The exhortation of the apostle Paul to Timothy begins in 2 Timothy 2:1:
Thou therefore, my child, be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
And the things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who enrolled him as a soldier.
And if also a man contend in the games, he is not crowned, except he have contended lawfully.
The husbandman that laboreth must be the first to partake of the fruits.
Consider what I say; for the Lord shall give thee understanding in all things.
Remember Jesus Christ.
And then, in 2 Timothy 4:6:
For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith:
Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved His appearing.
Finally, in 2 Timothy 4:21:
Give diligence to come before winter.
Eubulus saluteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren.
The Lord be with thy spirit. Grace be with you.
Our Father, we are so thankful that we could gather for this brief weekend, just to gather together and be encouraged by the fact that hither and yon—East Coast, West Coast, Canada, the United States—You are raising up faithful servants.
We are so thankful that we could gather to encourage one another for this brief time. We ask, Lord, that You would apprehend us and gain out of us that which is Your purpose from the very beginning of time.
Although we have little sense of predestiny and ages gone by, we want to remember the message of our dear brother who shared with us yesterday: from the very beginning, You planned for us to come and defeat the enemy, even as men made a little lower than the angels, but possessed by Jesus Christ and able to overcome.
And then today, he pressed us to look to the future in eternity, when those who overcome will be found with crowns, praising the Lord Jesus as overcomers.
Now, Lord, we come to this time caught in between eternity past and eternity future, finding ourselves in this present moment, at this milestone, at this meeting—which we believe, in the end, has been arranged by You.
We ask that You would leave things in our hearts as we go from this place to serve You. Oh, we thank You so much that we could gather together. Do bless all Your dear children. Gain what You want out of Your church for Your glory and honor. We pray in Jesus’ name.
When Timothy received this last letter of Paul, he read it, I am sure, with great interest and love. This was the man who was so honored that Paul would call him his son in the Lord. The apostle Paul was actually writing the last thing he would write to Timothy.
He came to the place there in chapter 2, and Paul’s words seemed to be prophetic in a way, as if he were leaving final instructions.
He was telling Timothy that he was going to have to lay hold of something, that he was going to have to strengthen himself going forward in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
It is as if Paul was saying, “Now, Timothy, there is grace upon grace. I want you to lay hold of all of it, because going forward you are going to have to suffer and be a good servant.”
Paul gives those four illustrations that we are all aware of. First, he gives the illustration of passing the torch in a marathon: “I want you to take all those things you have received from me, and I want you to pass them on to faithful men—faithful men who will be able to pass them on to others.”
Paul was saying, “Timothy, I am leaving you this deposit. Now, are you going to digest it, make it real to you, and pass it on to the brothers down through the generations?”
“You are going to have to fight like a soldier. You are going to have to be faithful in your discipline like an athlete. You are going to have to be intrepid like a farmer. Oh, you need to be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
Timothy took all this in and read on and read on. It probably did not strike him until Paul said, “Goodbye, Timothy. My time has come. I have done the best I could. I ran the race. Do not idolize me. My reward is a crown that the Lord will give me—and to you too.”
Paul pressed him to look toward the future, the coming of the Lord, and the reward that awaits faithful service. The last thing he said to Timothy was, “Timothy, would you try to get to me before winter?”
As it turns out, it was the last time Timothy saw Paul. He got up to Rome as fast as he could from Ephesus, and he got there just in time to see, according to history, Paul martyred before his very eyes.
As a matter of fact, Timothy was jailed just for going. But we only know from the writer of Hebrews that, about A.D. 69, he was released from prison and went back to Ephesus.
What would he do now for the rest of his life? He did not have his Paul with him anymore. What was left? He must have felt a great hollowness in him. Yet no—he felt instead a great deposit.
As he thought back about the days when he had traveled with Paul and been with Paul, he had seen Ephesus go through amazing stages. He was there at the beginning, as recorded in Acts 19, when the sparks were flying, demons were being cast out, people were being saved, and those involved in magic were throwing away their arts in faith in Jesus Christ.
The whole city came into an uproar because of the impact of Paul’s ministry, Timothy’s ministry, and his team of workers there in Ephesus. The Lord built the church through all of that spiritual travail and warfare—a church that had first love.
Timothy was there, sparks and all, danger and all. He was one of those who held Paul back from going into the amphitheater, and who sent Paul out of town lest he be stoned to death or killed by the Ephesians.
But then Timothy saw Paul thrown into prison the first time. He had to go back to Ephesus, and there had to be new elders appointed. I do not know; I guess the old elders had passed away.
Imagine being a young man, and Paul says, “Now look, Timothy. We need elders, overseers, but they need to be men of spiritual character. And we need deacons and deaconesses, people of spiritual character. I am depending on you, Timothy, my son.”
“Do not be afraid. Do not let them look down on your youth. Be such an example of the life of Christ—in your purity, your knowledge, and your service—that they will overlook whatever youthfulness you have and say, ‘This is a man of God.’”
Since you have saturated yourselves in 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy five times before you came here, you realize that another episode came in the life of Ephesus. Paul mentions it in 2 Timothy 2.
He says, “Now, the church—remember that church of first love, where everybody was serving by the grace of God, where the power of the Holy Spirit was there, where there was a tremendous time? Now, Timothy, the church has gotten large. It is like a large house, and there are a lot more vessels in that house than there were back in those early days.”
“But Timothy, some of those vessels are good. They are good brothers and sisters. And some of those vessels are worthless. In the church, things have changed.”
It used to be, as Paul wrote in 1 Timothy, “Tell them how to conduct themselves in the church of the living God.” That testimony was there. It was a pillar and foundation of truth. The light of Jesus was in their midst, and Paul wanted everybody to conform to that mystery of godliness seen in Christ.
Paul told Timothy to shape the church according to Jesus Christ, who was standing over them as the church of the living God. Boy, the testimony of Jesus was there.
But now, in 2 Timothy, the testimony seems to have been reduced to golden vessels—individuals whose lives really bore the testimony and fragrance of Jesus. The house of God had become a bit confusing.
So confusing, in fact, that Paul had to tell Timothy, “Now, Timothy, listen. Do not let anybody fool you. God knows those who are His, and He has written a seal on them. They are the ones who abstain from unrighteousness and wickedness.”
