This session that we are having now on the program is called “Concluding Remarks.” I was going to share a couple of thoughts, and then Brother Elkin was going to come and conclude. Everybody, when they start these times, always says they just have a few brief remarks. And the audience prays that the person saying that is not like the writer to the Hebrews, who, after thirteen long chapters, says, “I have written to you briefly.”
But it is our desire to just have a few brief remarks. Before we even do that, I think I may be the last non-Toronto person to have the privilege of standing up here. For all of us who have come and visited this conference, we really appreciate the labor of love that all of you dear brothers and sisters have shown. We would like to give you an offering of thanksgiving through a clap offering.
Let us have another word of prayer.
Lord, truly, great is Thy faithfulness. We thank You that all we have needed, Your hand has provided. As we come to this time, Lord, we come continually in that same place that we started: looking off unto Jesus. We thank You, Lord, that as we look to You, there is a full and complete satisfaction. We bless You, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I would like for us to turn again to the section in Luke 2 where we have the theme verses for this conference. I would like to read a couple of verses right after the theme verse. Our brothers have been reading this throughout the week and have shared on it.
If we look at Luke 2, starting in verse 51:
And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and He continued in subjection to them: and His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
Now, as has been shared, we know historically that this is the testimony of our Lord’s life during those next eighteen years, when it was a hidden time. But there is a little phrase within this verse that I would like for us to take and let apply to us in a very personal way as we leave. It is really the first few words in verse 51:
And He went down with them.
He went down with them.
When we started, John encouraged us to personalize these verses. I would like for us to personalize this particular phrase. As we say this out loud together, put your own name in it. We will say, “He, Jesus, went down with Mac,” and you put your name in that verse.
Again, not as a hope but as an assurance, this is the testimony. When we leave here, as Maurice was talking about going down into that valley, we leave these conferences and feel like we are going down. But what is the hope of our testimony? It is that Jesus is going with us.
So, can each one of you put your own name in it, and let us say it together: “Jesus goes down with Mac.”
Jesus goes down with Mac. Hallelujah! What an assurance that is.
In many ways, as we face leaving a conference, we can have anxieties. Most everyone within this room has been to different conferences, and we have all been through the same process. As we leave conferences, we have this great desire that we could continue on and experience what we have touched during this time together. We find ourselves nervous. We find ourselves scared. There is a lot of uncertainty.
But if you look throughout the Scriptures, these few words the Lord has used over and over again, from Genesis all the way through Revelation, are a very simple word of encouragement. When ones were in a time of crisis, when ones were in uncertainty, the Lord simply came in and said, “I am with you.”
I am with you.
We have that assurance that, as we go down from here, as we go back into our lives, He is with us. He said it to Abraham. He said it to Isaac. He said it to one even like Jacob, who was fleeing: “Jacob, I am with you.”
He said it to David: “Even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil; I am with you.” He is with each and every one of us.
We thank the Lord because of so great a salvation: He is not walking alongside of us. With His parents, He walked down that hill alongside them. But He is within us. He is with us, and we have that assurance that He never leaves us or forsakes us.
The precious thing we have in knowing the reality of that is how much our wonderful Lord is for us. He walks with us. He leads us. He guides us. He knows everything.
When He gives us those commands within our daily life, and we find that great resistance rising up within ourselves to say, “I cannot do that,” what is His assurance? “I am with you.”
There is one in the Old Testament who had a dialogue with the Lord. The Lord told him to go and prophesy and share certain things, and he said, “I am but a youth. I cannot do it.” Turn to Jeremiah 1.
The Lord has called and commissioned Jeremiah. We will look at a couple of verses, Jeremiah 1:6-8. The Lord has called Jeremiah and appointed him to be a prophet. If you look at the end of verse 5, He says, “I have appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”
What is Jeremiah’s response? He says, “Alas, Lord! Do You not know? I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth.” But the Lord said to him, “Do not say, ‘I am a youth.’”
You know, the Lord, in a very comforting way—you think the Lord was surprised that Jeremiah said he was a youth? It is like the Lord did not know that. When the Lord puts us in these places, He knows us. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and He has these circumstances for us.
We come back and say, “Oh, Lord, I am so young. Let someone else do it.” No, the Lord said, “Do not say you are a youth.” The Lord said to him again:
Do not say, I am a youth;
Because everywhere I send you, you shall go,
And all that I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them,
For I am with you.
I am with you.
