This is really weird. There’s a little thing here. I do not like microphones.
I was very inhibited in singing. One of the reasons is that, in our fellowship one time, I always asked the brother who mics me up, “This isn’t on yet during the singing?”
One time, Jack Cox, who does the miking up, after the meeting was over and people prayed, said, “I have some good news and bad news.”
He said, “The good news is, we were able to mic you so that, because you have a soft voice, it picks up. The bad news is, it was on while you were singing.”
And in the back—where they have the mothers and people that feel they have—the first person I met was my friend Tom. He couldn’t even look at me. He was just laughing.
So I don’t trust these things. I trust you, Scott, but I don’t trust it.
Anyway, I feel like I’m at a reunion, seeing many of you again. You know how you’re in my and Barb’s heart, and you’ve never been out of them. How good it is to be back with you again. There are new faces I see, and I hope to meet you.
So let’s go. Let’s read a few Scriptures. They’re all in the New Testament.
In Luke 2:49, the Lord Jesus is speaking. He said to them—His parents, because He was in Jerusalem at that time:
Why did ye seek me?
Knew ye not that I must be in my Father’s house?
Then, in Luke 2:52:
And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
In 1 Corinthians 13:11, Paul writes to the Corinthians:
When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I felt as a child,
I thought as a child:
now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.
Beginning with Philippians 3:12, Paul writes:
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect:
but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold:
but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Finally, 1 John 3, at the beginning of the chapter:
Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God.
And then verse 2:
Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.
We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him;
for we shall see Him even as He is.
With that, let’s turn to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, someone prayed earlier that it’s a good place to be here tonight. And it is, Lord. We thank You that You’ve brought us into Your presence at great cost. Lord, we remember the cost that You paid to bring us into Your presence, and we worship You for it. We thank You for it.
We thank You, Lord, that we no longer have to think about condemnation, but we are able to be in Your presence, fully clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Thank You.
And now, Lord, we come to You. So often, when we come to a conference, Lord, You know that we think that You’re going to come and tell us things that are going to be hard. You’re going to tell us that we have to do certain things and give up certain things. And it may be that that’s so.
But Lord, we ask that tonight, as You speak to us from Your Word, this being the opening night, You would just disarm us. Let us know that we can fully let ourselves go and fall into You because You love us.
We entrust ourselves into You for this, Lord. We ask that Your Word tonight will have that effect on us: that Your voice will be heard in it in a way that will disarm us and just let us be free, so that we are able just to hear what You have to speak to us throughout this whole week.
Lord, we thank You that You are not straightened, only by our unbelief. Lord, we ask that tonight You would give us that faith, the faith of the Son of God, that enables us to let You speak to us.
We ask for Your Spirit, Lord, to anoint this time, to anoint Your Word, to anoint my mouth, to anoint our ears. Lord, may our spirits be opened up. May our spirits be lifted up out of ourselves, and may we get out of just ourselves and unto a different plane—a plane where we are just free, free to hear You.
So, Lord, we commit our time to You. We come to You through Jesus Christ. Amen.
I knew it was going to be on tape, but I should tape your feet. I’m sorry.
Really, the verse that came to me when I was asked about coming here and being with you was this verse out of Luke, where Jesus, as a youth, comes and says, “Don’t you know I must be about My Father’s business?” And that’s really where my heart is to be.
Tomorrow—or not tomorrow, I guess it’s Friday night—I’ll talk more about being about My Father’s business. But before you come to be about your Father’s business, you have to become aware that your Father has some business. If you’re not aware of that, then you’ll never be about His business.
In this little passage from Luke, we find out that the Lord Jesus is aware, as a twelve-year-old, of His purpose. If we were talking about regular men—not the God-man—we would say they become aware of their calling. But for Him, it was to be aware of His purpose.
Really, when it comes down to it, our calling is our purpose: the purpose that God has for us while we live on this earth. And all of us are called.