“I want you to be, Timothy—I do not care if the church of Ephesus is going downhill in a spiritual trend—I want you going up. I want you to be faithful. I want you to flee youthful lust. I want you to flee that love of money. I want you to be faithful, a holy, useful vessel.”
“This is what I am telling you, Timothy, just before I die.”
It was a lot for our brother to take in. I would like to go over Timothy’s life, as it were, as you have read it a number of times, just to underscore this simple history: How does God raise up a servant of God?
Thankfully, we have enough references in Timothy’s life that we can piece something together and gain an idea that we can pass along, because these principles are eternal.
We know by the end that Timothy was faithful for another thirty years after Paul died. He was faithful for another thirty years and was finally martyred in Ephesus as one of the overseers, when some rebel-rousers from the temple of Diana fell upon him and killed him.
He was a faithful martyr. His name, Timotheus, means “God is worthy.” Now, I hope you will be a Timotheus. There is no greater honor you could have.
Imagine Paul saying, “I find no other of kindred spirit.” Paul and Timothy were so different. You would never make a comparison and say, “Hey, they are a lot alike.”
Timothy seemed shy, always needing to take some Tums. He would get distracted with going to the gym when he should be out preaching the gospel, you know. And there was Paul—he was just one hundred percent locomotive, going forward.
They seemed so different, but no, they were kindred spirits. When it came right down to the end, Paul basically said, “You know what? Everybody else has left me, but you are still with me.”
“I am going to die soon, and I want you still to be with me. I want you to carry on the torch of the testimony. It is now your moment, Timothy, to stop hiding under my shadow. Please do not make an idol out of me, but take those things that you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and pass that torch around.”
Somehow, by the grace of God, you will be a faithful servant.
How did it all begin? Well, you know the story, but we will look at some verses in Acts 16. As Paul begins his second missionary journey, he bumps into Timothy on his way out, as he is going through the Galatian churches.
And he came also to Derbe and to Lystra: and behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewess that believed; but his father was a Greek.
The same was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium.
Him would Paul have to go forth with him; and he took and circumcised him because of the Jews that were in those parts: for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
—Acts 16:1-3
Now, we do not know exactly how the story begins. We know the facts, right? Somewhere Timothy was saved. Many think it was on Paul’s first missionary journey, when he first came through those parts.
But Paul evidently did not know Timothy. Perhaps Timothy was just in the background, one of those many who got saved. Maybe it was his mother Eunice or his grandmother Lois who led him to the Lord, because they were believers—and not only believers, but strong believers.
Maybe they witnessed to Timothy, and he came to the Lord. We do not know. But here is what we do know, and it is the first principle—perhaps the most important principle—of how God raises up a servant of God.
By the time Paul came back through on his second missionary journey with Silas, and he came through the region and met with the brothers in Lystra, Derbe, and Iconium—these three Galatian churches up there—they said, “You know something? There is this young man. I do not know if you remember him, but his name is Timothy.”
“And you know something? God is doing something in that young man’s life. His life stands out. As a matter of fact, not just in our own hometown—Lystra is where most people believe Timothy came from—but also in Iconium they know of him. Actually, they have asked him to come over and take part in the church life there.”
Within those two, or perhaps three, years between the two missionary ventures, a young man—a servant of God—was being raised up.
A man is raised up in church life by the life of God. How is ministry raised up? God’s life in us.
As far as we know, Timothy had no apostolic assistance. As far as we know, Paul’s team all went back to Antioch, and then there was the whole church council problem, and so on and so forth.
As far as we know, no apostle stayed back to work with Timothy or did anything special. God worked with Timothy. God worked His life in Timothy.
Timothy yielded his life, consecrated himself by the grace of God, and began serving in the body of Christ. Now, we do not know exactly how he became notable.
I personally think it was this: Mommy and Grandma had read the Old Testament Scriptures. First of all, Grandma and Mommy had some money—they had the scrolls. They were reading them to Timothy, who from a child grew up in the Scriptures.
When he got saved, he had a tremendous gift. You know what it was? Number one, he could read. Number two, he knew those Scriptures from the Old Testament. Number three, the Lord had given him enough light to explain those Scriptures.
You remember how Paul says, “Until I come, give yourself to the reading of the Scriptures.” This may have been Timothy’s main ministry.
Back in the early days in the church, most sermons were not three points and a poem, with a whole lot of running around. Back in the old days, basically, sermons were homilies. They read a verse and explained it. They read a verse, or a couple of verses, and explained them.
Like Chuck Smith did for years on the West Coast: one verse, explanation. Timothy knew the Scriptures. He would go to these various churches—many of them probably could not read, and very few of them probably had scrolls.
Timothy went up to Iconium with some scrolls under his arm, read from Isaiah, and explained, “Well, this must be about Jesus.” The Lord used him to teach.
His character was growing in that Jewish kind of character. When his mom and his grandma got saved, Timothy learned a whole new lesson about forgiveness and righteousness by faith. But you know what? It was all generated by God.
Nobody could take credit. Nobody could say, “Yeah, I saved him. Yeah, I raised him up. Yeah, I was a great apostle. I did a great job on Timothy.” God raised up Timothy.
This is the first point: God raises up a ministry by the increase of life in that person.
How are we going to be servants of God? It all begins with consecration.
Romans 12, which we spent time talking about last night, is actually an explanation of what happens when somebody offers the members of his body as a living sacrifice to God. You know what happens according to the rest of Romans?
I assume you have all read that passage, and you know what happens in Romans 12, because it is all about serving by the grace of God in the assembly.
I was interested to hear whether anybody said—well, I am sorry, nobody did—the first day, “What is the testimony of your consecration and your calling?”
I know what the first calling, as far as ministry goes, was in your life. It does not matter what your ministry is now. I know what your first calling was. You know what it was? It was a calling to fellowship in the body of Christ.
Now, what does that mean? Let us break it down. Your first calling is to take the Christ that you know and share that Christ with your brother, and to receive from your brother that which he has of Christ in fellowship.
Your calling is to the body of Christ. Your calling is to the fellowship of Jesus Christ corporately.
But unless you consecrate yourself and lay yourself down and say, “God, here are my members,” you remain an individual Christian. If you lay yourself down and present your members, you are practically fitted as a member into the body of Christ.
Then suddenly you find what? There are things to do.
As Paul puts it in Romans 12, each one of you has been given a measure of faith. What is your measure—pint size, quart size, or do you go by milliliters?
