Well, we are thankful to be together again. It was very precious of the Lord. Last week we were in Toronto for the youth conference, and that was an encouraging time. It was not only the word that was spoken, but the spirit among the young people there; it was very encouraging.
It was good to see many of them here this morning. I think they rolled back into town about one o’clock last night, and yet they were here this morning. We are very thankful for that.
The theme up there was “Occupied in My Father’s Business,” from the Darby translation. There was a real challenge for them, and really for all of us, as we get the messages on the website: that in the days we are living in, we could be occupied in our Father’s business—not occupied with many things, but occupied with that one thing that is necessary.
As I was thinking about what the Lord shared last week in Toronto, it was such a blessing because it continued to remind us of what the Lord has been speaking all summer. Kenny shared last week how, at prayer meeting and at different times through various conferences this summer, the Lord has really been speaking one word to us as we live in these last days.
The Lord has been calling to us. Whether we were in Farmville, being challenged to press toward the mark with a passion to really pursue Christ; or as the dear ones gathered in Santa Barbara, where they were encouraged to finish well. We are going along, but are we those who are going to finish well?
In the spirit of that, it was shared there also that the Lord would revive His work in the midst of years. We can start and have a great work, and the Lord can be blessing us so much. But as we go on, we have a tendency to fade out. We get old and tired, things can become routine, and we need that precious life that we touched this morning in worship to revive us in the midst of years.
As the Lord shared once we were together in the Tacoma-Seattle area, we could really know what has been entrusted to the church. God has a precious treasure that He has entrusted to the church, and we as His people would guard that and be very clear on what He has called us for in this hour.
Finally, as was said in Toronto, we need to focus upon being occupied in our Father’s business. One theme common throughout all of these times was bringing us back to knowing the reality and freshness of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ in many wonderful, practical ways—in our lives individually and in our lives together.
It is very precious how the Lord speaks to us. It is very humbling how He speaks to us. We all have different ways of hearing and learning, and the Lord shares one way and maybe some of us get it. He shares another way, some more of us get it. It reinforces what He is trying to do.
In that regard, one of the verses that came to my heart is out of the book of Ephesians—Ephesians 5. Before we get to that, let us have another word of prayer.
Lord, we do bless You that, as we live in this hour, we are so blessed to be known of You and to know You. Lord, we thank You. We do gather under an open heaven, and Lord, we know how Your word is contested in this hour and how many things would come against Your word.
But we thank You that we gather not only under an open heaven, but under the throne of Your victory, in the presence of Your victory. We thank You, Lord, for that victory that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank You for the fullness of provision there is in You, Lord, and we come looking off unto You, that we not just be those who come and go through motions, but those who have encounters every day with the living God. In Jesus’ name.
As we consider this thought of redeeming the time and making the most of the opportunities we have, it is interesting that one of the verses used quite frequently in various conferences—and one we hear frequently in these days—is the cry to those who have an ear: let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
We are very thankful for how the Lord is speaking to us in this day and in this time. He is pouring out His heart to us that we, as the people of God, would really come unto Him and learn of Him in a new and living way for the difficult days ahead of us.
Our Lord is always speaking—maybe not audibly. Sometimes He speaks through circumstances. He speaks in many ways, but our Lord is always speaking. The question is: are we always hearing?
One of the Old Testament minor prophets is a prophet named Amos. I will not even make you turn and start looking for Amos. One of Amos’s prophecies, in Amos 8:11, says that in the last days there will be a famine. But it will not be a famine of speaking the word; it will be a famine of hearing the word.
The people of God will become so content and distracted that, even though the Lord is speaking, there is a famine of hearing the word. In the busy lives that we have, and as many things press in upon us to occupy and challenge us in this day, we do not want to be those who are found hungering for that word simply because we are not hearing what the Spirit is saying to the church.
May the Lord open our hearts to really hear. This is one of the ways that Paul, as he wrote to the church in Ephesus in Ephesians 5, was preparing them for difficult times ahead.
In Ephesians 5:14-17, he writes:
Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,
And Christ shall shine upon thee.
Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;
Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
There is this cry to those dear ones in Ephesus to wake up. Why? Because the days were evil. As we see, and as we have already mentioned during our worship time, these days are pretty evil. It is pretty tough, everything that presses in and comes upon us.