As we go back to our local assemblies, there may be those intimidating older saints there who have gone on before us. They can pray these eloquent prayers that go on and tie Genesis and the purpose of God through Calvary, and we get raptured in the end. They are praying those every Sunday, and we are sitting there asking, “What can I say?”
Do not be intimidated. Do not say, “I am a youth.” You know what the Lord is to you. Offer up within your heart what the Lord has given you, what He has touched you with, what He has spoken to you that day, that morning, in your recent dialogues. If you have been lingering with Him, what has He touched your heart with? Offer that.
There is one like you in the New Testament. Sometimes we have those grandiose prayers, and most of us feel like we are just that poor little widow offering her mite. But that little mite that widow offered up is known throughout all eternity, and all heaven sang when that one widow offered herself. She offered all she had. She just gave what she had, and it rang a hallelujah within our Lord’s heart.
That is all. He is just looking for us to respond to what He has given us and what He has put within our hands, and that we not be like Jeremiah and say, “I am a youth.”
But praise God, we have seen this week, and we have been encouraged, how the Lord has called us to be occupied with His business; how He has equipped us; how, through that abundant grace and through the revelation of His Word, He has such a heart to reveal to us more and more of His wonderful self. May these words continue to ring within us: “I am with you.”
Well, as we even begin in the New Testament, in the first chapter of Matthew, what is the Lord’s name there? Emmanuel—God is with us. Emmanuel, God is with us. He never leaves us, never forsakes us, and is always for us. What a great love He has for us.
Many great men of God found themselves terrified. Paul was in Corinth, if you look at Acts 18, and the Lord said to Paul, “Do not be afraid any longer.” I am glad the Holy Spirit put in that phrase, “any longer,” because that means Paul was afraid. He says, “Do not be afraid any longer. I am with you, and I am going to protect you.”
Oh, how we think sometimes that there is a weakness within ourselves to allow such a simple little phrase to mean so much to us. But may we never despise the simplicity of the testimony: “I am with you.”
He goes down with us into the valley of life. We thank the Lord He has been with us as we have been on this mountain. We thank the Lord that He goes before us and makes a wonderful way for us.
We thank the Lord that we can be assured of Him being with us as we daily spend time in the Word. I appreciate what our brothers have encouraged and exhorted us concerning throughout the week: the value of the Word of God.
As I stand here today, I am sixty-one years old. One of the regrets that I have in life is that I did not recognize the value of the Word until much later in my life. So many wasted years.
What a precious privilege we have had to be encouraged this week to really delve into that Word of God, to linger there, to dialogue, to really allow it to speak to us, and to ask the Lord to give us that spirit of wisdom and revelation.
But we also have another precious privilege of knowing how the Lord is with us, because we do not go down the mountain alone. We go with one another.
You all go back to Queens. Some of you go to Houston. Some go to Toronto. Some are going to Vancouver and Richmond—different places. Praise God, we have one another. There is a togetherness, a relatedness, that we have. We have Christ within each other to encourage us. We have Christ within each other that can strengthen us.
When we go through those times when we are feeling a little down or discouraged, we have one another to come alongside. I would challenge you, as you go back, to help keep each other fresh in what the Lord spoke this week.
Call one another. Lydia, call Rebecca and Amanda this week and ask them, “What else has the Lord been showing you?” When you all get back to Vancouver, call one another. I guess nowadays you text each other. Excuse the old generation of telephone and actually talking to one another, but I am still in that phase, so I enjoy talking to people.
But call ones. Talk to them. Really say, “Remember that? Remember what Dana said? Remember that discussion group? Remember that morning devotion?” Let us help one another keep it fresh.
Because in ourselves, we will all dry up. But we need one another. That is one of the things we see: we are all called to be occupied with our Father’s business. This is one of the ways we can encourage one another so that we come into the reality that we do not go down alone. He is with us, and He is with us in our brothers and sisters.
As we get back to our local assemblies, we have the precious opportunity there to enter in and allow the Lord to capture us in very real and practical ways of being occupied with our Father’s business.
You know, the morning devotion this morning ended up talking about how precious it was to be in our Father’s house. I do not remember the exact phrase, but as you go back, it is very precious. One of the things about that preciousness is that we will also find that it is painfully precious. But the painfully precious only makes it more precious, because we see more of our Lord and His wonderful faithfulness.
So, if I would have any concluding remarks, my prayer for you would be that you would know the reality that He goes down with us. He never leaves us or forsakes us, and we have that precious promise: “I am with you always, even to the end of the days.” Amen.