Everyone has a measure of faith. That is what Paul says in Romans 12:3. Then, in Romans 12:5, he says that each one is now a member and has been given His life—the fellowship.
In Romans 12:6, it says each of you has gifts according to the grace of God. So, what is your first ministry? It is to live alive in the body of Christ.
You see a need. By the grace of God, you go meet that need. It is not because you are a prophet or a teacher or anything, but you are a member of Christ’s body, and there is something to be supplied. By the grace of God, you supply it.
Because you have offered your life, you are able to do that by the grace of God and according to your measure of faith. It is a gracious thing to do, whether it is to be hospitable, to help with cheerfulness those who are downhearted, or to teach.
It is not as though you have been called to be a teacher, but there you are in the meeting, and help is needed. You stand up. How did you stand up? By the measure of faith, by the grace of God, and through faith.
I have noticed that you have taken home a treasure from reading that book Shepherding, so I want to mention this for just a second. I have heard several mentions up here about the book, and everybody seems to remember this: we are all shepherds.
Now let me explain that. That is absolutely true. Maybe this sounds theoretical to you, but it is not at all theoretical to me, because I have seen something of the truth of this.
You, as a Christian, have Christ dwelling in you. Now, He is not only Shepherd, but He is Teacher, He is Prophet, He is Healer, and He is Apostle.
At any given moment of time, He may ask you, by the grace of God, to do the work of an evangelist. That may not be your ministry, but by the grace of God you go out on the streets and do the work of an evangelist.
How can you possibly do it? It is because the Evangelist lives inside you, and He is able.
You may have trouble with faith, and yet at some moment in your life be called upon to lay hands on somebody and heal them. But of course, it is Jesus, the Healer within you.
By the grace of God, you are not limited by anything except a measure of faith, the grace of God, and the gift that He gives you. Are you available?
A member in the body of Christ learns how to serve by being available as a member. “Here I am, Lord. What can I do? Move the chairs? Praise God. What can I do?”
“Oh, the brother who was supposed to share the table cannot share? By the grace of God, Lord, help me. Oh yeah, I remember that Scripture I was reading on Friday.” Then you share, by the grace of God, something at the Lord’s table.
It is by the grace of God. It is not because you have a special gift, but because you have laid your life down. We share a life. I share what I know of Christ, and you share what you know of Christ. We have fellowship—all things in common, koinonia. It is body life.
Oh, what a treasure. But do you not know? This is how Timothy began to grow and eventually become an apostle. It started by being called into the body of Christ.
Now, it is a very simple thing, but it is very true. Everybody here, if you listen—if you are here tonight and you are reticent about joining in and praying during the time of worship when you are breaking bread back home—get over it.
You are a member of the body of Christ. Remember what Paul said: “Present your members as instruments unto God,” which is your reasonable worship, your spiritual service of worship. It is translated in different ways, but here is what it means.
The first thing you are, as soon as you are immersed into the body of Christ, is a priest in the household of God. Every Christian should be a prayer and a worshiper—every Christian.
If you have sat in your assembly and peeped up once a year, you are way behind schedule. You are holding in the life that is in Jesus Christ.
Do you mean the life of Jesus Christ in you is so shy, so small, and so unable that He can only bless God one time a year before His table? Is that the life of the Lord you have? Just a little shrimpy life—“Jesus is not very strong in me”?
That is a denial of who Jesus is.
Oh, listen. If you are a servant of God, you need to develop a real heart of worship. You need to be a worshiper.
The saints, even if you are twenty-two years old or forty-nine, should know on Sunday morning, “Now there is a worshiper.” Everybody else may be in, and the thing may be cold as a wet blanket. Somebody may read a Scripture that takes us somewhere into the middle of Leviticus, and the whole spiritual tenor of the worship time is lost.
Then you stand up and worship the living God, and we come right back on track. Are you alive to the fact that you are a priest—not an occasional priest, not a voluntary priest, but a priest in the house of God?
Furthermore, if you really love the Lord and have laid your life down, you should be at every prayer meeting. I am sorry, if you cannot make it circumstantially, you need to find a way out of that.
Do you want to learn the Lord? Do you want to become a servant of the Lord? You find it in prayer meeting.
I will explain that a little bit, but to start right off, you already have a ministry in the body of Christ. There you are: you are just saved, and now you are a worshiper.
Even if it is just a small load of worship: “Jesus, I love You.” As our brother Daniel says, it is okay if the young child says, “Jesus, I love You.”
We have one brother in Flushing. I think he is ten years old now, maybe. Even though he is ten years old, he prays some of the most precious prayers we have in the breaking-of-bread time, because he has been saved and he loves the Lord.
Then he always asks for a song like “I’m Happy and We’re Going to Heaven,” you know. Well, he is only ten, but boy, he is a priest in the house of God.
He shames all those proud men who are businessmen. They sit there the whole time. We sing songs, and they do not sing. If you are one of those persons, shame on you. Shame on you.
Your heart should be humbled when you see a little kid willing to worship God and you will not open your mouth. There is something wrong with your heart. There is an evil heart of unbelief if you cannot today be a worshiper of God.
Get that heart clear. Get your heart under the blood and repent of that, because every child who sees you sitting there like a stone wall is stonified.
You are hurting the body of Christ if that is your position. “Oh, not me. Oh, I am just too small. Oh, I am just too meek. Oh, I am just too proud. I am too tricky. I am too lazy.” That is what you are really saying.
All the kids over in the corner are picking that up. They say, “Well, that must be what a Christian is like. I am going to be lazy too.”
Oh, the saints came in and worshiped. So why do we leave it up to those four old ladies? They open their mouths, worship, love the Lord with all their heart, and start to cry because they love the Lord and are at the Lord’s table.
Why do we leave it to them? Where are the brothers? Where are the brothers?
Oh, for a masculine church. When the songs are sung, you should hear the brothers singing so loudly that the sisters can hardly be heard. Now, sisters, I have nothing against sisters, but you are the ones who are always in.
If we did not have sisters, we would not have brothers—well, I do not mean that. But you know what I do mean.
We have a prayer meeting, and who shows up? Thirty-five sisters and six brothers. Shame on it. Shame on us. You have nothing to pray? The devil has been attacking the assembly all week long. You have nothing to pray?
