts are impure. If we have impure motives, if we have mixed motives, then God will hide His will and purpose from us.
But what did Jesus say in Matthew 5:8?
Blessed are the pure in heart:
for they shall see God.
Not in the future—now. If our hearts are pure, if they are undivided, and all we want is what God wants, God will be faithful to allow us to see Him in the situations we are in every day.
Do not live your Christian life as though God is way out there and you are way down here. That is not the way it is. In Colossians 1:27, Paul says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” It is God in you, in Christ, who is working something for eternal glory. God is at work doing something in you to fulfill the eternal purpose that He purposed in Christ Jesus.
That is why it is important that we understand the distinction between the eternal purpose of God and the redemptive purpose of God. I think many of us have come to believe that God’s redemptive purpose is His eternal purpose.
Listen to me: it is not God’s eternal purpose to save sinners. I told you I was going to burst a balloon. It is not God’s eternal purpose to save sinners. It is His redemptive purpose to save sinners.
God’s eternal purpose was that there would never be any sinners. It was God’s purpose that, in the beginning when He created man, man would enter into relationship with God in such a way that, in a sense, God would be able to give Himself away to man—where God would become all in all.
Man had a high place in God’s purpose and plan. But because man fell, God’s eternal purpose did not change. God had to take a detour to get man, because man fell. What did he fall from? He fell from God’s eternal purpose. He disqualified himself from being part of God’s eternal purpose.
Now, God could have wiped the slate completely clean and said, “Well, junk that one.” But He did not, because that is not the way God is. We had better praise Him tonight that He is not, because we would not be here to talk about it if God were that way.
When man falls, God is faithful to do everything possible to bring that man from his fallen place back up to where God intended him to be in the beginning.
What God did in Christ was to incorporate man into Jesus Christ and once again bring redeemed man back to God’s eternal purpose. In Christ Jesus, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, God wants to take all that He has accomplished in Christ and work it into our lives, so that here and now you and I can enter into God’s eternal purpose, not just His redemption.
Please do not hear me as making light of the forgiveness of sin. Praise God for the forgiveness of sin. Praise God for the new birth. But, brothers and sisters in Christ, there is more to life than just being born, and there is more to the Christian walk than simply being born again.
As important as that is—you cannot go on unless that happens—that is not the end. That is the beginning. God’s intention is to take you from that beginning and bring you all the way into His eternal purpose.
What is that eternal purpose? I see it in four dimensions. It is basically the same thing. There is only one purpose, but it seems that God in His Word has revealed it in four different dimensions.
The four dimensions of God’s purpose are:
In essence, it is all the same thing. It is four different ways of looking at it. It is all one truth—one eternal purpose, which He purposed in Christ Jesus.
First of all, the reason God created man was so that God could have fellowship. Fellowship is not merely sitting around having chitchat, patting each other on the back, and saying how great it is.
Fellowship is the full giving of my personality to somebody else. I think the highest form of human fellowship on the natural plane is when a man and a woman become husband and wife. That explains the whole idea of fellowship in the Word of God. They become one. They give their lives to each other.
Understand tonight, brothers and sisters in Christ, that it is God’s eternal purpose to have fellowship with the likes of us. That really ought to cause us to fall on our faces before Him—that God would take the likes of us, mere handfuls of clay.
When you look at it, who am I in this morass of people? Here God is—He is God—and I am just a little old speck. Yet God would have fellowship with me. This is part of what is in God’s heart.
You see it in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Actually, it is part of a longer parable: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and finally the lost son. It is all the same idea.
The real point of that parable is not seen until we get to the elder brother. The younger brother took his inheritance, went out, blew the whole thing, and found himself in the midst of a hog pen. He came to his senses and went back home.
When the father saw him coming, he went out and embraced him. He called the servants to put a ring on his hand—giving him authority—put the best robe on him, and put shoes on his feet. He was no longer a slave; he was a son. He was totally reinstated into the father’s household.
They were having a glorious time, and the elder brother, who was out in the field, heard the music. He came in and asked the servants, “What is going on inside?” They said, “Your brother has come home, and they are having a good time.”
He began to pout. He would not go inside. Finally, the father came out and asked, “What is wrong?” He said, “Well, I have been here all this time, and You never gave me a young goat. You never killed the fatted calf for me. You never had a party with my friends for me.”
It is interesting what the father said to him:
My child, all that I have is yours.