So, for this last of the concluding remarks, they have asked a shy, timid Chinese guy to share with you. It is probably appropriate.
I think, as we look back on this week, we can all confess that we have had a full and very great feast from the Lord. It is not just the Redeemer food, which was excellent this year. It is more: it is the bread of life that we have received.
I would like to spend a little time reflecting on what has been shared by our speakers. It is not meant to be an inclusive summary. It is not meant to be notes for where your phone might have nodded off and here is the time for you to catch up. But there are some things shared by our brothers that I hope would jog our memories and bring back what the Lord has spoken to you personally.
When we first came to the conference, John reminded us that it was the Lord’s faithfulness that brought us here. It is His faithfulness that has brought us to the end of the conference throughout this week. We really do have to recognize that.
There was a real purpose for us being here. There is a reason that we are here, and there is a reason for us to live. It is not just so that we can coast through life, enjoying bits here and there. There is a purpose.
Whatever this theme and these verses mean to you—being occupied in my Father’s business—it is a life. It is not a set of things that we are following. It is life. It is purpose. It gives us purpose, and we thank the Lord for that.
On the first day, our brother Jim spoke to us on becoming aware. That is the question before us: “Do you not know?” We know that, for our Lord Jesus, He was aware. He was aware from a young age, when He was twelve.
He was aware of many things. He was aware that He had a favored status. He was aware of His Father. He was aware of His purpose for being where He was.
That is a prayer too: that in our lives, perhaps because of this conference or because of the words shared in your local assembly, we have become aware. There is something more to life than just being saved. There is that purpose.
We see how the Lord was brought to God Himself. There was that personal relationship. Jim introduced to us this word, linger. I really like that, because it is a word that now has meaning and purpose.
That is the definition he gave us: when we linger, it is for a purpose. We are waiting for something. We are looking for something. Before, I think we associated the word linger with just hanging around, just not doing anything. But that is a different word: loiter.
Now we see that we are given purpose, and when we are before the Lord, there is a goal. There is a purpose.
Brother Dana shared a series of snapshots with us that really showed us how much growth there was in the Lord when He was young, but not in very specific or particular details. Scripture seems, on purpose, to have left out those details.
We thank the Lord for that. We are not just going to follow how the Lord grew up: when He was five, He read the Word for the first time. There was none of that. We see the growth of our Lord Jesus, but it is not a set path or merely a set of instructions that we follow.
Through these snapshots, we see how our Lord was compelled. He was called by His Father, and He took that on at a very young age. He saw past the traditions. He saw past the things that were customary. He did not just go with the flow. He did not attend a meeting just because everybody else went. There was life. There was life for Him.
Dana basically wrecked the conference theme because he told us that the words occupied and business are not actually in the original text. Sorry for the T-shirts.
In fact, the words were, “It was necessary to be in the things of My Father.” Again, that is left open. It is not a set of things, a set of instructions, or even a how-to manual of business. What is the Lord’s business? What are His things?
When we see that, it becomes more than that: it is Himself. We are to be in the things of Him, of Himself. That is precious.
We see that in these silent years. Again, we do not know much about the Lord’s day-to-day life during these silent years. But these are your years. They are years of youth, but there was a preparation.
It was not as though the Lord was just doing whatever He was doing and, all of a sudden, when He came to age thirty, He got baptized and boom—three and a half years of all this great ministry. No, there was preparation all this time.
Again, we do not know exactly what He did to prepare. The speakers and the workshops have given us some of their experience. They have given us precious ways that we can commune and fellowship with the Lord. But again, there are no set detailed instructions. When we seek Him, when we want the Lord, He reveals Himself to us. How wonderful that is.
On the second day, Jim spoke to us about the Word of God. If food is an expression of love, then we really see how much God loves us. He gives us this wonderful, wonderful food that is His Word.
When we remember the slides, there was a picture of the Passover meal. There were desserts, there was the roasted fish, there was Chinese food, Mexican food, finger food, and we even talked about condiments.
For me, I am picky. You guys in Toronto know I have to have my Chinese food. That is important to me. I like to have ice cream—not just any dessert, but ice cream. I am really glad for the day when we get to Sundays. But that is picking and choosing.
The Lord has this whole feast for us, with different foods from the Old Testament and the New Testament—from books that we think are easy to read to those that we think are hard; names that I cannot pronounce, or Numbers that just go on and on. But there is a purpose in this Book too.