People ask me, “Well, I go to two prayer meetings a week. I go Tuesday night in Flushing and Thursday night in Manhattan.” Some people say, “Why are you doing it?” Why would I not do it?
Listen, this is the grace of God. You have the grace of God, and by your measure of faith and by grace, He enables you to be part of the body. I pray an increase and not a suffocation.
If we could just go back, just a bunch of us, and infuse the times of worship and prayer with life from the Holy Spirit, it would revolutionize the whole congregation. They would wake up and say, “What happened?”
But when we get down to that kind of pedantic, business-as-usual, ticking-off-the-boxes prayer for people who are sick, and there is no spirit in our prayers—where is the life?
Timothy grew by the life. Where is the life? There was something in that crazy church in Lystra. They had no great leadership. Paul appointed some elders, so there were some men of moral character, but we do not know of any of them being specifically gifted.
Yet over those two or three years, Timothy grew like a weed because Jesus’ life was there.
Whatever else you give your young people, if you are the one who works with young people, give them life. Do not give them phony stuff, theory, traditions, difficult messages to try to unravel. Give them life. Let them grow in grace.
That is the first step. Timothy was growing. So the brothers said, “He is a guy,” and Paul looked at Timothy and said, “I want that guy.” That is how he got his first break.
Timothy paid the price, right? He got circumcised. He paid a price to travel with Paul. Then he had to travel with Paul’s suitcases.
Paul carried every scroll of the Old Testament, both in Hebrew and Greek. Timothy had to carry them around, and they did not have wheel bags back then. Timothy got to carry around Paul’s stuff. That was the beginning of his auspicious ministry.
But it was the beginning of a life in which these grace gifts were being used by Timothy, and the Lord could move him on to the next thing.
What is the next thing? In 1 Corinthians 12:4, we have a simple statement:
Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
We know Paul goes on to mention nine gifts of the Spirit, which probably is not an exhaustive list. He is mentioning some supernaturally natural gifts that a person discovers.
Brother, sister, if you serve the Lord in the assembly by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, pursue the Lord, and fellowship with one another, you will discover that God has given you some gift of the Holy Spirit.
He gives this gift sovereignly to edify everybody, but everybody gets one. Have you discovered your spiritual gift?
It is a supernatural thing. Although when we hear of such gifts as helps and governments, we say, “Well, what is unusual about that?” When somebody has the gift, it is supernatural—the ability they have to govern, lead, and get things done.
The word grace is the word charis. In English, we spell it C-H-A-R-I-S. The word for gift is charisma, C-H-A-R-I-S-M-A. The ending -ma is a neuter ending in Greek that simply means grace made concrete.
That is what a gift is: grace made concrete.
There you are serving, filled with the Holy Spirit, serving by the grace of God and by faith, simply doing whatever needs to be done. As you are teaching, people begin to notice.
This is how wonderful it is to be in the body of Christ. People start to notice that sometimes, when you are teaching, you say some prophetic things.
Somebody comes up to you and says, “Brother, I am so glad you came to visit us. That is exactly what we needed to hear.” You hear people saying such things, and you discover there is a dimension of the prophetic.
You speak, and a person says, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, “God is among you indeed.” You were just teaching by the grace of God, let us say, but suddenly something popped out—a prophetic thing popped out.
The more you serve, the more you begin to serve according to burdens that the Lord puts in your heart. It is not just teaching important truths about Jesus, or even gospel teaching; now the Lord is beginning to put a burden in your heart.
This is prophetic ministry, which we need in the body of Christ.
My dear brother Stephen—I have been listening to him now for more than forty years—and he is a teacher. But he throws out prophecies, if you catch them, because he is a prophetic teacher.
I do not think I am telling anything out of school, and I do not know if even Jeffrey will type that in, but that is the truth. He says things, and you can sense the time zone of God come down upon us. We realize that God is speaking to us right now in this situation.
That is prophetic ministry. That is a supernatural thing.
Paul says, “Pursue love, and pursue the spiritual gifts, and especially that you might prophesy.” Somebody who is growing in the grace of the Lord, like Timothy, is also growing in spiritual gifts.
He begins to find some gifts popping out that he did not even know were there.
So he goes out witnessing. He tries this way; he tries Paul’s way, and it does not work. He tries Peter’s way, and it does not work. But eventually, if you get out there and witness long enough, what happens? You discover the net you can use, or the fishing pole you can use.
Some guys cast the line—I watch them at the beach and say, “That thing got out there a hundred yards. There is no way I can do that.” Other guys go out to the dock and lower a rope down. They have a lead ball on the bottom with some crab meat or something.
There are all kinds of ways to fish. But when you find your fishing way, you might discover that you are an evangelist. Who knew?
But you have to find your way. It might just be one on one. Most evangelists are one on one, you know that, do you not?
I was in a Billy Graham Crusade training conference one time, years ago, and Billy Graham got up to the microphone and said, “My kind of evangelism is the worst, because I am throwing buckets of water out, and there are a lot of Coke bottles out there.”
He said, “What I really hope is that people who come forward will be evangelized one on one by the counselors once they come up to the front.” He understood that there were evangelists.
Have you found out how you can fish?
I found out. I was just willing to do anything in the body of Christ. This is just for me: put a guitar on my chest and send me out, and I can sing and preach. Take the guitar off, and I feel naked. I have nothing to say.
But I found out how to fish. That is how I do it. So I cannot say to you, “Here is how you have to fish: take a guitar and go out.” You say, “Well, I cannot play guitar.” That is going to make a difference.
I evangelized and played guitar, and people got saved. That was my little fishing trick the Lord showed me. I did the work of an evangelist in a different way, but it was just by being willing to go.
I went to many malls. I stood there, handed out tracts, and did all kinds of things. But I found I could hand out tracts—or bring along people—and they were somehow more courageous when I was standing out in front, playing and looking like a jerk.
Then they did not feel so bad. They would hand out the tracts, and I would be preaching and singing. That is how it worked for me. That is how I discovered it. Is that not wonderful?
It is by being faithful, by the grace of God.
The greatest need we have right now in your assembly and mine is evangelizing the United States—Caucasians, Hispanics, African Americans, people here in America.
Japanese, Korean, Chinese—it makes no difference. It is a multicultural world we live in here, but we need evangelism.
We are stymied by the fact that everybody is a chicken. They are hiding upstairs for fear of persecution.