He did not know it. He was living there the whole time and had never understood the father’s heart. Here was this little whippersnapper, this younger kid, who went out and spent all of his inheritance; yet something inside of him understood what was in the father’s heart. When he came back, he was totally reinstated in the father’s household.
That is what we are talking about when we talk about the eternal purpose of God. God wanted to have fellowship.
When the son was coming home, who took the initiative? What did the father do? He left where he was and ran toward the son. That is how much God desires to have fellowship with you and me. It thrills His heart when He finds those who will give themselves one hundred percent to fellowship with Him.
To fellowship means that God has the freedom to give Himself away to you. Look with me at 2 Peter 1:4:
For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises,
in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature.
Do you see that word partakers? The Greek word translated “fellowship” in the New Testament is koinonia. The word partaker is the same word: koinonia. In other words, God would have you fellowship in His divine nature. We are to be partakers of the divine nature.
When God made man in the beginning, He said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Why? Because there needed to be something in man to which God could give Himself, something that man could receive. God would impart Himself to man—His own divine nature.
It is a very sad thing, brothers and sisters in Christ, that so many of God’s people are walking around expecting God in heaven to throw blessings in their direction. Listen, there is nothing wrong with receiving the blessings of God. But the blessings of God are only God’s way of getting our attention.
Does not Paul say that the goodness of God leads us to repentance? But God not only wants to give us His blessings; He wants to give us Himself. God wants to take His very nature, which He deposited in His Son, and deposit it in you and in me. That is fellowship.
What does it mean to be a child of God? How can we use this language and call ourselves children of God without understanding that, in order to do that, we must have the life of God in us?
My two boys cannot call themselves my sons unless they have my life in them. So it is with us. You may be the nicest, gentlest, best church member on the face of the earth, but that does not in itself make you a child of God.
The only way you can become a child of God is by the Holy Spirit of God begetting you, conceiving you. When the life of God is deposited in your spirit, you instantaneously become a child of God.
That is what it means to fellowship. Look in 1 Corinthians 1:9:
God is faithful,
through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
God is faithful, through whom you have been called into fellowship—actually, in the language of the text, into the fellowship of His Son. It is not merely a matter of taking Jesus as your model and trying to mimic your life after Him. That is not the call of God upon your life.
The call of God upon your life is that you should fellowship Jesus Christ—that the very life of Christ would come into you. Is that not what Jesus is talking about in John 15 when He says, “Abide in Me, and I in you”? He says, “Without Me, you can do nothing.” You cannot bear fruit. That is fellowship: for Him to be in you and for you to be in Him.
Look at 1 John 1:
What was from the beginning,
what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes,
what we beheld and our hands handled,
concerning the Word of Life—
and the life was manifested,
and we have seen and bear witness
and proclaim to you the eternal life,
which was with the Father and was manifested to us—
what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also,
that you also may have fellowship with us;
and indeed our fellowship is with the Father,
and with His Son Jesus Christ.
Our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son. Look at 2 Corinthians 13:14, Paul’s benediction:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
be with you all.
Do you see what I see? First Corinthians 1:9 says God is faithful, through whom you have been called into fellowship with Jesus Christ. First John 1:3 says our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son. Second Corinthians 13:14 speaks of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
We have been called to fellowship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In reality, Almighty God, the Creator of all and Sustainer of all that is, has called you to have fellowship with Himself. Almighty God.
That is why Paul could say in Ephesians 3:20:
Now unto Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly
beyond all that we ask or think,
according to the power that works within us.
God Himself has come to take up His residence in your life when you believed into the Lord Jesus Christ. God desires that your life should become a habitation for Him, where the whole central theme would be fellowship with Him.
It is not a matter of merely sitting back and receiving. It is a matter of God being in you. That is why Paul could say, “For me to live is Christ,” and, “I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”
That is the Christian life. It is fellowship. It is sharing. It is being a partner in the eternal life of God, in the eternal nature of God. It ought to make a difference, brothers and sisters in Christ, in the way we conduct our lives.
Let us look at one more verse in Revelation 21. Still keeping our minds on fellowship, verse 3 says:
Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men,
and He shall dwell among them,
and they shall be His people,
and God Himself shall be among them,
and be their God.
Do you see what I see? The book of Revelation is a description of the final outcome of all of God’s activities toward man. This is already reality. What is happening in this reality? God is dwelling among His people, He is their God, and they are His people.