But the Lord says that for us to live in these days, we are to wake up, walk wisely, redeem the time, and understand the will of God.
If we stop and think about Paul writing this to the church of Ephesus, we could understand why he might write it to those in Corinth, because Corinth was known for carnality. But generally, if we were going to pick one of the churches in the New Testament that was the most awake, the most with it, and had the most revelation, it would be the church in Ephesus.
Paul testifies that he declared to them the whole counsel of God. But in the Lord’s mercy, He speaks to them that they not fall asleep. The Holy Spirit through Paul was sensing that something within them was beginning to fall asleep.
Later, in Revelation 2, we know that they had gone not only asleep, but had left their first love. There was that cry to repentance.
If we look briefly at the history of the church in Ephesus, it begins in Acts 18. Paul was at the end of his second missionary journey, and he just passed through there, spending one Sabbath with them in the synagogue. He was on his way back to Caesarea, but he left the dear couple Aquila and Priscilla there.
Paul had a sense that there were those who had responded to the Lord. Even though he was not able to stay with them, he left Priscilla and Aquila there. Throughout the New Testament, we see that wherever they lived, they gathered ones in their home. We hear of Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome. Wherever they were, there was the preciousness of how the Lord was gathering people together in their home. What a heart they had for the saints.
Paul later began his third missionary journey and came back to the ones in Ephesus. He spent about three years there because he sensed a responsive heart. There was a great deal of opposition, but there was openness, and he really gave himself to the saints.
Acts 19:10 says:
And this continued for the space of two years;
So that all they that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord,
Both Jews and Greeks.
All of Asia heard the word—the Jews and the Greeks—as Paul gathered them daily in the school of Tyrannus. They would take their lunch hours and come together every day to hear the word of God. That is very humbling.
There was such hunger there, such a response to the word of God, and such a response to being captured by the love of Christ that they were anxious every day to gather together. For two whole years, they gathered in that place, responding.
Later, in Acts 19:20, it says that the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing. How does the word of God grow? How does it prevail? It is when it meets hearts that respond to it. The word goes out, and hearts respond—not merely heads acquiring it, but that word capturing and changing lives.
These ones responded in such a marvelous way. The word of God captured their hearts in such a way that it totally changed their lives and the things that were of value to them. They did not put those things on eBay and try to sell them to redeem a little money. They built a huge bonfire and burned it all.
Where they had relied on the magic and myths of the past, they put all those books together and burned them up. It says it was about fifty thousand drachmas. One person said that a drachma was equivalent to a day’s wages—fifty thousand days’ wages. You can work that out individually for yourself.
That is beyond what we would call a normal little sacrifice. This was a response. They were not burning those things to please God or to gain God’s approval. This was a response from a heart captured by the Lord.
So often we can think, “Well, if I do this, God will know that I love Him and He can be pleased with me. If I do this, if I do that.” There was not that thought at all. This was a response: “This is the past, and I am concluding it. This is what I love now, and I am going on with the Lord.”
These were the ones in Ephesus. They had such a good beginning because they were responding in love to the word of God.
While Paul was there, he also wrote letters to other churches. He had such a good atmosphere there. Paul continued on his missionary journey, and as he was heading back to Jerusalem at the end of this third journey, he wanted to see those dear ones in Ephesus again.
He was not going to go to Ephesus because he had a timetable and wanted to get back to Jerusalem. We do not know for sure, but we can speculate that he probably knew that if he went to Ephesus, they would love him so much that he would never get away. He would not make it back to Jerusalem.
So, as he was passing through Miletus, he called the elders to him. He said, “You come down here, elders, and just meet with me.” During that time with those dear elders in Acts 20, Paul rehearses for our sakes his relationship with that dear church in Ephesus.
In Acts 20:20, Paul says:
I shrank not from declaring unto you anything that was profitable,
And teaching you publicly, and from house to house.
I love not only the “publicly” there, but we see how Paul went from house to house. He was involved in their lives. He was not just there to preach during his school-of-Tyrannus time. In addition to that, he went house to house.