We have a tendency to limit the word calling to special people. We read books about great saints, and we read about how they were called and how they recognized their calling. We think that callings only go out to missionaries: “Oh, yeah, he was called to Africa,” or, “I was called to China,” or, “I was called to South America.”
Today, because not many people become missionaries, we think of calling as being called to be a pastor or a minister in some way. But other than that, regular Christians—we say “regular,” you know—we don’t have any calling. We’re just Christians.
But that’s not true. All of us have been called, and all of us are continually called.
First of all, each one of us, if we are Christians, if we are born again, was called out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His light—the kingdom of the Son of His love. All of us were called that way, because if we were not called, we would never have left.
But somehow we sensed the calling of God to come out, to be separate, and to come to Him.
All of us, having been saved, are called into the fellowship of His Son. Not one Christian is left out of that calling: to fellowship with His Son, to share the life of the Son of God. All of us are called into that sharing.
All of us have been called to walk worthy of this calling—this calling to be in fellowship with Christ, this calling to come out of darkness and into light. All of us have been called to walk worthy of that calling.
And finally, all of us are being called to be about our Father’s business. Not one of us is left out of that calling. Everybody who is a blood-bought believer, born of God, has been called to be about our Father’s business.
Now, to fulfill this calling, there is an underpinning, a foundation. It is foundational for everybody.
I’d like to look at the verse I read last, where John says:
Beloved, behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God.
Children of God. The foundation of this high calling is first that we become children of God.
The thing is, even our Lord Jesus was a child. I’m not mincing the doctrine or anything, but I just want us to understand this. It is a mystery about the Lord, how He grew up. I’m not going to unravel some mystery and say, “This is what happened,” or anything like that.
But our Father, when Jesus was incarnated, took pains about who would be His parents. He didn’t just choose anybody. He chose specifically two people: Mary and Joseph.
You might wonder, “Well, why did God have to be so picky?” Because He entrusted the raising of a child to them, and He knew that He would be brought up as a human child in a family where God was reverenced.
These were not—what do you call a Mormon who doesn’t practice? A Jack Mormon? Okay. These were not just Sabbath-going Jews. These were well-practiced Jews.
They brought up their son, their stewardship, in the admonition of the Lord. Mothers of that time had a strict code about how to raise their children, because they were the first teachers, bringing them up, teaching Scripture, teaching them about the Lord little by little. Mary did that.
Joseph, as Jesus was coming of age, also picked up the education of his son—not just to educate Him as a carpenter, but also to educate Him in the ways of the synagogue.
So Jesus, being a child raised in that atmosphere—which the Lord saw to, our Father God saw to—for a purpose, had a foundation.
It is foundational for us: our childhood. Now, I’m not talking about our human childhood, okay? Because of sin, our human childhood is messed up. A lot of us have problems even with the idea of father because of our childhood. That is because sin has come into the world.
But our childhood as born-again children of the living God is our foundation for being men of God and women of God. It is all foundational in our being children.
When we apply this to us and look at this matter of growing up, our becoming aware of being about our Father’s business is because of our childhood—our childhood in the Lord.
God knew whom He chose. When we were born again, it was not happenstance. He knows exactly where we are. He knows when we are brought into a Christian family—and I’m not talking about a natural family, a mom and dad, but our church family, the believing family.
We are brought into that assembly. He knows where we are. He knows who our fathers and mothers in that assembly are going to be, and He knows how we are to be raised.
It starts out here: “Beloved.” All children are beloved. All of them. All children of God are beloved by God. That is a great starting place. That is the place where we rest. We are beloved.
Beloved, now are we children of God.
If we looked at a chapter earlier, we could see that in 1 John 2 John talks about children. What is the experience of children? Remember, this is the foundation for our growing up.
It says this about children in 1 John 2:12–13:
I write unto you, my little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.
I write unto you, little children, because ye know the Father.
Why is he writing to these children? He says two things. Number one: your sins are forgiven. Number two: you have known the Father. These two things are our foundations as children, as we grow up.