Ultimately, when it is all over and done with, God is going to have unhindered fellowship with creatures like you and me. That is one way of seeing the eternal purpose of God.
Another way of seeing it is that God is looking for a habitation for Himself. Remember Genesis 1:2:
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The picture in the Hebrew language is like a dove hovering over a place, looking for a place to make a nest. That is the whole idea behind it. The Spirit of God was looking for a place where God could come and be at home, if you please.
Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But by the time you get to Genesis 1:2, apparently there was a whole lapse of time. Personally, I believe that during that time Satan rebelled against God, because in Genesis 1:2 you have darkness over the deep. Where did the darkness come from?
God spoke into that darkness, and the Spirit of God hovered over the darkness. There was no place for God to have a habitation. The Spirit of God was looking for a place where God could come and be at home.
He could just come home, take off His shoes, put His slippers on, let His hair down, pull His tie loose, and just be Himself. Now, I know we have to be careful when we use that kind of language concerning God. I realize that. But you know the point I am trying to make.
The point is that God is trying to find a place where He can be comfortable, where He can be Himself. He is always looking for a habitation.
When God was leading the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage, He brought them through the Red Sea and into the wilderness. God knew it was necessary to teach these Hebrew people, who had been in captivity for four hundred years, how to worship.
So He instructed Moses to build a tabernacle. The tabernacle was composed of three compartments: the outer court, the holy place, and the holy of holies. After they had constructed the tabernacle and placed the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies, the Shekinah glory of God came down upon that place.
The committed presence of God was in that holy of holies. Now listen to me: it seems so foolish that Almighty God, out of all the places on the face of the globe—among tremendous cities that had been built and all the other beautiful places on the earth—would choose to commit His presence in the midst of a whole group of wandering Jews in the Sinai desert.
You might say, “How foolish.” But through all of that, God was saying to those people, “I am still looking for a place where I can commit My presence, where I can come and be at home and be Myself.” God wanted to be at home among the Hebrew people. That is why He chose them.
Someone has said, “How odd of God to choose the Jews.” It is true. There was nothing in Abraham himself that attracted God. It was God’s choice. God was seeking to use the whole nation of Israel as a place where He could be at home, and through them He would be a blessing to all the other nations of the world.
When people begin to talk about themselves as the chosen people of God, they look at it from the wrong perspective. They are not chosen because they are something special. They are chosen as a special agent through which God is going to live His life out.
But first of all, they have to learn how to relate to Him properly so that He can be at home in their midst.
When the Hebrew people came into Canaan and took over the land, it was still in God’s heart that He would have a habitation for Himself. So He began to impress His servant David with this need.
Look with me in Psalm 132. Sometimes we do the saints of the Old Testament a great disservice. Somehow we feel that we are so far ahead of them that they do not even hold a candle next to us. But some of those saints in the Old Testament saw something of God that you and I need to see today.
Psalm 132, beginning with verse 1:
Remember, O Lord, on David’s behalf,
all his affliction;
how he swore to the Lord
and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,
Surely I will not enter my house,
nor lie on my bed;
I will not give sleep to my eyes
or slumber to my eyelids,
until I find a place for the Lord,
a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.
Do you sense what David was saying? He saw something: “Until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah,
we found it in the field of Jaar.
Let us go into His dwelling place;
let us worship at His footstool.
Arise, O Lord, to Thy resting place,
Thou and the ark of Thy strength.
Let Thy priests be clothed with righteousness,
and let Thy godly ones sing for joy.
Then God Himself speaks in Psalm 132:13-14:
For the Lord has chosen Zion;
He has desired it for His habitation.
This is My resting place forever;
here I will dwell, for I have desired it.
You can read the rest when you get home tonight. But do you see what I am saying? David had come to see, by the help of the Holy Spirit, that God wanted a place to reside on the face of the earth.
It became so real in David’s heart that, as you read in 1 Chronicles 28 and 29, at the end of his life David gave all that he had. All his possessions, all the energy he had at the end of his life, were funneled toward seeing that the temple was built for God.
He encouraged the people to give liberally and generously, and they did. The most beautiful structure was finally constructed under Solomon: Solomon’s temple.
You remember what happened when the temple was completed and the ark of the covenant was placed in the holy of holies. Again the Shekinah glory of God came down upon the place in such a way that the priests could not even minister.
What was God saying? God was saying, “I am still looking for a habitation. I am still desiring that there should be a place where I can commit My presence, where I can come and just be Myself, be at home, and be comfortable.”