He was involved in their lives, fellowshipping with them, encouraging them in the things of the Lord, reinforcing, answering questions, hearing from them, receiving from them, and allowing them to be strengthened in the Lord together. There was a relationship that Paul had there. How precious it was.
I love how the Holy Spirit puts those words in there: publicly and from house to house. We can be encouraged in that same way.
I think, in the days we live in, one of the great disadvantages of text messaging, emails, and even telephones—though they can be used so greatly—is that we miss the personal contacts, the house-to-house fellowship with one another. Would the Lord refresh us and restore us in that?
All those other things can be used for good, but let us not forget that there is something about a personal touch. There is something about sitting down face to face with somebody.
There is something about sitting in that little easy chair. You walk into someone’s den, you do not know where to sit, and you sit in that person’s chair. Then they have to sit somewhere else, uncomfortable, the whole time you are there. It gives that brother an opportunity to experience the cross. You are trying to help them, but you are sitting in their chair.
But that is life. That is what it is about: that we can share one another with one another in that, and in all the goodness of the Lord. This is what Paul was doing.
He testifies later in the same chapter, in Acts 20:27:
I shrank not from declaring unto you the whole counsel of God.
We have heard this verse plenty of times, but Paul did not shrink back. He found such an openness there that he could share with them the whole purpose of God.
Remember, as we look at the history of Ephesus, these were ones who had received so much and were blessed so much. These are the ones to whom Paul said, “Wake up. Wake up, O sleeper.”
Sometimes our blessings can comfort us and rock us to sleep. We can be so comforted in all the revelation and blessing that we have.
Paul continues and gives these dear ones in Ephesus a wonderful warning. He says, in Acts 20:28, “Be on guard.” It is interesting: first, “Be on guard for yourselves.”
First, be on guard for yourselves. I think this is one of the keys in these last days: we have to guard our own hearts. There is that personal relationship that we have with the Lord, and we have to be violent to guard that. We have to be violent to keep that fresh.
Sometimes we want to guard against so many other things out there, and we should. There are false teachings. Paul speaks of wolves that come in, and we need to be guarded against that and aware of it. But first, it is guarding ourselves.
If we are guarded and strong in the Lord within ourselves, then we are in a place to really know what to watch for and what not to watch for. It always starts with us—keeping our hearts right, our hearts fresh, our hearts awake, O sleeper—that other things not creep in upon us.
We know that after this Paul left, and he probably visited Ephesus one more time after he was released from prison. A few years after this visit, he wrote them the letter to the church in Ephesus that we have already looked at.
After that, he wrote a couple of other letters, but they were addressed personally to Timothy. In 1 Timothy, after Paul had been released from prison, he encouraged the ones in Ephesus through Timothy that they would know how to conduct themselves within the house of God.
They were to know how to conduct themselves in the house of God, which is the pillar and support of the truth. Somehow there was a beginning of falling away, and there was this encouragement that they would know how to conduct themselves. To conduct oneself is really another word for living.
We think of conduct as outward, but really it is an issue of knowing how to live together within the house of God. Would we respond too, as Paul wrote to Timothy?
A few years later, about A.D. 67, Paul wrote his second epistle to Timothy, who was still there in Ephesus. By this time, all Asia had turned against Paul. Paul testified toward the end, “Everyone deserted me. But the Lord stood with me. The Lord stood with me and strengthened me.”
What was Paul’s encouragement to Timothy throughout this letter, during a time of crisis when the church was going through tremendous crisis? He begins 2 Timothy 1 with the promise of life in Christ Jesus.
In times of crisis, life takes us through the crisis. It is the life of our Lord Jesus Christ within us, within our brothers and sisters, that gets us through the crisis.
Paul did not give Timothy any new doctrinal teaching. He encouraged him in life: to know the life, to recognize that which is of Him and that which is not of Him, and to allow that life to lead him through into fullness.
The last record we have of this dear church in Ephesus is in Revelation 2. Through the apostle John, the Lord speaks to those dear ones in Ephesus and says, “There is one thing I have against you: you have left your first love. Repent, and do the first works.”
What was He telling them there? They had left that first love, the flame had gone out, and they had fallen asleep. We have heard recently on this whole matter of first love, but He tells them to repent and do first works.
