Well, good morning, saints. Y’all don’t sound like you’re awake. Good morning, saints. Man, thank you.
It is such a beautiful day. I mean, I love these gorgeous days we’ve had. It’s amazing. I love them. I wish the Lord would just end our days with a string of these, but anyway, the Lord is good. And this morning we come to rejoice in our Lord and Savior.
Let us begin with a word of prayer. I need it this morning.
Lord, we come to You. Lord, this morning, our dependence is upon Thee. Lord, we’re dependent upon the anointing to be able to share in the Word of God, to share with one another. And Lord, we ask for that anointing upon speaking and hearing this morning, that, Lord, You can bring forth fruit out of Your Word, Lord, and not just education.
Lord, we thank You. We trust You this morning. We ask that You make it living and real to our hearts as we share. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, let us begin by reading a couple of Scriptures. The first one is out of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament: Malachi 3:16-17.
Then they that feared the Lord spake one with another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him, for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name.
And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.
I hope that’s why we’re here this morning: because we fear the Lord, and we think upon Him, and we want to share Him with one another.
“They shall be Mine,” saith the Lord of hosts, “in that day when I make up My jewels.” When I make up My jewels—My precious stones—and I will spare them as a man spares his own son that serves him. In the day that I make up My jewels.
Then Revelation 21:10-11.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: her light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal.
He took me to a high mountain, and I saw the holy Jerusalem descending from heaven, having the glory of God. And her light was likened to a stone most precious—a jewel.
Well, this morning, I have been struggling a lot, frankly, with how to begin this message. About six or eight weeks ago, as I really began to consider this message before the Lord—it is a precursor to our time at the conference—and, of course, the eternal purpose of God, which is what this conference is about, and serving God in our generation, was heavy on my heart.
I was before the Lord about it, and I came across the Scripture in Malachi 3:17: “They shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels.”
And I said, “Lord, you know, that’s it, isn’t it? God’s eternal purpose: to bring many sons to glory, that we might be His precious stones.”
Precious stones. It seems as if the Lord is in the jewelry business, making stones—precious stones.
And then I was also greatly burdened about all of the significant events in the lives of the saints that we know and in our midst: trials, deep tribulations, great suffering in some cases.
I thought of Winnie, and we just recently got that testimony from Winnie. She was struggling with death. She said, “In the beginning of the year, death was like a dot on the horizon, and it turned into a furious beast.” But praise the Lord, she triumphed in that. The peace of God came upon her, and she prevailed through the Lord Jesus.
We know that death is one of the strongest forces on earth. In fact, Psalm 89 says we cannot escape it. It is one thing you cannot escape. And yet the Lord said, “Whosoever believeth in Me shall never die.”
There is triumph even in the greatest force upon this earth—the force of death.
And then I had to consider those who are struggling with living, and all the trials—some of the trials that have been going on for years, not just for a week or two. We know the trial of the Olsen family. Some really struggle with living.
Brothers and sisters, I thought about Paul. Paul said, “For me to live is Christ.” That was his secret of triumph. Paul certainly went through a difficult life: with the thorn in his flesh, with being imprisoned, and with many whom he loved so much leaving him near the end of his life. He suffered much, and yet he said, “For me to live is Christ.”
That was the glory of living. That is why living was worthwhile: because of Christ. And in one of those prison letters he writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, Rejoice.”
Brothers and sisters, to enter into the triumph of life—of living—even into the depths of despair. I am just thankful that, brothers and sisters, there is triumph in all that we face.
And so, as I considered these matters of God’s eternal purpose, this thought about Him making us into precious stones, into jewels, and then all of the suffering and trials that we seem to be encountering in a very intense way, particularly in the last few weeks, I said, “Lord, the burdens mesh.”
Because it is all a part of Your eternal purpose: to make precious stones. That is what is going to give our Lord joy—precious stones.
So that is the way the burden developed in my heart. His purpose, brothers and sisters, as we have heard through the years, is to bring many sons to glory. It just kind of rolls off our tongues, and we say, “Yes.” But, brothers and sisters, often we forget the process of bringing us to glory. And it is a real process.