Look with me in Ephesians 2, beginning with verse 13:
But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off
have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For He Himself is our peace,
who made both groups into one
and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall,
by abolishing in His flesh the enmity,
which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances,
that in Himself He might make the two into one new man,
thus establishing peace.
Do you know what the two are? Jew and Gentile, making them into one new man, thus establishing peace.
And might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross,
by it having put to death the enmity.
And He came and preached peace to you who were far away,
and peace to those who were near;
for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,
but you are fellow citizens with the saints,
and are of God’s household,
having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone,
in whom the whole building, being fitted together,
is growing into a holy temple in the Lord.
Verse 22 says:
In whom you also are being built together
into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
Who is now God’s habitation? The church. The church of Jesus Christ has become God’s dwelling place.
What happened on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2? There were one hundred and twenty human beings, just like you and me, who had become disciples of Jesus Christ. They gathered together for ten days in an upper room for prayer and fasting.
When Jesus had taken His position at the right hand of the Father, He poured forth His Spirit upon those one hundred and twenty people, and the church of Jesus Christ came into reality. Once again, the Shekinah glory of God came down upon that place.
It was also true in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. At His baptism, did not God speak from heaven and say:
This is My beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased.
May I add, just for the sake of explanation: in whom I am well pleased to dwell. God could give Himself completely away to His Son. All the fullness of God dwelt in Christ in bodily form. God gave Himself away to Christ. He took up Christ’s body as a habitation for Himself.
Now, as Christ takes His position back at the right hand of the Father, He pours forth His Spirit upon those one hundred and twenty, and they become the habitation of God in the Spirit.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, this ought to lift the church out of being a mutual admiration society and up to the level of being the body of Christ. The church is not a human institution. It was not man’s idea.
Jesus said, “I will build My church.” He never told men to do it. He said, “You are the living stones,” out of which a habitation for God is being built. You become coworkers with Me, but I am the One doing the building.
If God does not build the house, the laborers labor in vain. Listen to me, brothers and sisters in Christ. I know that some of you come from denominational backgrounds and so on and so forth. But there has to come a time in your life when you evaluate whether where you are is really building the church of Jesus Christ.
Is there eternal value being accomplished where you are spending your life? I told you I was going to step on some toes tonight. I am not doing it just to be snotty. There is something involved—not for me. I am speaking, I trust tonight, for the Father’s heart.
In the parable of the prodigal son, the father always referred to the younger one as his son. But to the elder one, he said, “My child.” There is a difference between a child and a son.
A child is always interested in what he can get for himself. A son is always interested in what he can get for his father.
That is what you and I need to give ourselves to: not that we would see some great work done by us, but that God’s heart would be satisfied one hundred percent. God needs to find a place among His people on this globe, in this generation, where He can deposit His committed presence.
I have not been a Christian all that long, but I have not found but one place on the whole face of the earth where that happens consistently, and it is not where I am fellowshipping now. But God still wants it to happen. Why is it not happening?
Because men got their clammy hands on something of God and have made a mess of it because they have not seen, by revelation, what God wants. I stand before you tonight as one who is also guilty. This is not me standing up here looking down my long self-righteous nose at you.
But by the mercy of God—by the mercy of God—my confession is that, with David, I do not want to lay my head down and sleep, in that sense, until God has found a place for Himself.
I am believing God that in this generation, all over this island—yes, all over the world—there are going to be places where people come together. Whether they have a name or not is immaterial. God’s people will come together, and God will be pleased to be in their midst in a full and rich way.
That is what He is going to have. That is what the church is. We are to be a habitation for God in the Spirit. We are not like the body of Christ; we are the only body that Jesus has. We are the body of Christ.
Thirdly—well, again, I keep getting ahead of myself. Let me read Revelation 21:3 again in the light of God wanting a habitation:
Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men.
God finally found His place where He could be at home. In Revelation 21:3, we see that God has found His habitation among men.
Thirdly, the Lord is looking for a bride for His Son. You remember when God created man. In Genesis 2, God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Man did not say that; God said it.
God had to make man aware of it so that he would not complain. You know how He did it? He sent him out to name all the animals. He did not find anything he would like to settle down with. God has a sense of humor; He really does.
Adam could not find anything that would answer back to his face. So God said, “Okay, We will put you to sleep.” Out of the man, He made a woman—out of the ish, He made an ishah.