Was He telling them to repent and burn more books, because that is what they did at first? No. He was telling them to return and have that heart attitude within them that responded to the love that touched their hearts in a fresh way.
First works are the evidence of first love. You cannot separate them. When we are in first love, there is fruit that comes forth in the works of the Lord. It is not trying to do works again to show our love. The first works are those that respond out of a heart of love to Him.
When we are captured by that love, there is a response to the Lord, a response to our brothers and sisters, and an allowing of the love of Christ to come in in a marvelous way and touch us.
As we look at this letter to the church in Ephesus, we have spent that much time on the background simply to show the rich heritage they had. They had a lot of teaching, a lot of time together, and a lot of blessings.
Brothers and sisters, if we look back at our history and heritage, we have been very blessed—not in a boastful way in ourselves—but we have been blessed to have some excellent teaching over the years. We have been blessed to have many dear brothers and sisters that we have known over the years. We have been blessed to have times of fellowship together.
But does that suddenly create within us a false sense of security?
This is why Paul was writing to those in Ephesus: that they would wake up, that they would know of the evil days in which they were living. We can be so thankful for the past.
But the past, used in the right way, as we learn of the life of the Lord, can strengthen us and carry us through. The past, used in the wrong way, becomes a heavy anchor that can cause us to be lulled to sleep.
Would the Holy Spirit wake us up in this hour? As we have heard the word of God this summer, probably in the near future most all of the messages from Seattle, Tacoma, and Toronto will be on the website. We will be able to listen to them and take the opportunities to hear what the Lord was speaking to us. I look forward to hearing some of them.
As we come back to this letter in Ephesians, why was Paul writing to them? He said, “Because the days were evil.” Nobody has to tell us that today. We can look around the world, and we do not have to look very far to see that the days are evil.
We can see the financial disasters that are going on. We have had the blessing of being with brothers and sisters in California, and it is tragic how some of their homes are being foreclosed and they are losing jobs—ones who had good jobs. The financial crisis has hit, and it shakes you to your very core.
I am very thankful that, even though some were being shaken out there, at least a couple of brothers we talked with had a solid foundation. Otherwise, they would be alcoholics, drug addicts, or dead, probably, because of some of the financial situations.
It hits even little old conservative Richmond. These times are shaking. What are we putting our confidence in? These are evil days, and we need to wake up.
We can see the moral crisis. Gay marriages are being approved. It is just going downhill. The moral crisis and moral decay of this country are tragic things.
I have to say that I believe much of the moral decay of this country is testimony to the weakness of the church throughout this last century. In a broad way, we have weakened. We have allowed things to come in that maybe some before us were standing against.
Would the Lord revive His work in the midst of years? Be very merciful to us, that we not get what we deserve.
I was thinking of the election. There are not a lot of great alternatives out there. I remember Kenny had a bumper sticker that said, “Vote for Jesus,” and I have to agree with him. Maybe we can write Him in there. But that is our only hope: in our Lord Jesus Christ.
We look around at all the natural disasters that go on. It is interesting now that the natural disasters in these evil days are becoming so commonplace that some of them do not even make the news.
“Oh, that was just a minor earthquake. Only ten people killed there. Only fifty people killed over there in that flood.” We are so accustomed to them now. We are getting desensitized. There is such a loss of respect for human life.
We see the subtleties of the way the enemy is working. We can see wars breaking out all the time—Russia and Georgia at war, and wars throughout places we never hear of. Thousands of lives are lost fighting for a piece of land.
But really, the greatest tragedy and evil that comes in is not related to the world, because we should expect that. The greatest tragedy is when we think of the church: the evil that has permeated and come within the house of God.
Paul warned these dear ones in Ephesus of what was going to take place—of savage wolves and the various things that would come in. That is why, as Paul wrote to those dear ones in Philippi, he prayed that their love would grow in real knowledge and all discernment, so that they would be able to distinguish the things that are of the Lord from the things that are not.
Counterfeits look so pretty. They are so similar to the real thing, and sometimes people get fooled. But if we have that life within us, we can be trained in this day to really know in a fresh way, because these days are so evil.