This is the atmosphere in which we are to grow up as children of God. Number one: our sins are forgiven.
That is a wonderful place to be, where our sins are forgiven. Without the realization of these things, we will never get beyond childhood. If we do not realize that our sins are forgiven and what that really means, and if we do not realize that God is our Father, we will never get beyond childhood.
What does this mean? Our sins are forgiven. Having our sins forgiven allows us to find God as our Father. I am going to talk a little more about this later on, but suffice it to say for this part right here that because our sins are forgiven, now we can approach God and find out what it is for Him to be our Father.
As a matter of fact, when Jesus first began to speak to His disciples, in Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount, this is when He first began to tell us that God is our Father: “Pray to your Father who is in heaven. Your heavenly Father knows you have need of these things.”
What is a father? What are the things that fathers do? Well, a good father—because that is what God is. God is a good Father.
A good father is supposed to be certain things. From our natural fathers, we look to them to provide for us. They provide for all our needs: our food, our clothing, the roof over our head. They protect us. They keep us safe. They discipline us when we need to be disciplined. They encourage us when we need to be encouraged. They love us.
There is nothing like a father’s love. Some of us, in our natural lives, might never have had the love of a father. But some of us know what a joy it is, as fathers, to love our children—how glad it makes us, and what a good thing it is for our children to know that they are loved.
In the same way, this is what children are to know as born-again believers: that we are loved by God.
Basically, to be a child, then, is to be a beneficiary. We are beneficiaries of all the mercy, all the grace, all the wisdom, all the power, and all the love of God. We benefit from all these things.
Children are those that just benefit. It is almost as if they have almost no responsibility except to grow up in that kind of nurturing. You have this so you can grow.
You are not worried about the sledgehammer coming down, or, “Oh, you’re going to get it for this.” You are so free to grow—beneficiaries of these things.
This experience of children, I am not knocking in any way. I am not saying this is kindergarten, you know, and that we are more spiritual. No. This experience is so necessary for us in order for us to go on, because if we do not have this experience, our growth is stunted.
This is our foundation, and it is supposed to act as the foundation, a bridge, to our being able to go to a higher calling. We are children, and we are meant to be children for a period of time. Notice: for a period of time.
It is unfortunate that sometimes this period gets prolonged. That is not God’s doing; that is our doing.
One reason it gets prolonged is that we just like being beneficiaries. It is nice just to get, get, get, get, get. We can get very used to that.
Not only that, now we start to feel that we are privileged. Some of us, because of that, start to misinterpret Scripture.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “All things are lawful.” Oh, I like that: “All things are lawful.” Of course, I did not read the other part: “But not all things edify.” But, “All things are lawful.” I can grasp that.
Or this one—I remember because I used this one: “To the pure, all things are pure.” Titus 1:15. We like the obscure verses, right? “To the pure, all things are pure.” Boy, that opens things up, doesn’t it?
A lot of times, what happens is that we begin to use this part of being a child as license to do whatever we want. Spoiled rich kids, so to speak. “I can do whatever I want because Dad is going to bail me out.”
That is true, because when I fall, I can go back to the prodigal son. Even the prodigal son—the father took him back. He put a ring on his finger and everything. “That’s what I’ve got to look forward to. Even if I mess up, He’s going to have me back, so I don’t have to worry.”
But another way—and I think this is the one that holds a lot of us—is that we do not have the right apprehension of forgiveness. We do not know what God means by saying, “I’ve forgiven you.”
Our experience of forgiving is that somebody forgives you until they—it’s words. People are mad at us for a little bit until they get over whatever we did, and then, “Yeah, you’re forgiven.” Then we do a little penance, and it is okay. That is the way we look at forgiveness.
But that type of forgiveness gets us to the point, if we are really serious about wanting to please God, of saying, “How come I always have to come back for this? Why can’t I just get beyond this?”
We find ourselves beset. We cannot get out of our sin because we really have no idea what God’s forgiveness is like. We might say, “Oh, yeah, He separates it from the east to the west,” and that is a lot of distance, but it means really nothing.