God said:
For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife,
and they shall become one flesh.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I shared this with your GLOW meeting, but I still believe it is really God’s heart today. When God said, “It is not good for man to be alone,” God was not only speaking for the well-being of man. God was speaking something out of His own heart.
God was saying, “It is not good for Me to be by Myself. I have got to be wed to somebody else.”
When you come into Ephesians 5, Paul begins to make his application. In verse 22, Paul says:
Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife,
as Christ also is the head of the church,
He Himself being the Savior of the body.
But as the church is subject to Christ,
so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives,
just as Christ also loved the church
and gave Himself up for her;
that He might sanctify her,
having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word,
that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory,
having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing;
but that she should be holy and blameless.
Paul continues:
So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his own wife loves himself;
for no one ever hated his own flesh,
but nourishes and cherishes it,
just as Christ also does the church,
because we are members of His body.
For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother,
and shall cleave to his wife;
and the two shall become one flesh.
This mystery is great;
but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
Just as Abraham did not want Isaac to marry the children of the land of Canaan, he sent his servant over to his relatives’ home to get Rebekah for Isaac. So it was that the heavenly Father was not pleased that His Son should be married to anything other than that which was of Himself—nothing unless it had the very divine life of God in it.
God put the man to sleep, and out of the man He took a rib and fashioned a woman. God put Christ to sleep. If you notice in John’s Gospel, John makes much of the fact that, when they took Jesus down from the cross, they pierced His side. What came out? Water and blood.
Out of that, the church was born. Out of Christ came the bride. Paul says, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.”
Look with me in Revelation 19. We have got to get on; time is slipping by.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come
and His bride has made herself ready.
It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean;
for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Then in Revelation 21:9:
Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
Now listen. Verse 10 is a description of the wife of the Lamb—the bride:
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain,
and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
having the glory of God.
Her brilliance was like a very costly stone,
as a stone of crystal-clear jasper.
It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates,
and at the gates twelve angels;
and names were written on them,
which are those of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel.
What I want you to notice is that when the angel said to John, “Come, I will show you the wife, the bride of the Lamb,” what did he show him? He showed him the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city.
What is the New Jerusalem? It is the church. We are the New Jerusalem.
We do not have time to go into it tonight, as you can see our time is rapidly getting by. But if you notice in the first three chapters of Genesis, the elements of gold, pearl, and precious stone are there. Actually, the word bdellium is used in Genesis, but if you study that word, it means a pearly-like substance.
So you have in Genesis 1 through 3 gold, pearly substance, and precious stones. When you get over to Revelation 20 through 22, what is the heavenly city made of? Gold, pearl, and precious stone. Coincidence?
What do you think God is trying to do in your life every day? Why do you think the difficulties arise? Why do you think the problems and all these things keep coming up before us? God is trying to work something of His own nature into you.
Only that which is pearl, gold, or precious stone will go into the holy city. Nothing else.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3 that no man can lay any other foundation. But he says, “Be careful how you build on the foundation”—some with wood, hay, or straw, and others with gold, silver, and precious stones.
All of our own meager human efforts are going to be burned up. They are going to be tested with fire. What does fire do to gold? It purifies it.
Where do precious stones come from? The pressure of the earth, in the midst of the earth. Pressure. How are pearls made? With irritation. A little piece of sand gets inside an oyster and causes irritation. The oyster says, “I do not like that,” and it excretes this pearly substance over and over.
Do you see what I am saying? Many of God’s people run all over the place trying to get out from under God’s divine hand of working gold, precious stone, and pearl into their lives.
The church is the bride of the Lamb. God is wanting a bride for His Son, and the church—the New Jerusalem—is that bride. There is a wedding going to take place. Who is going to be invited to the wedding feast? Well, that is another problem.
Finally, the other dimension of God’s purpose is that God is wanting sons to reign with Him. Not only is God wanting fellowship, a habitation for Himself, and a bride for His Son, but God is wanting sons who will reign with Him.
In Genesis 1, when God created man, He gave specific instructions that man should take dominion over all that God had created. Is that not amazing? God took this creature called man, after He had created all these other things, and said to man, “Now you take dominion over all that I have created.”
Going back to what we said earlier: when God makes a decision, He does not have to change His mind. It is still God’s purpose that you and I should take dominion over the things that God has created.