But praise God: there will be, and there is, a great shaking going on. If you think Paul wrote Hebrews, Paul says in Hebrews that there is a great shaking going on. That which can be shaken will be shaken, but that is simply to show us what cannot be shaken.
The shaking that goes on within all of our lives allows those other things to fall aside. The source of this shaking is the love of God. He is bringing us back to His Son.
He is shaking our lives in such a way that we see, “This is not necessary. There is this one thing that is necessary.” He is bringing us back. He keeps trying to say it over and over again to us, and somehow, in the dullness of our hearing, we keep missing it more and more.
Would the Lord continue to open our ears, so that when this shaking is going on, we can let go of those things that are not necessary and allow that one thing that is necessary to strengthen and encourage us in the Lord?
Because these days are so evil, Paul continues with his exhortation to walk wisely, or to be careful how we walk. We really need to walk wisely.
I have noticed in my older age—I am sixty-one now—that I do not have the agility of foot that I used to have when I was younger. So I am having to learn how to walk wisely as an older person.
In the past, you could walk along and the sidewalk would be uneven. You would slip, and your body would automatically adjust. Now, when I walk along and hit that place on the sidewalk, I go tumbling over here, and Stella has to catch me. That is a good helpmate.
But we can do the same thing spiritually. We can become so accustomed to doing things in a routine manner that we do not end up walking wisely. Maybe we were able to walk a certain way in the past and be okay, but in these days we have to be much more careful how we walk and where we walk. There are many traps and little potholes out there trying to catch us.
Walking is a routine, normal thing, and it always speaks to me of daily life—that twenty-four-seven, daily walking with the Lord, daily being wise with Him. We are not to be weekend warriors.
Thank the Lord, within this country we have men and women called weekend warriors, and they provide a great deal of security to us. But within the family of God, within the army of God, if we want to use that term, there are no weekend warriors. We need to walk wisely every day.
We need to be faithful in those small and routine things of life, staying fresh. Otherwise, we end up falling asleep. We end up just letting things go.
It is interesting: when we do not exercise things, when we do not use things, the older we get, the quicker they weaken on us. “Quicker they get weakened”—that is not the right English, but I am going to count it.
If you are twenty years old and you do not use your arm for a week or two, it comes back pretty quickly. But when you are sixty years old, or whatever, and you do not use your arm for a week or two, it takes a long time and a lot of therapy to get it back in shape.
It is the same way in our Christian life. As we go along, if we do not use something—if perhaps we are not in the word, not in the place of prayer, or not in the place of fellowship—we can become comfortable with that. But the Lord wants to reactivate that within our lives.
He wants us to know how to walk in a way that is really wise, redeeming the time and making the most of every opportunity.
Walking wisely comes about with the recognition of who is our wisdom. We can walk wisely because we have wisdom living within us. We have One who is wisdom. We have His life.
He is crying out to us every day to come and allow His life to lead us and guide us. Again, the older we get in the Lord and the more experiences we have, there is a greater and greater temptation to lean on our own understanding and think that we can handle certain situations.
That is one of the things we need to wake up to: we cannot handle it. We cannot handle it today, and we could not handle it before. He is our wisdom. He is the One who leads us and guides us into the fullness of what He desires for us.
We really can be those who make the most of every opportunity we have. I like that translation: “Making the most of every opportunity.” Some say, “Make the most of your time”; some say, “Redeeming the time.” I like the one that says, “Make the most of every opportunity we have.”
The Lord provides so many wonderful opportunities for us, so many times when we can come in. Time does not wait; time just keeps going on. He gives us opportunities every day.
I am using this word opportunities not in a power-of-positive-thinking way, but in the sense that He is orchestrating for us the opportunities of life to learn more of Him, to learn more of how we care for one another, and for His life to be expressed. We learn how to live within the house of God together.
The question we can ask ourselves in regard to opportunities and time is: who owns your time?
The psalmist testified:
My times are in thy hand.
Is it my time, or His time? Our whole perspective can be changed just by who we think owns our time.
It is interesting how often things that the world creates reflect, at times, our attitude in the church, because they can reflect what we are. One of the popular things on the internet nowadays is MySpace. It is getting replaced, but anyway—MySpace.
If that is our concept—“my space”—how much space do we really have? We actually should have none. It is His space in our life. What is my time? My time is His time.