He is after a special treasure. I do not know if you have thought about this much, but every one of us in this room is a special treasure to the Lord—a precious stone that is in the process of being developed.
And as we come into this conference, I am hoping that the Lord will, like He did John, take us up to that high mountain and give us a fresh, new perspective from His point of view, that we might see His eternal purpose and realize that we are a living part of that eternal purpose.
You know, when He took John up to that mountain, what did he see? What was it that he saw?
I want to tell you this morning: what he saw was God’s eternal purpose in its full glory, manifest in its full glory—His purpose brought to completion.
And what did he see? He saw a city, the New Jerusalem, coming out of heaven.
Brothers and sisters, I know that in our hearts and in our minds, as we think of that, it is almost like a fairy tale. But it is not. The Lord is after building this city. This is His eternal purpose.
And we know, because we have heard for so many years, that this city is actually His bride, His helpmeet, that will be with Him through eternity, serving with Him, governing with Him—a helpmeet, a bride, the eternal purpose of God.
It is on my heart that we have a fresh view of what the Lord is doing.
Think about it. You and I are deeply involved in this eternal purpose. Without precious stones, there will be no eternal purpose. Think about that.
For God’s eternal purpose to be fulfilled, He has to have precious stones. That is what we are a part of: becoming jewels, something worthy of Him—a special treasure that He treasures so much.
To me, as the Scripture about becoming a precious stone leaped off the page, I said, “You know, is that not the explanation for my life? Is that not the reason why I was created? Is that not the reason why I was born? Is that not my eternal destiny? Is that not what is preeminent and primary in all of our lives: that we might be turned into precious stones?”
I think it gives us explanation, frankly, for our whole life. You are important to the Lord—a precious stone in development.
I think it is much like Job. You remember all the sufferings that Job went through—tremendous, inexplicable suffering that our brother went through. And yet it was the Lord at work.
Job lost everything. He was a righteous man, but that righteousness was within; it was from himself. He wanted to be righteous so God would protect him and bless him. He had not yet discovered that Christ was his righteousness.
But in the end, after forty chapters of wrestling in spirit, soul, and body, Job finally had his eyes opened. He saw the Lord. He saw God.
And he no longer was asking why. He was just saying, “You know, once I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now I see You.” And Job was changed forever.
In fact, Job received a double portion in his life, and it came out of suffering. Let me say this much: Job was turned into a precious stone. Thank the Lord. He did come to the Lord’s end in all His dealings.
The Lord is seeking and desiring precious stones.
I think y’all might remember the parable of the pearl out of Matthew 13:45-46.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls:
and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
Brothers and sisters, that pearl of such preciousness is the church. It is all the precious pearls brought into one living stone together, and the Lord paid the great price.
Now, indeed, the Lord died for you and me. He died that we might have redemption. He died that we might become a precious stone. But, brothers and sisters, His heart is that all these precious stones be combined into one living stone for Himself.
It says in Ephesians 5:25:
Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it.
Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it.
Brothers and sisters, at the cross, He paid the price for our redemption. He died and rose again that we might have eternal life, that He might bring us into being a precious stone.
But there was a work on Calvary’s cross that was also done when the Roman soldier pierced our Lord’s side with the spear, and out came blood and water. That was for the birth of the church: the blood to bring in materials for the church, and the water, the life of the church.
So, brothers and sisters, not only was He dying on the cross for us, for redemption, to take care of our sins and our sinful nature, but He died on the cross that He might have His helpmeet, His bride—His eternal purpose that was in His heart fulfilled.
Now, when John viewed this city, this eternal purpose of God, what did he see?
He saw that the city was built of three materials: gold, the most precious of elements to man; jewels, precious stones, combinations of elements; and pearl, an organic stone, I call it—the pearl of great price.
Gold, jewels or precious stones, and pearl: that is what the city is made of.
In Revelation 21:18, it says the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. In other words, there is no other element mixed in with the gold. There are no impurities.