For backsliding and worldliness, God uses circumstances to heal that, to get us out—just like the prodigal son. “Okay, I’ve got to go out. Okay, I’ll cut this off, I’ll cut that off,” until you come to your senses.
But what about this issue of forgiveness? For that, we need a revelation. We need a revelation of what forgiveness is like. What is God’s forgiveness? We need an epiphany. I am going to call it a Gilgal moment.
You have heard of Gilgal, the city in Israel. At Gilgal, the children of Israel came across the Jordan, and the Jordan opened up for them. This is in Joshua 4.
Joshua—the Lord told Joshua to send twelve men in there to pick up stones that were in the Jordan, or actually to take stones from one side and put them in the Jordan, then pick up twelve stones that were in the river and come back. Then the river came down.
That is forgiveness. What do I mean by that? Gilgal means, “The reproach is rolled away.”
In this picture, those rocks that were on the ground you never see again, because they are now at the bottom of the river. You never see them again. They have not just been covered; they have been enveloped by this water.
What you do see are the rocks that were at the bottom. This really is a picture of the death and resurrection of Christ to us and what it means: those twelve rocks that went down under never come back up again.
The old man, the old, is crucified. It never raises its head above the grave again. But what happens is, you get a new man that comes out.
What am I talking about, then? I will tell you. My epiphany—and I share this on Sundays, so those from San Diego, I’m sorry—came when I was playing golf with Jerry, Jerry Leniver.
You’re laughing at it, but God is able to speak anywhere. He’s God.
I have to admit, I’m a whiner. I’m a crybaby. We were golfing, and we were on the putting green. Jerry asked me how things were going, and I was just giving the woe tale: “Oh, I’m still doing this. I have my besetting sin.”
Jerry just kind of stopped. He was getting ready to face down, and he said, “Man, those are judged, Jim.” Then he finished his putt.
Those are judged.
Our sins are forgiven because they have been judged. Our sins have been judged. I no longer have to bear them anymore because they have been judged. They have been dealt with as they should be dealt with.
That is what Gilgal is all about. When we come to realize that our sins are judged, we are free. We are just free. We do not have to carry them anymore.
It is like in The Pilgrim’s Progress. Remember when Christian comes in and he has the big burden on him? Finally, he sees the cross.
We see Jesus died on the cross, but we do not realize that it is not merely that He died on the cross. In His death, He was taking the judgment for sin. He was judged for our sins. Sin was judged in the flesh. That is what 2 Corinthians says: sin was judged in the flesh. Therefore, I no longer have to bear it. Now I am free.
That changes your whole way of approaching the Lord’s table. Instead of coming and saying, “Oh, Lord, I don’t know why You would save me,” we come and we are stuck. We are stuck in our sin.
Now we can approach. We do not even have to come like that anymore. We can come now and just worship, because these other things have been taken away.
That is what we were singing about: no condemnation. Now I can boldly approach. I do not have to carry that around anymore. I am free to worship now. I am free now to say, “Oh, Lord, I just thank You that I am free. I thank You that You paid this tremendous cost for me. It has been paid. I can worship You now, and I am free for that.”
Christ to us now is no longer just the crucified One, but He is the risen One. Brothers and sisters, there is a big difference. There is a big difference.
If we just have a crucified Christ, we are men most miserable. But when we have a resurrected Christ, we are men empowered and men that are free.
With that in mind, now that I am free, I am free to ask different questions. Instead of asking the Lord, “Why would You save someone like me?”—and again, that is a childish way of thinking.
“Why would You save someone like me?” Who is the center of that statement? Me. “Why would You save me? Look at me.” Because that is what I see: I see me. That is why we cannot have freedom at the table, because we see me; we do not see Christ.
But once we have this epiphany, once we come to the place of saying that our sins are judged—our sins are taken away, not just taken away and forgiven but judged—now we can ask a different question.