It was true with Israel. We do not have time to look at it tonight, but you can study it yourself in Deuteronomy 28. God wanted Israel to become the nation through which He would govern the whole world.
Finally, in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, God found Someone through whom He could govern the whole universe. Look with me in Philippians 2—we sang part of it tonight.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant,
and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore also God highly exalted Him,
and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
We sang tonight, “Hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty”—what?—“reigns.” The Father found One in His Son whom He could put in the position of absolute authority over all things.
Jesus Christ, at this very hour, has already been crowned King of kings and Lord of lords. He is seated in a position of absolute authority. There is no other authority other than that which is invested in Jesus Christ Himself.
Yet Jesus, speaking to Simon Peter in reference to the church, said:
Upon this rock I will build My church;
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth
shall have been bound in heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth
shall have been loosed in heaven.
That is authority. In a sense, God does not have the keys anymore. Where are the keys? The church has the keys. If we do not lock and unlock, God’s hands are tied.
In a sense, God is at the mercy of the church as far as the kingdom of God coming to this world is concerned. We may need to talk about that more at some point, but it is true. He has granted to us, as the church, the keys of the kingdom.
We have authority in Jesus’ name to loose and to bind. But for the most part, the world looks at the church of Jesus Christ like a little old lady in tennis shoes. They get about as upset about the church as they do about little old ladies in tennis shoes.
You know what I am saying. I am not trying to be derogatory, but they look at us as harmless. Is it not true that, for the most part, we could remove the church from most communities—move the building, move the people out—and the community would not even know it was gone? It ought not to be.
There is a real sense—and I do not want to put too much on us tonight—in which the responsibility for much of the evil now stalking our land can be laid at the feet of the church, because we have not been the church.
If we have the keys to bind evil, why have we not done that? Why do we stand back and throw rocks of criticism at these porno shops? Where are some of us who ought to be on our knees before God, taking the keys and binding those things in the heavenly realm?
Paul says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and rulers of darkness.” Satan stands up and laughs at us when we parade up and down the street with a placard on our back.
Now, I am not saying that ought not to be done, but that will not destroy it unless we learn to use the keys of the kingdom. That is why we must learn, brothers and sisters in Christ, how to reign with Him. God would have sons who would reign with Him.
Look again in Revelation 1:
John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace, from Him who is and who was and who is to come,
and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne,
and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,
the firstborn of the dead,
and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood—
and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—
to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
He has made us to be a kingdom. In our own country, that word does not mean a whole lot to us. But a kingdom means there is a king on the throne. He is an absolute ruler, and he has designated authority—delegated authority—to those who are under him to carry out his work.
We are in the kingdom of God, and we have been given authority by the King Himself to take this planet for Him.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
as it is in heaven.
That is how Jesus taught His disciples to pray. Well, it has not happened yet. God is waiting for a generation of Christians, simple believers like you and me, who will take His Word at face value and pay whatever price is necessary to learn how to reign with Christ and use the keys of the kingdom to bring the kingdom in.
Look in Revelation 5. This is a song, okay? There is a lot of singing going on in heaven. There ought to be among God’s people too.
Worthy art Thou to take the book,
and to break its seals;
for Thou wast slain,
and didst purchase for God with Thy blood
men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
Thou hast made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God;
and they will reign upon the earth.
They will reign upon the earth. Look at Revelation 22:3-5:
There shall no longer be any curse;
and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it,
and His bond-servants shall serve Him;
they shall see His face,
and His name shall be on their foreheads.
There shall no longer be any night;
and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp
nor the light of the sun,
because the Lord God shall illumine them;
and they shall reign forever and ever.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I do not know what your idea of heaven is or what you expect to do when you get there, but according to God’s Word, I expect to be a king. He has made us to be kings and priests. It has nothing to do with me.
But it does mean this: if I am to reign with Him, He must work into me the character of a king. God is not going to put anybody willy-nilly on the throne.
Is it not true that those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son? God, even now, wants to work into your life and into my life the character of a king.
That means He is going to give us some on-the-job training right here and now. Let me encourage you to read a little book entitled Destined for the Throne by Paul E. Billheimer. It will challenge you, and it will encourage you, I trust, to take your position as a child of God.
Let God do that inner work, that interior work in you, to produce in you the character of a king. We have this phony idea that at the end of time God is going to snap His fingers and everybody is going to reign. God does not do things like that. You cannot find any foundation for it in the Word of God.