I shared in my discussion group how the Lord spoke to me when I was reading 2 Chronicles. The Lord told me very specifically, “Do not fear or be dismayed, because this battle is not yours, but the Lord’s.”
If we started skipping, if we started just picking and choosing, we would miss out. We do not want to do that.
There is also something very precious: the Lord not only provides His Word for us; He also provides the time for us when we ask of Him. It is like He provides everything for us. We are not lacking in any way when we have that heart and desire to go on with Him.
To say, “Lord, I really want to study Your Word. I really want to spend that time with You in Your Word, in that secret time of prayer”—He shows up. We say, “Lord, I do not know where to fit You in my quote-unquote busy schedule in life.” The Lord will rearrange some things in your life, and all of a sudden that time will show up.
Well, I do not want to say, “Be careful what you ask for,” but we know that the Lord will answer our prayers. Let us be serious. He might do that rearrangement of your priorities and your time. But when you ask Him, He is faithful. He is faithful to show you what is in His Word, and He is faithful to give you that time that you can have with Him.
Jim showed us that picture of the galaxies and the star systems, and he asked us, “Are your hardships, your problems, your issues, and your concerns bigger than that?” The Lord is even greater, even more immense, than the galaxy. He created the universe and everything in it.
When there are times that we think, “Uh-oh, we are going to fail. I am going to fail right here, right now, and this is it. There is nothing that can stop me”—really? Do we see how great our Lord is?
If we do not, that is another prayer we ask of Him: “Lord, I see that picture of the universe, of the galaxies, but I have not experienced that. Show me.” He is so much bigger. Not that I have experienced that fullness, but the Lord does show Himself. Again, there needs to be that seeking for Him.
For our second message time, Dana sang—or we sang together—the song, “Let the Beauty of Jesus Be Seen in Me.” When we invite Him into our lives, He lives in us, and there should be an outward radiance of that life. We are not just covering it up. We are not just hiding it under a bushel.
Let that life show forth. Because He is beautiful, there should be that beauty of Jesus that others do see.
We talked about having progress and advancement in our lives. You guys are growing up. I do not want to say the number of conferences I have attended—I think it reaches double digits—but every year we see growth.
I will pick on Janice. When my parents and I came to Canada from Hong Kong—this was even before the time of Jeffrey, my younger brother—we came on August 8, 1988. Today would mark twenty years in Canada.
The reason I mentioned Janice is that she was born August 1, 1988. By the time we came, in our first week in Toronto, she had only been a week old. Here we are twenty years later, and we see growth—but not just physical growth. We long for spiritual growth.
Whether or not the Lord brings us back to another conference, we long for there to be progression with the Lord. “I want to go on with Him. I do not want to just be a newborn babe all the time. I do not want to just be drinking milk.”
That should be natural to us, that we want to grow to the point where we are no longer merely being fed. We are now ministering to others. We are feeding others because we are sharing our experiences. We are sharing our life of what the Lord has done with us. Again, we are looking for progress, and just like our Lord Jesus, there was progress.
Another vocabulary word we were introduced to is dialogue: listening, questioning, and answering. When we go back and review the conference, I hope we do not just summarize it in these words that we use around. It is more than just lingering and dialogue. I really hope there is life to it.
Those words and vocabulary help us to remember, but I ask every one of us: there is a challenge here to really have that living, live dialogue with the Word every day.
Is it not amazing that when we read something that is supposedly static—when we open up a page, or on your PDA or your computer—there is life? There is a response. When we ask the Lord through His Word, “What does that mean?” He shows us.
Do not necessarily look for it instantaneously. I think we made this point during the discussion group. This generation expects things to just happen. There is that instant—we want things right away.
Some of you have shared about quote-unquote older technologies. I want to remind you that before your internet, there was something called a modem. When the internet loaded through your modem, it was very slow, depending on the speed of your modem. Now, you guys do not know what I am talking about, so it is too bad.
We expect things to happen. Right now, if you go to your browser and load up a page and it does not show up in less than a second, you hit refresh or close your browser and try again. We expect answers to come right away.
But there is something precious in waiting on the Lord. There is a reason why the Lord does not just throw things at us. He wants us to chew on it. He wants us to digest it. He wants us to have that gradual searching with Him.
In that way, you build up a relationship. If everything is instant, then what is this relationship based on?
This is the same thing when you have relationships with your friends and peers. Quick and instant relationships do not last. They are shallow. But those that have stood and passed the test of time—those relationships are precious. That is something the Lord wants us to have with Him through His Word.
