I’m going to move. I got another mic on, so I got this, if that’s all right.
Can you hear me? All right. Thank you.
When I was gotten with a couple months ago to ask to share, I remembered what Luke said. He said, when he shared about “mark the spot”—I don’t know if you remember that, when we had opening sharings. So I started saying, “Well, help me mark the spots.” So may He do that and be with us this morning.
I want to share two psalms that have been on my mind often: Psalm 132 and Psalm 127. There’s no clear understanding of who wrote Psalm 132, but I’m going to read portions of it. If you don’t mind, I’m going to kind of amplify it along the way and paraphrase some parts.
Remember, O Lord, in David’s behalf,
And all his affliction;
How he sware unto the Lord,
And vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob.
Him being a supplanter, but yet one God said, “I love.”
The psalmist goes on and says David said:
Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house,
Nor go up into my bed;
I will not give sleep to mine eyes,
Or slumber to mine eyelids;
Until I find out a place for the Lord,
A tabernacle for the Mighty One of Jacob.
Behold, take note: we heard of it; we found it in a field. And I look back when I read this, and I remember hearing about it in a message tape. I remember finding it with the saints in Port Charlotte when I met down there, how we really saw what the Lord was after.
For the Lord hath chosen Zion;
He hath desired it for His habitation.
This is my resting-place for ever:
Here will I dwell; for I have desired it.
I will abundantly bless her provision:
I will satisfy her poor with bread.
Zion, as a city, is His bride. He has desired it for His habitation, His home. “This is My resting place forever,” says the Lord. “Here I will dwell and live, for I have desired it.” And that’s in us and with us.
In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus said, “I am the bread.” Her priests—in the New Testament, we’re told—He has made us a kingdom of priests. “I will clothe with salvation,” and I think of Christ. And her godly ones, only by His doing, will sing for joy.
Then Psalm 127 says:
Except the Lord build the house,
They labor in vain that build it:
Except the Lord keep the city,
The watchman waketh but in vain.
Unless the Lord, our great High Priest, guards the city—His church—the watchman keeps awake in vain. For the Lord is the true watchman, the true guard.
It is vain for you that ye rise up early,
That ye tarry late,
That ye eat the bread of toil;
For so He giveth unto His beloved sleep.
That means to be self-driven, thinking, “Maybe my energy, my power”—to eat the bread, the food, the wisdom, of painful labors, my own efforts—for His building. For He gives to His beloved even in sleep. He can give His wisdom, His power, and His food to us even while we sleep.
Now, what I’m sharing today really stems from the past summer conference that we had. There are some notes there. I’m not preaching or teaching this morning. I’m only saying to you what’s inside of me, and what’s been there and stays there. I know many of us—we all have that—but that’s what’s on my heart this morning, regarding us as believers in His church universally.
In my morning reads, I’ve marked up these psalms. Like Danette said one time when she came up here, she said, “This is nothing new. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before.” I see it as another slice of bread for us, another helping of what the Lord is doing.
Lord, we are always dependent on You. We thank You for fresh bread. We thank You for always wanting to remind us, encourage us, and give us all of Your enablement to go on in what You’re after, allowing us to be a part of it. We love You, and we ask that You would just be with us this morning. In Your name we ask. Amen.
As I said, I hope that this morning we see something new and fresh for all of us. It’s mostly regarding the building of His church. In these two psalms, we see the psalmist’s love for the Lord and the Lord’s desire, the Lord’s response back. There’s a dialogue going on.
Some matters that cross my heart and mind about the Lord building His church are these:
Whenever I’m reading, it often crosses my mind: I see one thing. It seems like no matter what book I pick up or what Scripture I’m reading, it’s in reference to Him and His house and what He’s after—His purpose.
One thing I’ve seen is that it takes so much time, in our standards, because we have a finite, limited amount of time. But the Lord—you know, four thousand years ago, however many thousand years ago it was when creation was done, or when Jesus came—and when Peter said the end is near, I think sometimes that for that generation, the end was near.
The end is near because, as Reagan prayed this morning, “Lord, we want You. We want You.” But to one degree, aren’t we glad that the Lord didn’t come back in the Book of Acts? Because we wouldn’t be here, and we wouldn’t be a part of it. We wouldn’t be able to be there and enjoy what He was doing.
Also, our loved ones, the people we pray for, they wouldn’t be in on that. And our grandkids or our kids are all included in that. So the Lord, in His wisdom, knows when. The Father knows when He’s calling the Son home. He’s still going to complete this church. He is going to complete the bride, and I’m grateful that we’re part of it. But I think there’s also a cry in us: “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Prior to all of this, there’s so much thought and planning in what the Lord does in His church. When it comes to the building of His church, it isn’t a quick process for the Lord.
It’s not like these ninety-day cookie-cutter model homes. I remember going to work one time, and I remember them breaking ground. I said, “I want to take note of how long they take to put this house up.” They were done completely—it was a nice-looking home—in ninety days. The carpet was in, the sign was out there: “Come on in and look.”