The question we are free to ask is: Why have You saved me?
There is a whole difference to that. First of all, we are acknowledging, “You have saved me. You have done it. I am saved. I am already saved.” Saved—past tense, right?
You must have something to do with saving me. In other words, You must have some purpose for saving me. Now I am free to say, “What is Your business? What do You want from me? Now that I am saved, now that I am free and I can be Your servant, what is it that You want?”
How is it that we become aware of this upward calling? Here we have the Lord Jesus. Jesus, as a child, is twelve years old. How did He come to this place of saying, “I must be about My Father’s business?”
A lot of us will say, “Well, it’s because He is God.” No. Remember, He is God and He is man. As man, He had to become aware of it.
How do we, like the Lord Himself, become aware of God’s purpose for us to serve Him? Because that is what His purpose is: to serve Him.
I will tell you this: it has nothing to do with what you know. It has nothing to do with the acquisition of knowledge, because we can know everything and still be children. I teach gifted kids, and believe me, they think they know everything. But they are still children.
There is no rite of passage. In other words, there is no ritual you go through. I was raised Catholic. It is not that once you go through First Communion, then you can—no, no, no, wait, you have to go through Confirmation first. Or, “Oh, you’re a Jew; you have to be bar mitzvahed.”
There is no rite of passage to becoming aware of this call upward. I want to get away from hearing, but becoming aware of this call upward.
So then, gee whiz, how do we find out? How do we become aware? God makes you aware. That’s it.
“Well, that isn’t telling me anything.” No, that is telling you everything. God makes you aware. God can choose the way He makes you aware, just like on the golf course with Jerry.
You can think about times when the Lord has spoken a word to you and made you aware of something. We want something spiritual to happen, but He does it in different ways.
Joseph was made aware of an upward calling in his life by dreams. Now, some of us will say, “Boy, I want God to give me a dream.” That is not what you want. God makes you aware. If He wants to use a dream, He will use a dream. He did with Joseph.
With Moses, Moses just went out to see the Hebrew children. He probably recognized, from his parents telling him as a young man before he went to live in the house of Pharaoh’s daughter, something about a deliverer.
When he went out to the Hebrew children, all of a sudden it was quickened to him: “You’re the deliverer.” We know that he knew that because he figured that when he killed that one Egyptian, they would realize that he was the deliverer.
But the thing is, God just brought him among these people and quickened it.
What about David? If you read Psalm 8, David was made aware when he went out among the sheep and surveyed the sky. He was made aware of the vastness of God by looking at the sky and looking at the heavens.
In seeing that vastness, David recognized his own insignificance and asked God, “Why have You made me?”
If you read the rest of Psalm 8, he says, “To rule.” You made us a little lower than angels to rule.
What about Daniel? Daniel was taken away captive to Babylon. He was made aware by having a determination not to lose his identity as a Jew. God quickened it to him: “I have a higher calling for you than just to be one of the king’s servants.”
What about Peter? Well, the Lord spoke to him after the resurrection. Remember when Peter went out fishing? He said, “I don’t know what to do with myself.” The Lord spoke to him, brought him out of the boat, cooked him breakfast, and said, “I want you to feed My sheep.”
Is that too many biblical heroes for you? Okay, let’s give you somebody who is not biblical.
You guys read Amy Carmichael? Have you ever read the little book Mimosa? It’s a great little book. You should read it once a year. It’s a great little devotional.
Here is Mimosa—an illiterate pagan. High calling of God. Illiterate pagan. How did the Lord make her aware?
She simply went to a missionary school where she was going to be taken home, and she met the presence of God. She met the presence of God. God presented Himself and made her aware of Himself. That’s all—just made her aware of Himself, and captured her heart.
Most of us may not have those experiences. But I will tell you the experience most of us will have, and this is it: we become aware of the voice of the Spirit of Christ, who lives in us, who dwells in us, and who is saying to us:
Don’t you know that I must be about My Father’s business?