Those who allow Him to work the character of a king into them here and now will reign as kings forever and ever. Again, it has nothing to do with us. Do you understand what I am saying? It has to do with the call of God. It has to do with your faithfulness to be obedient to what the Holy Spirit is trying to do in you.
That is why, when the obstacle comes, do not try to detour it. Do not dig a hole under it. Do not get a ladder and try to go over it. Say, “Jesus, here it is. Together, we are going to go through this thing.”
In doing so, You are going to take something of Your kingly character and work it into me as we go through this thing together. On-the-job training. Destined for the throne. Destined to reign with Him forever and ever.
Now, that excites me. Sitting around on a cloud playing a harp does not excite me. Running barefoot on gold streets does not excite me. But I will tell you what: I am excited, and I can give my life unreservedly to One who would call me to reign with Him forever and ever.
Look with me in Revelation 3. This is to the church at Laodicea, by the way—the lukewarm ones, the ones whom He wanted to spew out of His mouth. But listen to the last words, verse 21:
He who overcomes,
I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne,
as I also overcame
and sat down with My Father on His throne.
You mean Jesus speaks those words to a lukewarm church? To those who overcome. That is the thing about it.
I know I can be misunderstood, and you have to risk my being misunderstood. It is not that I care about myself, but I care for the sake of the kingdom of God that you not misunderstand me.
The eternal purpose of God was fulfilled in Jesus Christ—the eternal purpose which He purposed and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. When Jesus spoke those words on the cross, “It is finished,” it means there had come a fulfillment in the heart of God of all that God had ever wanted. It was completed in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
When you and I believe into Him, we become individual members of the body of Christ. We become the church, the ekklesia, the called-out ones of God. Christ desires to live His life through us.
As a church, we are the ones who are here on this planet right now who should be fulfilling the eternal purpose of God. Here is the problem: as you study church history, you see that very early in church history the church became corrupt.
Even by the turn of the first century, John had to write a Gospel in order to make the church of Jesus Christ wake up to what they were doing. The Gospel of John, in reality, is a Gospel written to the church.
In the book of Revelation, when Jesus came through His apostle John and spoke to the seven churches in Asia Minor—to Ephesus, Pergamum, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, and the others—He closed each address with these words: “To him who overcomes.” Seven times: “To him who overcomes.”
He was speaking to the church. With only one exception, there was something wrong in all of those churches. Philadelphia was the only one He did not criticize. But to all seven churches, Jesus said, “To him who overcomes.”
The promise to reign with Him is to those who overcome. What does it mean to overcome? As far as I can understand, it means those who have some understanding of what is in God’s heart, of what God’s purpose is, and who give themselves without reservation—one hundred percent—to see God’s purpose fulfilled.
I wondered for a number of years—and I am not suggesting tonight that I understand the book of Revelation, for I do not. I really do not. I have to confess my failure at this point. For the last fifteen years, people have tried to get me to teach on the book of Revelation.
It is a funny thing: you become a Christian, and three weeks after becoming a Christian you want to study the book of Revelation. I have been a Christian for nineteen years, and I do not understand it yet.
But there is something in the first verse that I think opens up the whole book. Revelation 1:1:
The revelation of Jesus Christ,
which God gave Him
to show to His bond-servants.
The New American Standard says “bond-servants.” In the King James Version, it just says “servants,” does it not? But the word is doulos. It means a galley slave.
In the life of the Hebrew people, they were permitted to have slaves. They could buy a slave. But God set down a regulation that at the end of six years of serving as a slave, that slave would have his freedom. He could go where he wanted to go. He was free.
But if the slave wanted to remain with his master, he went to the elders of the city and said, “I love my master, and I want to become his bond-servant.”
At that point, they would take the servant back to his master’s home, take something called an awl—it looked like an ice pick—put it through the lobe of his ear, and put it into the doorpost of that man’s home. Thus symbolizing that that man would be a bond-servant.
What that meant was this: he would get no pay for his work. His time, his life, and all he possessed did not belong to him. He had no rights and no possessions. They all belonged to his master.
I am convinced that only those who have made that decision can understand the book of Revelation. You can find a thousand different authors who tell you what the book of Revelation says, but I am convinced that He came to show it to His bond-servants.
If you are careful to go through it, I think you will see that, in reality, the word for bond-servant and the word for overcomer are one and the same.