Versus a custom home, which the Lord says He desires. The Lord doesn’t have a cookie-cutter church. It’s something He desires, something He’s after.
Some of you may be aware, and some may not, but Beth and Reagan—my son-in-law and daughter—bought a farmhouse, and it has some extra acreage on it. They asked us if we would like to buy some land and build next door to them.
When I shared that with other people at work, they were going, “Wow, that’s really something. That says something.” I said, “Yeah, you know, it does bless me.” We were excited, and it touched Annette and me both. So we said, “Okay.” We bought the land.
But there was already a delay. As soon as I went to the courthouse to find out about this—and bear with me with this analogy—I was told, “Yeah, you can do that, but you’ve got to wait two years before you can build.” I said, “Why?” They said, “Well, we have ordinances in Chesterfield. When you split off land, we have a two-year window because we don’t want developers coming in there.” That made sense.
So I said, “Okay,” and went ahead and waited. We finally got in, and my father-in-law was able to help. I endeavored with the project. My father-in-law was the one who got me started on this when I was about twenty-six years old. I said, “We’re going to build a house. You know how we did it.” He had some experience, and I was the gopher boy.
He had a contractor friend, and we got his name and went ahead. Anyhow, when this whole house was done, from beginning to end—the one we’re in now—it took 362 days, three days short of a year.
Prior to that, though, so much planning had to go into this. A lot of planning. And so it is with the Lord’s church, for what He’s building.
I mentioned this to John, because I heard John had done some homes for his sons. He said, “Well, you need this book.” So I got the book he mentioned. It was a big, thick manual. I spent a year watching TV in between, reading, underlining, marking, and taking notes—for a whole year.
Then I wasn’t happy with the house that I had in mind, and Annette found four plans online. She sent them to me. I said, “Wow, this will work. This will work. It’s custom designed for me—for us, for what we like.”
Then Kenny directed me to an architect. That poor guy—I put him through a lot of torment for four months, back and forth, back and forth, tweaking it for what I had in mind.
Then there were obstacles along the way. As we waited that whole two years, my family was saying, “What’s taking so long?” Then we’d have another Thanksgiving dinner: “Sure, it’s taking a long time.” We’d have Easter dinner in our house: “Are the blueprints done yet?” Maybe another Christmas would go by: “Maybe you should have got a contractor.”
We chuckled about it. I said, “Now I know how Noah felt, building the ark. Yeah, it’s going to rain.” I knew they were loving about it, and I understood that they did not understand the dynamics involved with the holdups. I mean, I’m talking fifty phone calls just to get the land in our name.
Then I thought, if I hired a contractor, he’s going to do it his way. And I’m thinking about the Lord and the church—man is trying to do it his way. I was very cognizant of the Lord and the church while all this was going on too.
I remember we built our first two homes with my father-in-law’s help. Then I told Annette, back in Florida, “Let’s just hire a contractor. I’m getting too busy. We’re raising a family now. We’re both working.” So we hired a contractor.
Long story short, in the middle of building the house, I wanted some changes. It was five hundred dollars a pop, and we’re talking thirty years ago. Every time you wanted to make a change, it was five hundred dollars.
Then the worst case happened. Halfway through that house, the contractor skipped town with forty thousand dollars of our money. That’s twenty years ago—maybe eighty thousand today. But we won’t get into that.
So I said, “No, I don’t think I want a contractor.” I decided to go ahead with this. I started looking at a lot of model homes, taking pictures and notes, realizing what kind of foundations to look for, what kind of windows, what kind of doors, what kind of trim, and what kind of layout we would go with.
Then John got me one Sunday and said, “You know, Bob, you need a truck. You’re going to need a truck.” I was like, “I need a truck?” “Yeah.” So Annette and I shopped around and got a truck. We ended up putting eight thousand miles on that truck just for the house. I could have gone to California and back, then back one more time. But there was all the running around.
My point in making that is that it involved a lot of planning. Again, I liken this unto the Lord. He knows what’s all involved. He knows what has to be done for this church to be ready.
When the clearing of the land came, I walked around there for a while. I would mark which trees were colorful in the fall so I wouldn’t cut them down, planning it all out. The trees came, they cut down what needed to be cut down, and it was good. Everything was fine. The clearing of the lot went smoothly, and in fact, it was kind of fun. Caleb would climb up on all the logs and big rocks and have a ball, and Ava was out there climbing around.
The clearing of the land went okay, but we had to wait six weeks because there was so much rain before they could start any work on the place.
So when they broke ground to build the actual foundation, I saw the digging going on and the iron rods being put in there. There were about fifteen men out there at that time, contractors all talking back and forth.
I looked around and said, “What did I get myself into?” My father-in-law wasn’t there. He knew. So I rested on him. I said, “This is a lot. I can’t turn back.” I said to myself, “I think I bit off more than I can chew.”