And we know from past teaching that this gold is the divine nature, the life of Christ that is given to us when we accept the Lord Jesus Christ. It is imparted to us upon receiving the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts. It is being born again, which is to receive the gold—the life of Christ in us.
But, brothers and sisters, within us there are other impurities, other mixture. So in us, it is more like an alloy: a combination where gold has been mixed with other elements. Therefore, the gold has to be refined.
The life of Christ is pure, but we have our own mixture with that gold in our life, and it has to be refined. Most of us may know—some of us may not—that the refining process is quite interesting.
The gold has to be melted and heated into a molten state, actually becoming molten, like a liquid. And as it begins to cool, the impurities begin to float to the surface. Finally, they scrape off the impurities, and the scientist actually calls it dross. That is where we get dross in the Bible.
So there is a requirement for the gold to be purified, to get rid of those foreign elements that are mixed with it in our lives. It requires the molten state, a state of being heated: trials, tribulations, issues in our lives, issues in our family, issues at work.
We go into this molten state, but the dross is skimmed off. Often that process has to be repeated many times to get to pure gold.
Now, the people that deal with gold say that twenty-four karat gold is pure gold—no impurities. But the rings on your fingers, guys, and some of you ladies that have gold instead of silver, are probably twelve- or fourteen-karat gold. It is still alloyed with other minerals to make it hard enough to be useful, because twenty-four-karat gold is very malleable, very soft.
And I think that says something about God’s eternal purpose in us. We need to be malleable in the Lord’s hands. So He goes for twenty-four-karat gold, not twelve or fourteen karats.
What are these impurities? We might think of it as sin, and it can be, obviously, a great impurity. But I think it speaks more of our flesh, our natural life.
You know, we have what is referred to as good flesh and bad flesh. Some of our natural life is kind of good, you know? And we learn to live by that good part of our flesh. But the Lord says, “No, even that is flawed.”
Even our natural goodness, even our natural way of life, is not acceptable, and it has to be dealt with and removed—even our natural goodness.
I have to go back to Winnie’s testimony. What she discovered in this last year was that it seemed like her whole life had been about herself instead of the Lord. Now, Winnie was a naturally good person—very good—but she needed to be refined, brothers and sisters.
And I love what she quoted as she testified. She quoted Job 23:10:
But He knoweth the way that I take;
when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
Gold. “I shall come forth as gold.” Praise the Lord.
You know, she also said something else that touched me very much. We all need gold. We need to be born again. We need that life imparted to us by God—the life of Christ put into our spirit. We need that, and only He can do it.
We cannot earn it. We cannot be good enough for it. We just have to accept it from His hand. He wants to impart His very nature into our lives.
Brothers and sisters, it is not something earned, but it is something that we can receive from His hand.
And thank God, most of us, I think, in this room were brought to the place where we finally yielded to the Lord’s working in our lives and said, “Lord, I need You. I need Your life. I need to be forgiven for my sins.”
And we have done that by His grace. “By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
But she said something that touched me in her dealings before the Lord: “I wish my relatives and friends who have not yet believed in God could take time out of their busy schedule to think about life. Everyone’s life is a countdown from the moment they are born.”
Something to think about. What deep lessons our sister has learned in her suffering.
Then there is not only gold that has to be refined, but there are precious stones in the city. And what are precious stones?
Well, you know, gold is an element, a basic element. There are 118 basic elements that the scientists have discovered. Basically, God made those basic elements. The whole universe was made by God, and He used 118 elements to make everything.
Amazingly, your human body—ninety-nine percent of your human body—is made up of only six elements out of the 118. They tell me that the other one percent has five more elements in it. So, brothers and sisters, we are made up of elements.
But precious stones are a combination of elements that are fused together—not just one element, but many elements that are fused together. And they have to be fused together.
How do precious stones come into being? It is through heat and pressure—heat and pressure. Does that sound like some of our lives?
You know, diamonds are actually formed mostly from carbon. And do you know what is mostly carbon? A piece of charcoal. Charcoal is almost all carbon. Think about that.