It is the Spirit of Christ in us. That is what Christ did. That is what Christ was aware of. Do we think that it is any different for us who have living Christ in us?
It is the Spirit of Christ who speaks to us from within. We think that all our awareness comes from the outside. We are going to hear something, or see something, or something like that. But we forget that God has put His Spirit in us.
It is His Spirit in us who speaks to us in very still, small, little voices: “I have to be about My Father’s business. Don’t do that. I have to be about My Father’s business. Don’t go there, because I have to be about My Father’s business.”
All of a sudden, that in itself is a very freeing thing. We see that we are not trying to be some outward form; we are being conformed in an inward way, where the life of Christ in us is speaking to us and moving us to be about His Father’s business.
We cannot stop and just say, “It is enough to be aware. It is enough to be aware that Christ lives in me.” This is not where we can stop.
We have to come to the place where we also see that being aware of this calling is another beginning, just like being born again was a beginning and not an end.
Being aware of His calling to be about His Father’s business, this high calling of God in Christ, is just another door.
In Philippians 3:14, it says, “I press on toward that call.” Toward that call. And Luke says about Jesus that He advanced in the grace of God.
For years, as a child, we live in a realm of grace. But the grace we know mostly is the grace of unmerited favor. It is manifested to us in that way: just unmerited favor.
I am not downing that. Do not think that unmerited favor is something little. It is great, because without unmerited favor, we would never have been born again.
But it is only one facet of grace. Grace is much larger than just unmerited favor.
When we begin to respond, to advance, to press on into this upward calling, we find another facet of grace. This facet of grace is a grace that enables us to be about His Father’s business. It is an enabling grace.
This type of grace is a wonderful grace to know, but it is a hard grace to know because we have to enter into it by faith.
Our experience as children should have settled the issue that, first of all, in whatever predicament we find ourselves, to get this enabling grace, God loves us. That should be a settled issue: God loves us.
He is not out to judge us. Why? Because He has already judged us in Christ.
The other thing is that He is our Father. He will provide, as a good Father, all that we need in the circumstance that He brings us into as we follow this upward call.
As we press on to this upward call, we find this facet of grace that enables. All that press on to this will find this grace. This is a given. If you are going to press into being about the Father’s business, you are going to find the grace that enables you to do this.
Okay, well, prove it. Let’s look at these people we just talked about.
Joseph—did Joseph find enabling grace? Yes. He endured imprisonment, didn’t he? He endured imprisonment with the idea that God had something bigger. “It is not just about me.”
What did he say? “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good”—not just for good, but to save. He said, in effect, to save even the world, because he was the one in charge of all the goods Pharaoh had. It is much bigger. God enabled him, gave him enabling grace to endure.
What about Moses? Moses went out to be among the Hebrew people. What was the result? It says in Hebrews 11 that Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God.
He had enabling grace—grace to turn his back on what was a pretty gravy situation. He had grace to turn his back on that and endure with the people of God the sufferings, the afflictions of the people of God. Enabling grace. God took him through all the way.
What about David? Did David find this enabling grace? Well, David, in the first part of his life—read 1 Samuel—what do you find David doing all the time? He is fleeing. He is fleeing.
Why? Because he will not take the kingship by his own hand. He says, “God, You promised me to be king. You have to make me king.” The Lord enabled him to flee and be pursued—enabling grace all the way through.
What about Daniel? Daniel had enabling grace because he was able to purpose in his heart not to defile himself with the food from the king’s table.
Because of that, he was brought into a position where the Lord upheld him through a number of things—the lions’ den and all these other things that he had to go through. Enabling grace.
What about Peter? Peter stood at Pentecost. Peter stood before the Sanhedrin. Sometimes we do not recognize this because it is not in the Book of Acts: Peter was martyred.
You do not think you need enabling grace to lay down your life—not just spiritually speaking, but to lay down your life unto death, physical death? Peter had enabling grace.
What about Mimosa? You’ve got to read that book. It is only about a hundred pages.