This is another serious matter: we are asked to examine ourselves. We need to repent for our casual attitude toward His Word. Even in the testimonies that have come up, we see how we leave the time we spend with the Word to the last possible moments.
We pray that He would forgive us, but also that He would show us the value of His Word: that we would seek Him in His Word throughout the day. It is not just, “I am going to leave this time for the Lord.” Again, it is a relationship.
You do not go to your friend only whenever you think you need him or her. There is that constant dialogue in relationship. Let the Lord convict us of our attitude toward His Word.
Looking at what Jim shared with us on the third day, this business that we have been talking about is to redeem man. It is the Lord’s purpose to redeem man, to have this new creation.
He shared with us six characters in the Old Testament. There was Joseph, who was caught and held by his vision, his dreams. There was Samuel, who was dedicated to the Lord. He had open ears, and he obeyed when he heard the Word of the Lord. He helped usher Israel into a new era.
There was King David. He was chosen by the Lord, but all those years as a shepherd, he was just the youngest of his family. There was really no sign that he was ever going to become as great as the king of Israel—probably the greatest king of Israel of all time. But he was faithful in what he was doing in his youth.
There was Daniel, who, despite being captured and brought to Babylon as a prisoner, did not compromise. He purposed in his heart. There was Ezra, who gave himself to the Word and to seeing the building of the temple. There was Elisha, who was full of life. He asked for a double portion because he saw the preciousness in that.
All these characters are not old, mature characters in the Bible. Many things they did when they were older are recorded, yes, but the preparations came in their youth. There are even more examples, and our Lord Himself is again the example of how He prepared when He was young.
This room is full of young men and women—you and me. Okay, maybe not me, but a lot of you are youths, and these are your years of preparation.
We are not asking that there be a striving to say, “I am going to be like David when I grow up. I am going to be like Samuel.” But these characters in the Old Testament are there for a purpose. They are there for us to learn from. These are examples that our Lord gave us for us.
When we see that finished product—the lives of those whom I have mentioned—it is great. You know why it is great? Because the Lord had His way with them. He brought them through hardships and trials, but they persevered, and they did great things for the Lord.
Dana, in his message last night, shared with us from 2 Timothy. We talked a little bit about Timothy: shy, timid—what is going to happen? “Do not leave.” I wonder sometimes whether we live on that secondhand faith.
A lot of us have been to a lot of conferences and heard many messages. Do we just hear it and recite it to others? Do we even think and consider? Do we go back after we hear the message and check the passages? Do we go and have that examination?
It is life when the Lord gives us that Word. It is not just, “Here are the condiments.” It is very living that way.
Dana encouraged us to strengthen ourselves in the grace of God and take hold of the life within us. Again, He has given us everything. Why are we concerned? Why are we worried? Why are we saying, “It is not enough”? The provision is there.
There are the four examples in 2 Timothy: those who pass the torch, who have really digested the words and are becoming ministers to others; the soldiers, who suffer hardship for what is right; the athletes, who endure to the end; and the farmer, who works hard and perseveres through the storms to ensure that there is a crop.
You guys—I do not know how you do it—you woke up at five or six and started running. That is training. I have not done that, so I am not there. I cannot endure, at least in the physical realm, very well. But there is endurance when we train as athletes.
Do not cut corners. We are reminded of that. What shame comes when it is discovered that some athletes did not abide by the rules. Instead of fame and glory, they are in shame and their reputations are in shambles. It is a reminder for us that we have to be faithful with the Lord. There are no shortcuts in God’s kingdom.
I cannot really go into all the details of what you heard in your workshops. But there were those topics of functioning in my Father’s house, character in my Father’s house, and relationships in my Father’s house.
When you go through these workshops, I do not know what your expectations are. Sometimes, for myself, I go to these workshops and pick the topics, saying, “Yes, that is a great topic because I want to learn more about how to forgive somebody. I want to learn how to read the Word of God.”
Sometimes I go in with the expectation, “This workshop will show me how to have the right relationship with one another.” Then you go to the workshops and realize, “Wait a minute, this is not really what I was expecting.”
In whichever workshop, whichever topic there is, we see the example: it comes back to our Lord Jesus Christ. Relationships do not happen, or relationships do not work out, when they are apart from our Lord Jesus Christ. If He is not in the center, it does not work.
There are going to be heartaches when we do not function in this house with Him as the center. It does not work. Then we are just doing things, and there would be no value in that.
Character is not about a checklist of characteristics that we should have. The perfect example is provided for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. That life that He lived—those are the characteristics that we ought to be pursuing.