But do you know how it is transformed into a diamond? It is carbon that has been exposed to the molten region under the earth’s crust—the hottest region, two thousand degrees at least, and more, they say. It has been subjected to the highest temperatures and the highest pressures at that molten level in the earth.
And, brothers and sisters, it comes to the surface through eruptions—volcanic eruptions, great eruptions in the earth. A precious stone, a diamond.
It is one of the hardest stones. It may be the hardest stone. It can be used to cut steel; it is so hard. But think of the process to create a diamond: tremendous heat and tremendous pressure.
Now, brothers and sisters, not all of us go through that tremendous a heat and pressure, but we all go through heat and pressure. The other precious stones are actually created in the upper crust of the earth. Again, it is through heat and pressure—not as intense as the molten stage—but continuous heat and pressure year after year after year. And certain elements get fused together.
Now, in this city there are twelve precious stones mentioned, none of which are diamonds, but they are twelve precious stones. They are the same stones that were in the breastplate of the high priest, next to his heart—each one representing a tribe of the nation of Israel, precious to the Lord, next to his heart.
Precious stones are fused from various elements. Brothers and sisters, gold is life imparted to us. Becoming a precious stone is Christ’s life being constituted into us.
Imparted is the gold. The life of Christ becoming a precious stone is His life constituted in our life—in other words, our life of dependence on the Lord.
And in fact, it begins to change us. The more we depend on Him, the more we lean on Him, the more we look at Him, the more His life becomes constituted in us.
Gold represents the exchanged life, and precious stone the transformed life.
The third material in the city is pearl. Now, pearls are not formed by heat and pressure. They are formed by suffering.
We have already heard that the church is a pearl of great price, formed from the sufferings of Christ Himself. But when we think of the pearl being developed in our own lives, brothers and sisters, you have to think about where pearls come from.
They are found in oysters and some other—what do you call those kinds of things? Oysters and clams. Anyway, that is where the pearls come from.
And it begins when an irritant gets into the oyster. Some people say the irritant could be a grain of sand, but they say most of the time it is from a parasite that gets into the oyster.
It irritates the oyster. It does not devastate the oyster, but it irritates him. It causes some little pain, like the arthritis I have in my knees. It causes some pain.
So, the oyster secretes a fluid around the irritant, just a little layer of fluid, and it hardens. But the irritant is still there. Because of the layer of fluid that he has put around it, it gives him some temporary relief, and it requires another layer of living fluid, organic fluid, and that hardens.
And as the irritant continues in the life of the oyster, the pearl gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and becomes a beautiful pearl that has come—excuse me—that has come out of the suffering of the oyster. That is the way pearls are formed.
It is important, brothers and sisters. We all have these things in our lives, but let us not lose perspective. The Lord is making a pearl.
And there are two ways to approach the irritants, the trials, and the problems in our lives. One, we can become bitter. We can just become bitter, and many do, even Christians.
But the other choice—the other choice that we have—is to turn to the Lord, like Winnie has turned to the Lord. Then that organic, special life of the Lord comes in and covers that trial, that particular irritant in your life.
But it can continue on, can’t it? Some of us have had issues that have not been solved in a week or a year, but have gone on for a long time. And what has happened in that process is, every time we turn back to the Lord, His life comes in; it flows in.
And, brothers and sisters, it brings peace in our heart, like it did to Winnie—just peace in our heart. And that forms something around it. Yet it continues. The trouble continues.
Then we come back to the Lord, and He brings that peace. He brings a special word into your life that becomes living and real to you. The pearl is becoming bigger and bigger.
So, brothers and sisters, it is important for us to remember, as Christians, in all of our trials and tribulations and all the sufferings that we cannot always understand, or where we have a question about why: “Lord, may our hearts be trained to turn to the Lord and trust in Him.”
Allow Him to give us that peace that passes understanding. Allow Him to comfort us with a special word from the Word of God, or a voice from heaven, which we have probably all experienced.
In Philippians 3:10, it says:
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death.