I know I look forward to different parts of the day so that I can have my time. You get to the end, and then you can have your time. We become so possessive. It is as though we do not think that His interests for us are our best interests.
It shows how we do not know His love for us. He knows we need this, to do this, and to do that. Yet we want control. We are all control freaks in many ways; some of it just gets manifested more than others. But we all want to be in control of our time.
That is why I love how the psalmist says, “My times are in thy hand.” Would that our time be in His hand. When our time is in His hand, we do not really have to worry about redeeming the time, because He will allow us to make the most of every opportunity we have.
We will come into that place, as we have shared before concerning Esther, where Esther came to that wonderful reality that she was there for such a time as this. We will know that we are here not by chance, happenstance, or any such thing, but with purpose for such a time as this.
Paul was writing to those dear ones in Ephesus, saying, “Wake up. You are here for such a time.” There was a great crisis as the first generation of believers was passing away and the next generation was being called to carry on the torch of the testimony.
“You dear ones in Ephesus, you need to wake up and make the most of the opportunities you have, to really carry on all that the Lord has entrusted you with.”
As we look upon Christendom today, there is that great call. One of the blessings of the various conferences we have been to or heard about this summer was the large number of young people there.
We know the large number that were in Farmville and Santa Barbara. Someone said that about thirty to forty percent were young—those under forty. The same was true in Seattle. There were over twelve hundred brothers and sisters gathered there, and a large percentage were under forty.
Last week in Toronto, all the young people gathered with such a precious heart. There is a hope that we have. There is a generation coming on.
There is a generation that we need to be encouraging. We need to be walking wisely. We need to be living examples of the testimony of Jesus, that we would not be hindrances to them, but could be used of the Lord as helps within the house of God.
So often, one of the greatest challenges from one generation to another is the older generation. May we not fall into that trap. May the Lord, in His marvelous ways, show us how to walk wisely, making the most of every opportunity we have.
Until our Lord returns, may we be those who carry on day by day in the wonderful faithfulness of what He has shown us and what He has called us to.
That is really the third point that Paul prays and challenges these dear ones in Ephesus about: that they would understand the will of God.
Not merely the various wills within our lives, but that they would have an understanding of the overall heart and purpose of God. When we talk about what God has entrusted to the church, what work He is reviving, what we are pressing toward, and what His business is that we are to be occupied with—do we understand this?
Do we understand the work that God is doing in this hour, bringing a people together and preparing them in the end to be His eternal bride? Do we know this calling that He has of summing up all things in Christ? Are we clear on that?
May we take the opportunities to redeem the time and get clear where we are not. This is not something where, all of a sudden, we have a total revelation and total understanding.
As we talk about the will of God and His purpose, we see dimly. But as we go along, we see a little more. I think as long as we are upon this earth, we are still going to be seeing dimly.
We will never be able to comprehend the height, depth, breadth, and length of all that God has purposed in Christ Jesus. But we have a wonderful opportunity to taste the riches in our lives today, of what we can take in.
It will be far beyond whatever we can imagine or think. He will do that as we are found cooperating with Him.
This is far beyond head knowledge. This is knowledge being made real, where hearts are captured—where, like those dear ones in Ephesus, lives are totally changed and totally committed to the Lord, His house, and being about His business in this hour.
What are we occupied with? We have to ask the question: what are we occupied with in these days? Would the Lord bring us back to being occupied with His business in such a way that we know and understand within our hearts, and have reflected in our lives, what the will of God is?
There were dear ones in David’s time, back in 1 Chronicles, who were transferring the kingdom from Saul to David. There was one tribe called the sons of Issachar.
In 1 Chronicles 12:32, the sons of Issachar were men who understood the times, and it did not stop there: they had knowledge of what Israel should do.
They understood the times and had knowledge of what Israel should do. This is what the Lord is calling for us in this hour. Would we have an understanding of what the people of God, the house of God, the church, the family of God, and the body of Christ should be doing today? What should we be occupied with?
In this time of crisis, there is one thing: it is His life that gets us through the crisis. It is tragic as we look back through church history. So often, when a crisis came in, various groups throughout the centuries would put up a big façade and say, “Look, everything is still great. Everything is beautiful.”