But there are some of you. The two ways, most likely, a person comes into real ministry for the Lord are these: one is evangelism, and the other is teaching.
You may prefer teaching, but the Lord may want to kick you out. Timothy was a theoretician. He loved study. He knew the Bible. He liked to study doctrine. Paul was always kicking him out: “Get out there and evangelize. Do the work of an evangelist.”
“But no, no, no, no, Paul. I would rather stay in my attic and study the Greek.”
But you see, reality—what does it take to put some muscle on a Christian? I will tell you what it takes: standing out there on the fire line and witnessing for Jesus.
Our dear brother Stephen, such a meek and mild man, in his early days would go out on the street, sing gospel songs, and preach the gospel. He would take as much ridicule as you receive today. That is how you get strong. You obey the Lord.
Jesus says, “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses.” How many are witnesses?
You do not just have to go out in the street or play guitar. But how many of you are being a witness? It may be your way into ministry.
That kind of stuff puts muscle on you. We are great theoretical people, but if you serve God, go up against the enemy, find victory, and do that long enough, you get some bones and muscle on you.
If you are going to be a servant of God, you need to know about that.
We have this little inbred teaching ministry, which is okay. How wonderful it is to have teaching, man. But there is the gospel—the one-two punch of a growing church.
I speak as a fool, because some of you do one thing well: gospel work among the Chinese. Some of your churches are very good at that.
But I want you to become a man of God, a woman of God. I am telling you, you have to put some muscle on. This is the way you do it: by being faithful to the Lord, letting Him raise you up and show you.
Maybe a gift comes because you are in a prayer meeting, interceding, in the prayer, and in the Spirit in prayer. As you are there, the Lord shows you something in the Word of God.
You open up, find that word, speak it, stand by faith on it, and God does something. You begin to realize God has given you a word of knowledge and a word of wisdom.
These are gifts that you often find in prayer. As you are praying, the Lord gives you a Scripture. As you are praying, the Lord tells you something, and you say it out and claim it.
There is no big deal about it. They do not say, “Oh, sister, you have the word of knowledge.” No, but in the prayer meeting, you had it. It is for the good of the assembly, so we can pray more effectively.
Even in our young group in Manhattan, we have some people who occasionally say something that comes right from the Lord. As soon as they say it, we launch forward in prayer and faith.
People come together and say, “Okay, what are we going to pray about tonight? Oh, we are going to have to pray about all this sexual harassment that is going on. It is such a problem.” We all go, “Oh, yeah.”
But then somebody has a Scripture. They have found an angle in which to pray. Boom, off we go praying. That is what I am talking about. That is a supernatural gift.
Call it an impression, whatever you want. Let us not make a big deal about the gift itself. It is about being useful in the body of Christ, and that is why the Spirit gives us these various gifts. They are so precious.
Maybe you are in fellowship and life in a church, and every time you help out and do something administrative, the church marches ahead.
Do you know there are brothers who have a gift to make announcements, and there are other brothers who do not? One brother makes an announcement, and everybody is so confused that they have forgotten what was said. Nobody remembers to show up Wednesday, because even though the brother said it, nobody heard it.
Another brother stands up and makes an announcement, and it is like saying, “Hey, shut up, everybody.” Everybody says, “Yep. Oh, what are the announcements?” It is a gift.
Or somebody is in a meeting, you are having a Bible study, things are going on, and somebody starts to feel queasy and uneasy. They do not know what is going on, but the Lord has given them discerning of spirits.
“I can sense the spirit is not right in that person. They are saying good stuff, but there is something wrong.” They have a spiritual gift worth a million bucks in the body of Christ: gatekeepers in the body.
We need to have such gifts. Do you pursue these things? Are they interesting to you? Or do you just want to do everything naturally, out of our own flesh and our own intelligence?
We will not be able to exist for long unless we have supernatural power from heaven, seen in these simple gifts given to members of the body of Christ.
When you start administering faithfully according to the gifts that God has given you, there is increase in your ministry and increase in your life.
You started out by grace, and charis became charisma.
We find an interesting verse in 2 Timothy 1:6. Paul says:
For which cause I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee through the laying on of my hands.
What is Paul talking about? We actually do not know what gift he is referring to, but Paul, at some point, laid hands on Timothy, and Timothy was empowered in a certain gift.
Let us say, for the sake of argument—because we do not know—that it was prophecy. Now, when Timothy taught, a prophetic element began to come through his teaching because this had been administered to him.
He received a gift from God. It was a gift. He did not earn it, but God wanted him to have it in order to edify the body of Christ. Timothy was willing to do it. He received that spiritual gift, and he became more useful.
Then we come to 1 Corinthians 12:5, where it talks about ministries.
And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord.
After saying that there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, Paul says there are varieties of ministries and the same Lord. He is talking about another category.
It is one thing to have a gift, such as the gift of prophecy. It is another thing to be a prophet. That is a ministry.
A gift can be given to anybody by the Holy Spirit, according as He sovereignly desires. But a prophet is a ministry given by the Lord to the church.
How does He raise such a ministry? Let us say it is a prophet. Is it enough just to have a gift in you? No. The Lord has to start working on your life.
Your life needs to be able to speak the Word of God in some sense incarnately. Your life has to have the moral character to give gravitas to the word of prophecy spoken.
In my charismaniac experience, I have heard people with gifts of prophecy who had no character at all. To tell you the truth, in the long run, those prophecies were despised.
If you have not been in that environment, you have no idea what I just said.
But when you find a man who has been disciplined by the Holy Spirit and worked upon in his life, then when he speaks a word, his life is behind it.
Then you have a prophet—a ministry which only the Lord can distribute.
That is why, when we have a weekend like this, we cannot say, “Now we are going to call you into the ministry,” because nobody can do that except the Lord.
But He looks for those who are consecrated and serving by grace. He looks for those who are pursuing spiritual gifts that would edify the body, so that the body might be supernaturally natural.
Oh, how wonderful it is when you see it.
My father-in-law went to Halford House back in 1974. He went with a bunch of friends on a business trip over there. Lance used to be there in England, though Lance was not there at the time.
They went and visited Halford House. When they got there, one of my father-in-law’s friends had a blistering migraine headache. He was one of those guys who got migraines. Here he was flying over to England, and he came down with this migraine headache.