The fellowship of His sufferings—not the fellowship of His atoning death on the cross, but the fellowship of His sufferings for the sake of the church, for His eternal purpose to come into being.
Brothers and sisters, join into fellowship with that. I know Paul did. We see it in the life of Paul. He gave his life also, that it might be built through suffering.
Acts 5:41 says they rejoiced that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.
You know, when I was a young man growing up, a teenager, the Lord had touched my life by then, and I stood for the Lord, and people respected that.
But today, you tell someone that you are a Christian, and they despise you, don’t they? There has been a whole new culture developed in this nation. A Christian is no longer politically correct.
And to declare yourself a Christian publicly is to be ridiculed and considered a racist, considered one who is a hater. That is the way we are seen today in this world’s culture.
Brothers and sisters, it says here that they rejoiced because they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.
Romans 8:17: we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. Our Lord Jesus suffered greatly. He made it to the throne. And, brothers and sisters, if we will join with Him, we can make it to the throne.
Praise the Lord, His full purpose can be realized in you.
First Peter 5:10 says, “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace”—all grace. What did the Lord say about His grace? “My grace is sufficient.”
Sometimes we do not believe it. Really. I mean, if we are facing it, let us be honest about it: sometimes we struggle with being able to say, “Yes, Lord, Your grace is sufficient.” But He says it is.
The God of all grace has called you to eternal glory. He will Himself—listen to this—perfect you. He will confirm you. He will strengthen you. He will establish you.
I often think that a lot of the Lord’s work and dealings in our lives is because we need to maintain first love in our life. You know, first love, when we first come to Christ, is just there. But as we go on in the Lord, we find that first love is something that has to be maintained.
Sometimes the Lord challenges us with things in our lives, and He is saying, “You have got to come back to first love. You have got to love Me more than these, more than anything.” First love.
Galatians 4:19: “My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.”
That was Paul’s passion: that Christ might be formed in you, that we might be transformed. And he said he was in travail. In other words, travail is birth pains.
It gets stronger and stronger as you go on, doesn’t it, ladies? It gets pretty intense for those who have gone through it, particularly natural childbirth. I never will forget after the first one, when my wife went into the second one, they said, “Do you want—what do they call it?—an epidural?” She said, “Yeah, give it to me.” Pain was intense.
But anyway, I think of Paul. He was the one in travail for the sake of the church.
Brothers and sisters, when Paul was on the Damascus Road, the Lord revealed Himself to him. In fact, the revelation was so brilliant that it blinded Paul. It required a brother, an unknown brother in the Lord, to come and open his eyes.
And that is when Paul began to see something of the church, something of God’s eternal purpose. Then he was lifted into the third heaven and saw things that he has not yet told us, apparently. But there is one thing he saw: he saw the fullness of what it meant—the eternal purpose of God, the church, the importance of the church.
And, brothers and sisters, so great was that revelation that he shared with us that the Lord gave him a thorn in the flesh, didn’t He? He did it for his sake. He said, “I have to keep you humble, and the only way I can do that is through the thorn in the flesh, because of the greatness of what you have seen.”
But he was allowed to share his revelation of the church with us, though he had to be humble to do it. Eventually, Paul was in prison. Such a great man of God—you would think he needed to be free, wouldn’t you, to continue his ministry? But no, he was put in prison. Great limitation.
But, brothers and sisters, it is out of those prison letters that we see and discover that God is building that city, that precious stone. And in the end, brothers and sisters, he was martyred—a living pearl.
Well, the Holy Spirit is transforming all of us into precious stones, pearls. The gold is being refined. But we need to know that not all pearls, not all stones, are alike. In fact, none of them are alike. They all are specific.
The point I want to make is that each one of us, the Lord is doing something that we may all experience, but He is also doing something in each one of us that is a little unique—a special suffering, a special trial that brings you deep into the Lord in a special way that maybe your other brothers and sisters will not experience.
But it is that you might become an expression of that precious stone that He is looking for. What I am trying to say is, every one of us is unique to the Lord. Every one of us will be a precious stone, but it will be a unique precious stone.