There is a sense—and I know I can be misunderstood yet—in which God is at the mercy of His bond-servants. If God’s eternal purpose is going to be furthered in any way in this generation, then there must be those among God’s people who are sons and whose only desire is to please the Father.
They set aside their own ambitions, their own drive. Everything they do—their occupation, everything—is geared toward serving God.
Now, please do not misunderstand or interpret that too quickly. In my own religious background, when we started talking about people committing their lives unreservedly to God, immediately the enemy would put a picture in their minds of going into the darkest jungle of Africa. Already, you see, they were defeated before they began.
God does not work that way. Brothers, the way you do your job, the way you perform your job every day, ought to be a living testimony to the fact that you are a bond-servant of Jesus Christ.
Sisters, the way you take care of your home, relate to your children, relate to your husbands, and conduct yourself in your neighborhood ought to be a living testimony that you are a bond-servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do not think that the bond-servant is some elite group. It is not an elite group, not in that sense. It is those who have heard the call of God, seen with their eyes what the Father is after, and said yes to the Father’s desire, no matter what it costs.
Jesus said:
If anyone would come after Me,
let him deny himself,
and take up his cross,
and follow Me.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, for too long we have watered down the claims of Jesus Christ. We have distorted the call of God in such a way that it does not even attract too many people anymore.
I want you to know that if you find it in your heart tonight—and only if the Holy Spirit puts it there—if you find it in your heart to say to the Father, “Father, I love my Master. I love You. My whole life, I want to give it to You, and I want to become Your bond-servant,” you will never regret the day you do that.
You can be assured that the moment you make that decision, God will pour out abundant grace upon your life to live in the commitment you have made to Him. He never requires anything of you that He does not first give you the grace to do.
That is the kind of Father we have. He wants you to be a part of His eternal purpose. He does not want you spending your days, hours, weeks, months, years, and decades doing things that have nothing to do with God’s eternity.
He wants you every day to be finally aligned with heaven itself, finding yourself, even in the small things. That is why I said last week, “The Lord loves to clean bathrooms.” He does. The Lord is there when you are down on your knees scrubbing the bathroom floor. He is working something of the character of a king into you.
Let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus:
who, being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
but made Himself of no reputation.
It took a King to get on His knees and wash His disciples’ feet. It is those who are going to reign forever and ever.
Please hear me: it has nothing to do with your own natural abilities. If God wants to use your natural abilities, they have to come to a place where they are no longer under your control and are given over to Him completely. Then God begins to use them for His purpose and plan.
I think you know something of my own heart tonight. What little bit I have seen has revolutionized my own life. You may say, “Well, it probably needed revolutionizing.” It did need revolutionizing; it did.
But I believe God in His mercy has allowed me to see the blueprint, a little bit of it—enough to know something of the direction God wants to go in.
I trust, by His help tonight and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that you have gotten a glimpse of God’s eternal purpose. I trust that you will give yourself, with whatever God has given you, without reservation, that His purpose would be fulfilled in you, in His church, and in this world.
Let us pray.
Lord, we want to humbly bow before You tonight and praise You, bless You, and exalt You for who You are. Lord, You are the King of kings and the Lord of lords. You are seated in the position of absolute authority, ruler over all things.
Yet, Lord, You humbled Yourself and became a man, died on the cross that we may be redeemed and that our sins may be forgiven. Now You have sent Your Holy Spirit to make us sons of God, to enable us by Your power to live lives that would become the praise of Your glory.
So, Lord, seeing something of what You want, seeing something of what You are going to have ultimately, we want, as honestly and simply as we can tonight, to say yes to Your call upon our lives.
Lord, we do not want to second-guess You. We do not want to start looking all the way down the road at the things we will have to give up. Lord, we just want to stop tonight and cast our gaze upon You, looking unto You and seeing You for who You are.
Lord, as we do, we trust that Your Holy Spirit will cause to well up within us a desire to say to You, “Lord, I love my Master, and I want to become Your bond-servant.”
Lord, for those of us who are here tonight who find that in our hearts to say, we ask that You will so arrange the schedule of our lives and engineer situations for us where we will learn and experience what it means to reign with You in life.
But, Lord, our desire tonight is that You should have a church, that You should have a bride for Yourself, that there would be a habitation for God, and that there would be unhindered fellowship with You.
So we say amen to Your purpose, and we trust You to work it into our lives in some way that would be pleasing unto You and fulfilling of Your purpose. We do it in Jesus’ name. Amen.