A woman welcomed them at the door. They said, “Well, we have heard about this. We met Lance over in the United States.” She said, “Welcome, come in.”
They looked around the place and saw Halford House. They went out in the garden, and two of the elders were out there, as it turned out, planting roses.
As they were talking, this friend—his name was Bob—kept rubbing his head. They said, “Brother, have you got a problem?” He was not in the conversation.
He said, “Well, yeah, I just have this headache. It is blinding me, even.” They said, “No problem. Let us pray.”
Somebody went in and got a little flask of oil. They came out, and these two simple brothers—you would not know either name; it was not Lance, it was not Joe Big Somebody—were just two brothers in the church.
They anointed him with oil. They prayed, and instantaneously his migraine left him.
That really impressed this man and my father-in-law. They had a cup of tea in Halford House, and then they left to go other places.
There was no glory given to some supposed healer. Nobody said, “Oh yeah, we are going to call up the healer guy.” No, because they knew the Lord could heal, and they simply had faith.
They prayed, and that man’s migraine went instantaneously. It was so supernaturally natural. It seemed as if the headache just dropped on the ground.
How we need this kind of undertow of the supernatural going on in our life in the assembly. Then the Lord calls people into such a ministry.
Paul was called as an apostle from his conversion, but he was commissioned more than eleven years later.
He was called to be an apostle at his conversion, but for eleven years he lived as a witness in the body of Christ back in Tarsus. Eventually he became a teacher.
Then, as the Lord opened up the Word of God to him, he became a prophetic teacher. When Barnabas brought him down to Antioch, he was a teacher, an evangelist, and a prophet.
He served with the brothers for a year or so in the body of Christ. He had a ministry. Either he was a teacher or a prophet, because he is listed among the men in Acts 13 who sent out the apostles on their first missionary journey.
But he was not an apostle, although he had been called to be an apostle for more than eleven years.
Finally, one day in Antioch, as the brothers fasted and prayed, the Holy Spirit spoke through somebody supernaturally—a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge, a word of prophecy, whatever you want to call it.
It was not as though the Lord came in, opened the door, and said, “This is the Lord, Lord, Lord. I am telling you.” No. As they were praying, a brother said, “The Lord is telling us, the Holy Spirit is telling us, we must separate Paul and Barnabas for the work of the ministry.”
That was when Paul was commissioned as an apostle through the church and through these ministries, as they were waiting on the Lord.
But first we need these ministries. Only God can raise up these ministries.
God raised up this ministry in Timothy. He was that grace-filled brother in Lystra and Iconium. The next thing you know, he is a circumcised bondservant carrying baggage.
Every once in a while, Paul would stop after preaching all afternoon in the marketplace. Paul would get tired and say, “Yeah, my voice is a little hoarse here. Timothy, take over for me.”
Timothy would say, “But, but, what, what, what?” By the grace of God, Timothy would stand up and preach the gospel. Somebody would get saved.
Ten may have been saved when Paul preached, but one got saved when Timothy preached. Timothy was learning, following along, learning the Lord.
Then it came to the place when they came through his hometown, in 1 Timothy 4:14, where it says:
Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.
The elders saw a ministry in Timothy—not merely gifts. Paul laid hands on him, and he received the gift of God. But these elders saw a ministry in Timothy, and they wanted to commit it to the Lord.
They already saw it. They recognized it. It was not as if the elders said, “Let us make him a prophet.” No, they said, “Well, we see it. Now let us commit this matter to the Lord.”
They prayed for this dear brother Timothy, and he started on another level of life, grace, and gift—as somebody who had been fitted as a minister of the new covenant.
Timothy became more responsible. Sometimes Paul could leave Timothy behind in a city and go on to the next town. Timothy could wrap things up, preach the gospel, disciple new converts, and bring order to the church.
He could help them understand: “No, no, no. The Lord is the Head. He leads. No, I know you are a big businessman, but you are not leading. It is the Holy Spirit who leads by the headship of Christ. You need to listen to Him to make your plans.”
Timothy began to have a greater status. Yet he was still kind of shy, not the most aggressive guy.
Paul had to say to him, “Tim, you are neglecting something. You are on higher ground, but you are neglecting that higher ground. Remember that ministry given to you by the prophecy of the elders? Remember that? Stand in it by grace. Be faithful.”
Timothy continued to minister as he went from place to place. Oh, how wonderful it is to see this growth in Timothy.
Today, we need the body of Christ alive, so that grace can be fellowshiped, gifts can be discovered, and ministries can be fitted into men’s lives by grace and the gift of God.
How we need this today. Today we have so-called ministers like myself. I was a GMO minister—genetically modified.
I got saved, but then I went into the Baptist hothouse. By the time I came out, I knew Baptist doctrine, the Baptist viewpoint, and I also had ministerial disease—a pastor complex.
The Lord could only use me for so long on that faithful trail. Then He had to drop that whole thing and say, “You know, that was not really My developed gift. You took My gifts, and then you got them genetically modified and became Baptist. I want you to be My servant.”
Are you the Lord’s servant?
One time Brother Lance came to Manhattan. Back then, we were a rough bunch of twenty or twenty-five people. He came and spoke to us one time.
Afterwards, we were all eating—you know, because we always eat. There were snacks out, and Lance was standing there. One of the sort of wise-guy brothers—we have a couple of wise guys; Manhattan is full of them—said, “So anyway, hey Lance, what do you do?”
You know what Lance did? Lance looked at him and said, “I am a servant of the Lord.”
Now, that guy could have been the Tasmanian devil; he would have drilled himself into the ground, because he realized the stupidity of his question.
He was asking, “What are you, a computer scientist? What do you do? What do you do that is important?” To which Lance said, “I am a servant of the Lord.”
Can you say that? Before you are an apostle, before you are a teacher, before you are a prophet, before you are an evangelist, Paul says, “I am a servant of the Lord.”
Can you say that with all your heart? If somebody asked you, would you be able to say, “I am a servant of the Lord,” or would you try to hide that identity?
Now, I am not saying that some people should go around with calling cards: “Dana Condon, servant of the Lord.” Well, you can question whether somebody like that really is.
But do you know that in your heart? In the final analysis, that is the definition of who you are. Beyond your employment, beyond your family, beyond your cultural identity: I am a servant of the Lord.
The Lord wants to raise up ministries like this, but oh, what discipline of the Holy Spirit is necessary to bring us into these things.