They would paint the outside of the building or do this or that, and have this grand façade. But there was nothing inside—no life.
Others would say, “We can just create more programs, get more activities, focus on improving meetings.” But if we work on trying to improve a meeting, we have the wrong goal.
The issue is life. As the Lord’s life is expressed through brothers and sisters, the meetings will improve.
In many ways, I do not know anyone who is qualified—and I say this being guilty of doing it—to judge meetings. Most of the time, we walk out of meetings and say, “That was good. That was bad,” this or that. I see a few smiles from people, one or two that maybe have done that before.
But really, in the long run, a few people over here may have been really blessed by the meeting. Somebody else thought it was horrible. Somebody else said, “Man, that was seventh heaven,” while you were sitting there thinking it was dead as a doorknob. We do not know.
The issue is not really trying to have “good meetings.” The issue is having our hearts and lives in such a way that the life of Christ is expressed. If our lives individually and our lives together outside the meetings are full, the meetings overflow.
Meetings are reflective of conditions. Our goal, in the midst of crisis, is to return to life. It is the life of Christ that gets us through the crisis, individually or together.
The question is: do we recognize life? When the Lord walks by, do we recognize Him? As the Lord speaks, do we recognize life? Or do we have our own standard?
Oh, how the Lord, in His marvelous way, is saying, “Wake up, O sleeper. Return. Remember that life that you touched. Remember that life that captured you. Remember that life that I poured out to you publicly and from house to house. Allow that life to strengthen you.”
If that life strengthens us, if we awake and are able to redeem the time and continue going on, then there is no falling away from first love.
In many ways, what Paul wrote here ended up being a prophetic testimony of what happened later in Ephesus. But may it not happen within our lives.
May we be those who, every day, allow the Lord in the freshness of His life to come in and meet us. May we have an ear to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
Wherever there is need of repentance, may we repent. Where there is need of denying ourselves and going on, may we go on. But may we never fall into a place of complacency.
May we have, even as Kenny was sharing out of the Song of Solomon, that pursuing passion of our love for our Lord to keep us going in this day. Many challenges are coming upon us. We have already faced many, and we can be encouraged because it is only going to get worse.
In the midst of that, though, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That is our hope. That is our way through, and that is the way that we can rest in the goodness of who He is.
May we be found as those who are pressing on, occupied with our Father’s business, guarding what has been entrusted to us, having that ear to hear, and allowing the Lord to bring us back.
As Paul wrote to those in Corinth, may we be brought back to a purity of simplicity and devotion to Christ.
If that life of devotion to our Lord can stay in the simplicity and purity that we have known over the years, there is a freshness that we keep there. It is the freshness of His life that captured us. It is the freshness of His life that keeps us, and it is the freshness of His life that leads us on and does that work of preparing us for His return.
May we be those who are found redeeming the time.
I was talking with a brother the other week, just as an example of how the world permeates Christendom, permeates the church, and permeates all our lives.
It is sad how most of us, most assemblies, go along for nine months in one way, but then summer hits and the life of the assembly changes. We are governed by outward circumstances.
Should our life together, should our going on, be any different in July than in February? But somehow we equate vacations and all of that, and we get a summer mindset at times.
Then September kicks in. We have a Willow Run. We rev the kids up again. No, it is good, but we go through this coming-back phase.
It is as though, during summer, with regard to our lives together, we hit the pause button and start up again in September.
May the Lord awaken us, that we not be those who are so governed—and I share that being as guilty as anybody—by outward things.
May we be governed by the life of Christ in such a way that day by day, and with each passing moment, we can be those who are learning more and more of our Savior and following Him in a fuller and greater way.
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank You for Your marvelous lovingkindness and Your exhortations to us. We thank You for the examples that we have in Scripture that touch us and encourage us in these days.
Lord, as we look around at all that is going on, I think most of us have to confess that our greatest fear is ourselves.
Lord, today we would, in a fresh way, offer ourselves unto You. Lord, You would revive us in the midst of years. You would quicken us, Lord.
Where there is a famine of hearing, Lord, may our ears be dug out. May our ears be opened, and may we be those who hear what the Spirit says to the churches. In Jesus’ name. Amen.