You read that book through Mimosa, and you will find out that she was given grace to have enduring faithfulness. She endured so much with nobody, no other brothers and sisters around her, just like Joseph.
No other brother or sister to give her a little word: “Oh, read this.” “Well, I’m illiterate, thanks.” But the Lord presented Himself, and she had the revelation that He was her Father.
That simple revelation kept her all the way through those years: the lousy marriage, the death of her son, the townspeople turning on her, until she came to Dohnavur finally to settle it out. All the way up—enabling grace. All that is ours.
Now, in closing up, I am not going to take you a full hour because I know you are tired.
But my prayer is that we are disarmed, because a lot of times we look at something like this and say, “Oh, it’s the upward call of God, and it means this, and I’ve got to do this and that and the other thing.”
Brothers and sisters, you are looking at it wrong. You are looking at it like children: “Oh, if I want to do this, I’ve got to clean my room. I’ve got to do that.” You are looking at it like children.
Because I think what the Lord is saying to us—because He is calling us all to be about His business, and none of us is exempt from this, not one of us—is that first of all, He wants us to be settled.
He just wants us to be settled, like children should be settled. Are you settled in His love? Do you know His forgiveness?
Remember, not the kind of forgiveness that keeps you guilty, but the forgiveness that sets you free.
How our Father wants us to be settled in this. He knows that if we are not settled, we will never come to the completion of the purpose that He has for our lives.
He is saying, “Oh, My children, that you would be settled, that you would be firm and know, and that you would be able to rest in what I have done for you. That you could know I have forgiven you, that I have taken away—I have judged—your sin.”
“That I am your Father, that I will provide all that you need. I will take care of you. I will protect you.”
I know that is hard to think when you are out of a job, or your kids are sick, or your marriage was broken. But does that mean that God is unfaithful? No.
God takes us as those children. He says, “Come, and come to Me as a Father. Know Me as a Father. Let Me clothe you. Let Me give you food. Let Me protect you.”
Then I think He wants us to know this: “I’m not putting something on you from the outside. I’m not talking down to you. I’m not saying, ‘You need to do this.’”
“But I put My Spirit in you, and I am speaking to you from the inside. I want you to hear Me.”
Because what My voice is saying—the Spirit that I put in you—is saying this:
Don’t you know that I have to be about My Father’s business?
It is something from the inside out. That, brothers and sisters, should disarm us.
That should take us to the place of saying, “Oh, Lord, I had You all wrong. I didn’t know what You provided for me. Help me to hear Your voice.”
“Help me to know the gift You’ve given to me in Jesus Christ—not just the Savior on the cross, but a life that pleases You, that is able to please You, that is asking me to let Him have sway.”
That is what the Lord is asking. That is what the Lord is saying to us tonight. So, let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we do just want to thank You that we are Your children, that we are born again. We are born again not by our own wills, or by the will of man, or by the flesh, but You have birthed us. You have made us Your children.
Lord, just like Your children, there is nothing that makes You love us—just this fact that we are Your children. How wonderful is that, Lord?
We want to rest on that. We want to rest on the fact that You love us just because we are Your children; that we do not have to have some reason for You to love us; that we do not have to do something, or anything like that, to make You love us. You love us because we are Your children.
Lord, we want to rest in that. We do not want just to be those who are beneficiaries. We want to respond to that love, to be brought out of childhood, Lord, to the place where we are saying, “Lord, I want to please You. I want to be about Your business.”
Lord, we do not say, “Help us to try harder.” We say this to You tonight, Lord: let Your Spirit rise up in us. Help us by Your grace to give You sway in our lives.
Help us, Lord, to lay down our arms, to open our hands to You, and let You do the things that You have meant for us—to be those ones that serve You out of a willing heart and find great joy in doing just that.
Lord, we thank You. We thank You for our Savior, Christ. We thank You for the Spirit who dwells in us. We pray that we become more and more aware of Him.
In Jesus’ name, amen.