Many times, back in the charismatic and Jesus People days, people with gifts were catapulted into ministry before they had any character at all.
They were newly saved, but they were a former basketball player or a star of some kind. So they were catapulted into pulpits and gave a great testimony: “How I got off drugs and got saved.”
But they had no moral character. They fell into sin and caused great grief to the church. They had gifts, for sure—some real spiritual gifts, supernatural spiritual gifts—but they did not have the body of Christ and the discipline of the Holy Spirit to forge the character of Christ into them.
When they ministered Christ through gifts, their character did not back it up.
You have the body of Christ, but you have to be able to work, encourage, and help brothers and sisters come into their fitted ministry through the discipline of the Holy Spirit and the discipline of the assembly.
You are God’s gift to prevent GMO-modified ministers. God wants the real thing: somebody born in the body of Christ, growing in the body of Christ, learning grace, gift, and ministry in the body of Christ.
When all of that happens, there comes a day when the Lord does an Acts 13 and sets somebody apart for the work.
They have been faithful. They have ministered in their church and local assembly. Somewhere along the line, the Lord sees fit—because only God can bring somebody into the work.
It says there are many gifts, but one Spirit. There are many ministries, but one Lord. But you know what else it says? There are many workings, many works, but there is only one God who decides who works.
We are talking about a yet higher level of ministry. Why? Because the Lord is entrusting a worker not only to minister in the locale, but perhaps to minister in other places—to build the foundation of Jesus Christ, to be a master builder, and to be careful about how the church is built.
The Lord raises up workers to go from place to place, but He cannot raise up workers unless there are first grace-filled people, then gifted people, then ministries, and then workers coming out of ministries.
Those ministers got together. What does Acts 13 say? The prophets and teachers got together, fasted, and prayed. The Lord spoke and said, “Set apart Saul and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them,” and they became workers.
Then these men, as we find in Ephesians 4—apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers—become God’s workmanship. They are gifts to the church, sent out to the church, going here and there to help build and order the church.
As Timothy had to do in Ephesus, they sometimes warn of wolves and whatever else is needed. They go from place to place as a gift to the church.
When they go somewhere, it says they equip the saints, who in turn do the ministry in the church. Then the church builds itself up in love.
They do not have to have a worker stay there for the church to be built up. Once brothers and sisters are equipped, they can build one another up in love in the body of Christ.
The Lord began to send Paul around. Apollos had a team, Barnabas had a team, Peter had a team, and John had a team. Teams were going around here and there, building up the body of Christ. They were sent out as workers, sent out by God.
Timothy became part of that work.
Paul stayed in Ephesus for about three years. During that time, Paul did his work there. He preached the gospel in the school of Tyrannus, but the church continued to meet over at Aquila and Priscilla’s house and elsewhere.
In those three years, Paul not only did his apostolic work and teaching work, but he raised up a bunch of men. He sent them out.
He sent Epaphras out to Colossae, and a church got started out there. He sent out another man, Timothy’s workmate named Erastus, and he went out and worked.
When Paul finally left Ephesus, Acts 20:4 says he was accompanied by Sopater of Berea, Aristarchus, Secundus, Gaius, Timothy, Tychicus, and Trophimus.
All of them were workers raised up by the worker. As Paul worked in Ephesus and sent these brothers out, they came back, taught, learned, prayed, and went out again.
During this time, Paul, this great worker, produced more workers. So the work continued on.
This is something only the Lord can commission, something only God can do. We cannot send out workers.
Let me tell you about the last thing I guess I have time to say tonight. It is this: What is the qualification for a worker?
They have various different gifts. It does not actually tell us what all the qualifications are. As an apostle, Paul was an apostle, but it does not actually say, “What is the gift of an apostle? What does the guy do?”
It is not really a gift so much as a commission to go and build up the body of Christ. That is what Paul was as an apostle.
But what is the one thing necessary for somebody to enter into the work?
Brothers and sisters, in this last day, I pray with a heart full of faith that God is going to raise up workers. I look at a field white unto harvest. I see sheep without a shepherd going astray. I feel the compassion of Jesus.
I listen to Jesus’ prayer, and He says, “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest.”
We need workers—men approved by God, with godly character—workers out into the world and doing this final work before the Lord comes back.
But the one qualification I would mention, among all the other things I believe are necessary for a worker, is this: a worker really needs to have a vision of Christ.
There are many people who can serve and work in the church, but if you do not see a bigger picture of what God is doing, if you do not have a vision of Christ—the comprehensive Christ, the all-sufficient Christ, the Christ who is Head over all, Christ the beginning and the end, Christ’s finished work, what Christ is doing now, and what Christ sees as His bride—then you cannot cooperate in the work.
The work is a bigger thing. It takes a bigger vision.
We talk sometimes ad infinitum about vision and having vision. Without vision, you really cannot be a worker.
Vision does not just come to some lazy person who says, “You know, God, give me a vision. I do not know what I am doing. I know I fold the chairs up after the service on Sunday, but give me a vision, Lord. What are You doing?”
The Lord gives vision to those who are serving Him and need further direction. They have come to a certain place, and they cry out to the Lord, “Lord, help me. What can I do?”
If you are pressing into the Lord, the Holy Spirit will show you a vision of Him.
I wish I had time, but I really need to be careful here. There I was, this evangelist, if you want to say. I was preaching the gospel, and people would get saved.
But then I would watch and see that these people got saved, and nobody was discipling them. They became lukewarm Christians, and the church was not really vital.
The more I saw, the more discouraged I became. I said, “Well, why should I be an evangelist? It is not working. People get saved, and they get lost by next year. What happened to all of them?”
I was pressed up against a wall on that thing. In the midst of those circumstances, even trying to teach people but finding that they were picking up a lot of theory and head knowledge, what was happening? They were not growing.
Then I saw. I saw a vision of Christ.
That was the end of my ministry, as far as I was concerned, because here is what happens when you see a vision. There is only one vision. There are many roads, many works, and many ministries, but they all lead to one vision: the vision of Christ.
When you see Christ in His fullness, you see that the work is already done in Him. You see that what you thought was impossible is absolutely possible by Him.
I would say, “Lord, how are You going to recover the church? Nobody is really faithful and fervent and pressing into You.” Then you see the Lord, and you see that He knows exactly what He is doing.