No two alike. Those twelve stones—there are obviously other stones similar to the twelve, in the family of the twelve, let me put it that way—but they are all different. And we are all different, and God intended it that way. He is not mass-producing precious stones that are all the same. Very specific.
We need to see: in the beginning I said, when John saw the city, he saw it as a precious stone. He saw one great precious stone. But that great precious stone was made up of multitudes of smaller precious stones.
The Lord is not building a museum of natural history like we have in Washington, D.C. How many have been there? It is amazing, isn’t it? Particularly if you go into the section on precious stones. They have a display. All of them—the different types—are all there, and you can see each one individually. It is marvelous. If you have never been, you should go. It is amazing.
But the Lord is not building a museum to put you on display. You are going to become a part of that one great precious stone, brothers and sisters, full of glory.
I hope we can get hold of this: what the Lord has had on His mind for eternity, He is working out in your life right now. What has been on His heart from eternity past, He is producing in you now.
He is producing in His church by very concrete means, very definite matters, for the purpose of turning us into precious stones.
Brothers and sisters, I think sometimes we look at one another and say, “Oh, we’re the precious stones,” but we see our problems, our issues, our faults—not only in ourselves, but in one another.
But the Lord says, “You need to concentrate on what I am doing. I am making precious stones.”
So you are not only valuable to Me, but all your brothers and sisters are extremely valuable to Me, because every one of them is becoming a precious stone.
So what has been on His heart for eternity, He is now developing—the eternal purpose of God.
Another note: I think we have to be aware that one of the greatest dangers for us as Christians, and the reason we need to see this eternal purpose, is uncertainty of purpose.
Vagueness of your objective in life—the enemy will take advantage of it and take you away from Christ, take you away from being willing to lay yourself down to become that precious jewel. He will preoccupy us.
If we do not have that objective in mind, he will preoccupy us with many other things. Our minds and hearts can be taken away. That first love can be lost, brothers and sisters.
He takes us away from the main thing in our lives—the supreme objective of your life.
In God’s eyes, the supreme objective of your life is to turn you into a precious stone. That should be our objective as well.
But we often are satisfied where we are in our life with the Lord. We come into a life of mediocrity, of lethargy, not being definite about our purpose.
We cannot lose purpose. Without purpose, you will not reach your goal. We should always be seekers: “Lord, we should always be seekers.” If you do not seek, I guarantee you, you will not find.
You know, the Lord is interested in the college you are going to attend. He is interested in whom you are going to marry. He is interested in your profession and what you are going to be doing.
But, brothers and sisters, none of these things mean a thing unless they are related to the eternal purpose of God.
If we can see what God is doing, we will say, “Lord, where do I need to go to college? Lord, whom do I need to marry? Lord, what profession should I take up?”
You know, vagueness in your objective, in your purpose, is so devastating.
Now, I remember, I have run into a lot of young people over the years, and I say, “Well, what’s on your heart? What are you going to be doing?” They say, “I don’t have any idea. I am just going to maybe drop out a year or two and do this or that and see if I can find myself,” and all that.
Let me tell you, the Lord was gracious to me. When I was in the ninth grade, I discovered that I was really good in math. That was the only subject I was really good in. In fact, English was my downfall. As y’all probably have figured out by now, English and spelling were atrocious to me. Memorizing things was just awful.
But anyway, that being said, that year the teacher discovered I was really good in math and put me in a special class on math. Not only that, I was living near the University of Florida. In the trailer park we were in, there were a lot of engineering students there.
I got to know them, and they befriended me, just a little kid. I got along with them well. I guess I thought a lot like them because they were engineers, and engineers have a unique way of thinking that my wife has not grasped as of yet.
But anyway, it set my path.
From that point on, I knew I wanted to be an engineer. And I think that kind of purpose gave me where I needed to be headed, what subjects I needed to take in school, what colleges I needed to go to, and that kind of thing.