You see, it comes back to the Lord Himself. There are no formulas. There are no step-by-steps. But in our walk with Him, the Lord will show us what He wants us to do.
Even in the different times that we have had—through our morning devotions, evening prayers, discussion groups, the testimonies we heard this morning and last night, and even the times of worship—I hope the Lord has really been speaking to you throughout all these times. Again, there has been such richness in this entire conference.
We have come to the end of the conference, and this is where we are right now. There is a question: Now what?
What happens now that we have to come down from this mountain, from this mountaintop experience? What happens now?
I want to impress an idea, a word, upon your heart. I would like to instill in each of us a sense of urgency. Can you turn with me to Joshua 24?
Joshua 24. We just want to read verses 14 and 15.
Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt; and serve the Lord.
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Can we also turn to Hebrews 3, verses 14 and 15?
For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm unto the end:
While it is said, Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
Let me just read that part again: “Today if ye shall hear His voice.”
Again, I would like to impress upon your hearts this matter of today and the response that we want to give today.
If we look back at this passage in Joshua, we see them coming out victorious. By Joshua 24, they had defeated most of their enemies and were living in the land that they now possessed. They were conquerors.
But Joshua also realized that they were still living in the world. There were still idols and other gods among them. So there was a choice that they had to make.
For us, it is the same way. We start out on grounds of victory because of what the Lord has done, but we are still in the world. It is easy for us to slip. It is easy for us to be distracted by the attractions of the world, by the gods that we either consciously or unconsciously worship—those idols that are not of Him.
It is easy for us to be occupied with other things other than our Father and His business.
Even in one of the morning devotions, there was the book of Haggai. Those ones came back from Babylon. It was not like they were just willing to settle in the world. They actually had purposed in their hearts to come back from Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem.
But what happened? There was a delay. There was discouragement. There were threats. So they were distracted. They were no longer occupied, and they became occupied with their own affairs. They wanted to build houses for themselves.
It is easy for us, even as we start from these grounds of victory, to be easily distracted. So Joshua presents this choice before the people: “Whom will you serve?”
He makes it very clear. It is either God or it is not. My question to you is: Which business will you be occupied with?
It is a very clear choice. Right now, it is very easy to make. Right at this moment, it should be a very easy decision to make whom we will choose. But as we go back to our everyday lives, that choice could become more and more difficult.
That is why you have to make that choice today. Today—every day—first thing in the morning, throughout the day, and at the end of the day: today, make that choice to serve Him.
That could mean a number of things. Is it the daily sacrifice that you have to make? Is it the time—how you spend your time? What kind of relationships do you choose to build? Those are the choices that you have to make.
What kind of character are you displaying? What kind of testimony are you giving among yourselves and among your friends? Those are choices. It is very simple: Who are we serving today?
I just want to close with a couple of slides.
I do not know if you see this clearly, but this was something compiled. These are a couple of pictures, and they read, “Occupied in My Father’s Business.” These pictures were created during the campfire time, when we had the glow sticks, and through magical photography and open shutters, this was the result. A lot of brothers and sisters worked hard, and they are legible.
Can we show the next slide?
Not quite as legible. I am not sure what happened to the “U” or the “I.” In “Father,” the “TH” does not really complete, and “business” looks like it is missing a few characters.
The reason I am showing you this is that I believe it speaks to how, as we go back, we have to interact with one another. We are going back to our local assemblies. As Mac shared, we are living stones.
Is it always going to be as complete as our first picture, where everything and all the parts are working properly, and it actually spells out, “Being occupied with My Father’s business”? Or is it going to look like this?
Let me tell you: I think I took about fifty pictures that night. A few—a handful—like the ones I picked for the first slide, showed up. The rest looked more like this, or worse.
That is an encouragement. You know why? Because it shows us that, yes, not all the time are things going to be rosy or perfect. Not all the time are things going to be exactly the way we planned it.
Sometimes the “C” is going to take a break, and the other characters are not going to show up. But let this be an encouragement, because we need to encourage one another to do their part, to keep swinging their arm like this, and to be strengthened, because we all have a part.
Let us have the nice slide again.
This is the picture. This is that finished product that our Lord wants us to be, right where we are—there as individuals, or together as an assembly—to be occupied in His business.
May the Lord have His way with us. May He encourage our hearts as we go from here.
Let us close our time with a few prayers, again giving ourselves up to the Lord in response to what He has done for us this week. Then we will close in a word of prayer.