He knows exactly who is overcoming. He knows exactly who is faithful. He is not upset about it a bit, because He has His precious ones, even if we cannot see them.
Do you believe He has His precious ones? Do you believe He has His remnant? Do you believe He has His overcomers?
When you see the Lord, you realize He has it already planned from beginning to end.
Of course, when you see a vision of the Lord, you know what that does: it completely undoes you. No matter what ministry you thought you had, when you see the Lord in His ministry, you realize that you are an unprofitable servant.
You realize, “How I am undone.”
Imagine John, faithful all those years. When he sees the Lord on the isle of Patmos, he falls down like a dead man because he sees that all his work among the seven churches—the work he was trying to do so faithfully—was nothing compared with the Lord Jesus, who was working among the lampstands.
When you see how the Lord Jesus works among the lampstands, you feel pretty bad about being an apostle taking care of lampstands. John was undone, and when he saw it, he said, “Woe is me.”
But here is the thing: do you know what the third part about vision is? First, you see the Lord. Then you see yourself.
Our brother said yesterday that if you see yourself, you get disconsolate. You say, “Woe is me, I am undone.”
But the Lord never gives a real heavenly vision without there being a call in that vision.
You look in the Bible and see that those to whom He really showed Himself received a calling in that vision.
Isaiah says, like a fool, “Here am I; send me.” Paul says, “What wouldst Thou have me to do, Lord?”
Paul saw that everything he had done was against the name of Christ. He had been a persecutor. The whole thing fell before his eyes like a house of cards, yet still he could say, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”
He heard his call in the midst of devastation.
Have you ever been devastated by the vision of Christ, Lord over all? Then you have heard a calling. He is calling you to step into that which He is showing you, to cooperate with Him in that which He is showing you.
If you will faithfully do that, you will be part of the work.
You may not be an apostle, but you may be somebody helping finance the work. You may be somebody who is a facilitator.
From what we know—and it is tradition, so we do not know for sure—Lois and Eunice, Timothy’s mother and grandmother, were actually quite wealthy. They supported Paul often in the work and ministry, along with Timothy. They were part of the work.
There are a lot of different aspects to this whole thing, but it all begins with consecration.
Then it leads to the pursuit of spiritual gifts, so that I can be more edifying to the body. Then the Lord sets aside those who have ministry and a recognized ministry, as Timothy was prayed for by the elders.
At some point, the Lord says, “Set apart for Me Timothy for the work that I have for our dear brother.” Timothy was faithful until the day he died.
Now, this is a moment. We are at the end, and there is much more that could be said, but the real point is this: I do not know if you see that the torch is being passed.
I do not know if you are in a position like Timothy, realizing that a lot of deposit has been treasured up in you. You have heard messages online. You have heard sermons. You have been to WCCC, which is the absolute heaven on earth.
You have been through years of hearing and hearing. Now the Lord says, “Will you digest, make real, and pass along those things that you have heard?”
Is it just notes, or something you have forgotten? Or are you making that living and real?
You know the Lord really loves us. He has gathered us here for the purpose of raising up men and women in ministry, and even to cooperate in His eternal purpose, His work that He has to do.
There are so few people who understand what the Lord is really about in these days. They are running around serving like chickens with their heads cut off.
But you guys know more than anybody else I know.
I am praying that He will touch some hearts here, so that He can have some fruitful ministry and work in these last days.
Our brother gave us the time constraints yesterday. He said, “From the very beginning, this was God’s plan for you.” Then today he told us, “The end is very near for him who overcomes.”
This is the time you are living in.
Are you willing to stand in whatever the Lord has for you, to be faithful, to be a bondservant, whatever level of ministry the Lord may give you?
Let it show in the body of Christ where you live—real, Spirit-filled life of Christ coming out of you. Let there be gifts exercised.
How are you going to know if you have a gift? Have you ever exercised it?
May God help us to exercise those things that are in our heart, so it is not just theory but reality—tested, muscles put on us because we have spoken things, been corrected, made mistakes, and learned our lessons, all superscribed by the Holy Spirit.
Oh, in these last days, Jesus may come back this very night. But if He does, He wants you to be on your way upward in the body of Christ, in terms of value, deposit, and character.
You may be a pretty new Christian. As a matter of fact, when Jesus comes back, at that very moment somebody will have just been born again.
But if they are pursuing and going higher from that very beginning point, they will be part of those overcomers. The Lord knows who is in and who is out. He has plenty of mercy, but there is no place for sluggards.
There is no place for passive people, no place for people storing up head knowledge while they are not serving God.
May we be found faithful, serving the Lord when He returns. We will not be those lazy servants, but we will be serving the Lord, and when He comes back, He will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
For that, we need to be in spiritual increase: from grace to gift, from gift to ministry, and from ministry to work.
This is the process of what happened in Timothy’s life, and it is the process of what the Lord wants to do in many lives here tonight.
May the Lord help us. Only He can bring us through that threshold of the cross, where we come and say, “Lord, I lay it all out before You now. I am Yours. I am Your bondservant. I am a servant of the Lord.”
That is my identity. Wherever I work, wherever I live, I am a servant of the Lord.
So, Lord, we just come to You in our weakness and frailty, trying to express these matters before us.
Oh Lord, the church in so many ways is flagging, is failing, has fallen into a Laodicean lukewarmness. People seem content with riches and content with a mediocre ministry.
But, Lord, You are not content. You are telling us to get hot, to be zealous, and repent. You are telling us to realize that just as You overcame, we can overcome through You.
Lord, we pray for upward movement in the spiritual lives of every brother and sister here. We are so thankful that we could attend and listen to these things.
But now, Lord, we come to listen to the Holy Spirit’s voice within us, telling us to repent, be faithful, overcome, and serve You as bondservants.
We realize the book of Revelation was written to bondservants. Nobody else can understand that book. But bondservants can hear what the Spirit is saying to the church, repent, do the first works, gain the first love, and be ready for You as a bride when You should appear.
Lord, help us to come into these things. It is a move of the Holy Spirit we need through this land. We need it on the West Coast, East Coast, Canada—every place represented here tonight.
Oh, move us, Lord, with the moving of God. Let the gifts of the Spirit, the ministries of the Lord, and the work of God be seen once again among Your people, so that You will hasten to come to receive us.
We pray in Jesus’ precious name.