Well, anyway, objective, purpose: it is something that we need, and we should not be lax in it. But there is one overriding purpose in everything that you do in life: God is turning you into a precious stone. Just remember that.
We are called to be a part of His eternal purpose. And I want us this morning, because we have been heartbroken in recent days, to take heart.
All that we have gone through, all that we are going through, and all that we will go through, the Lord is using: heat, pressure, suffering—to transform us into precious stones. That is the way they are made. It is God’s way.
And this is on my heart as we go into the conference: that the Lord will give us a fresh vision of His eternal purpose and what He is after in every life. I pray that He will take us up on that high mountain, like He did John, and give us a new perspective, a fresh vision, a fresh seeing.
But, brothers and sisters, not only do we need vision and freshness of vision, we need to believe. We need to believe that it can be accomplished in us.
You know, I think we talk about, “Hey, we are being turned into precious jewels.” We say, “Hallelujah. Thank the Lord, He will do it.” But He is doing it now. He is doing it now.
And I think in the now, we have a difficult time sometimes believing that He is doing it, or believing that it can be done in us. It seems impossible, and it is, except for the Lord Himself.
Be encouraged.
It says in 1 Thessalonians 5:24:
Faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it.
Now, that is a pretty big promise from the Lord, considering our condition. He who calls you is faithful, and He will surely do it. Kenny spoke on that recently: “He who calls you is faithful, and He will surely do it.”
Now, the reason we can have confidence in that, brothers and sisters, is that our Lord Jesus suffered more than any other man on this earth—not only physically, but in His soul. He suffered more than any of us.
I know sometimes we think, “Well, He was the Son of God. He was built to handle this stuff.” He came as Son of Man, like you and me. He suffered greatly in spirit and soul while He was on this earth.
And, brothers and sisters, when He went into the garden that evening, and He uttered those words, “Lord, if it be possible, let this pass from Me”—remember? He came to the breaking point.
Now, before you say, “Jerry, I do not believe that is possible for the Lord,” as Son of Man, He came to the breaking point. It said that when He began to sweat, He was praying so intensely that blood came out of His pores.
And it says God intervened. He sent angels to support Him, to minister to Him. Brothers and sisters, He was at the breaking point, but God sent the angels to minister to Him, to make it through.
He made it through as a man. He made it through as you and I. And He made it through not just for Himself, but for us.
In other words, it says in the Word of God that He became perfected as a man. He learned obedience through the things that He suffered.
He made it through as a man. And because He made it through, it is the guarantee that you and I can make it. He is your guarantee that you can make it through.
We need to believe. We need to set our hearts on the Lord and His promise that He who has called us is faithful, and He will do it.
He has suffered far greater than we ever will, to the point of pure exhaustion, needing the direct intervention of heaven itself to make it through.
And He made it through. God saw to it. He made it through.
And, brothers and sisters, I want to leave us with this thought today: this great eternal purpose is not something way up in the sky.
It will come down from heaven, I know that, as the New Jerusalem. But it is being done now in you and me—the great eternal purpose, the great eternal purpose. The Lord is our guarantee that He can do it.
Lord, we come to You today. Lord, I do pray—so on my heart—I really pray, Lord, that You will take us up to that mountain, to give us a new perspective on life and on all that we have been experiencing: all the trials, all the difficulties that we have personally been through, and, Lord, that we have seen other brothers and sisters go through.
Lord, You are doing something beautiful. You are doing something far beyond what we could even ask or think. You are turning us into precious stones, that we might become a part of that great precious stone.
Lord, we thank You today. We ask that You bless my brothers and sisters. Lord, I particularly ask Your covering over all of us and all of our families, as there is apparently a great warfare going on concerning this conference, Lord.
And we want to stand against all of his wiles and works to dissipate us, Lord, to bring harm to us in any way. We stand in the covering of the blood of Jesus today as we come.
And Lord, I ask that You bless—bless us mightily with an open heaven. Lord, bless us mightily that we might have vision. Bless us mightily, Lord, that there might be faith in our hearts to see what You are doing be accomplished.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.