Some anxiety kicked in, and I remembered where Jesus said that when a man is going to build a house, he really has to consider the cost and have everything set up, because people are going to laugh at you if you can’t finish it. That crossed my mind. I thought, “Okay, Lord.”
There were more obstacles besides that anxiety. I had to go to the brothers for prayer. I said, “I can’t sleep. I’m taking too many pills. I’m concerned. I can’t pray.”
What I did for a year, during the whole construction of the house, was that my prayers were the psalms. I said, “Lord, my brain goes here, my brain goes there. So I’m going to read the psalms, and these are my prayers.” And they were.
The Lord really blessed me, and He really met me to go on. I felt empowered by the Lord. I kept Annette from some of the things that were going on because some of the contractors were trying to be sly and sneaky. It was a battle. And I think about how, for the Lord, it’s a battle.
There was even a phase where so much got done, and then the stairs weren’t coming. We were waiting for the stairs. “When are the stairs going to get there? The kids can never go upstairs because the stairs aren’t there. Why is it taking so long?”
During this whole time, I kept being reminded of what the Lord has to do—how He has to wait, how He has to wait.
Even though there were all these setbacks, with all these pressures, I felt encouraged by the Lord. I know it was Him; I don’t think it was the pressures. I knew there was purpose now, and I saw how the Lord had purpose. I felt the Lord was with me in my morning times, and He was blessing me to be with my kids.
So I look back now and reflect on how glad I am that the Lord didn’t stop building back in Acts, or during the church times around 500 AD, or during Martin Luther, or the Brethren movement in England—T. Austin-Sparks, Müller, and Spurgeon. He wasn’t done. He wasn’t done yet. And aren’t we glad? We wouldn’t be in the bride. We wouldn’t be married to Him someday.
Again, a house can take so long. It really takes generations. I think this is Kenny’s favorite verse, Acts 13:36, or one he often refers to: David served God’s purpose in his own generation.
For David, after he had in his own generation served the counsel of God, fell asleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption.
David was faithful in his generation to serve God’s purpose. His purpose was to have that blueprint, and he kept hearing from the Lord. Then he passed that on to Solomon, and Solomon saw that it was completed.
Now, how will He build? I’m not going to say this morning that I know exactly how He is going to build. I can only say what’s going on inside of me, from what I’ve heard, read, and what has been made real to me.
I’m of the belief and conviction—and I know we believe this—that it is with living stones. But He’s the One who makes them living.
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
And Jesus said:
I will build My church.
I said to myself, “Okay, how does the Spirit build? How will He still build?” Well, He’s the Head. The Head knows what the body needs.
My body doesn’t tell my head too much what to do, I don’t think. But my head says, “Oh, I have an infection,” or, “You’ve got a cold,” or, “You’ve got a leg I have to take care of,” or, “You can’t sleep.” My head says, “You need nourishment. You need some water. Go out and sit in the sun. You need some vitamin D.” My head tells my body what it needs.
And so it is with the Lord. He knows what the body needs, and He makes directives.
Along with this building, He knows what I need, and He knows what the body needs. He builds with His character in us. Again, I’m sharing something I know we all know. It’s a slice of bread. It’s a refreshment, I hope.
I remember one time Lance sharing—this stuck with me. I think he said it here, though I don’t know if it was at the conference. He said, “Life is like a spiritual laboratory.” It’s for training—for discipline. But I see discipline here as training.
Sometimes there is a negative tone to the word discipline. But when I have parent conferences, I say, “When I mean discipline, I mean training. I don’t mean punishment. We’ve got to train your son or your daughter. We’ve got to help them.”
There are thousands and thousands of areas in our lives where we need training, where we need things done—daily workings. It’s like a test tube. Think of a laboratory.
In Florida, when I used to live there, we went on this field trip every school year. Thomas Edison had a home in Fort Myers with Henry Ford. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison had summer homes in Fort Myers. They were neighbors—two inventors, rich, wealthy.
But Edison had his summer laboratory down there. He just couldn’t stay away from the laboratory. We would visit the lab every school year. You would literally see thousands of test tubes and beakers still laid there and preserved after he was gone.
The tour guide would come by, and I was really impressed because she would say that he had a cot there. His laboratory was next to his mansion, but he had a cot inside there. He could have gone into his mansion and gone to bed, but he decided to sleep in that cot for just a couple more hours. Then he would get up and work some more in the lab.
Then he would get tired, go back on that cot, get up some more, and work in the lab. He was working on the light bulb. They recorded over ten thousand attempts to make a light bulb. Ten thousand—all recorded. He tried this; that didn’t work. He did this; that didn’t work. “Well, tomorrow I’ll try this.” That didn’t work. Finally, it would work, but only for one second. The light would work for one second.
The point is, he was given to this. And what was the outcome? We have this artificial light today. Now, it’s artificial, but it’s light. That was the outcome.
So I was impressed with that. What does the Lord want to have from us? What would He like to have from us? If this man can do this, and we have test tubes—I hate to call them test tubes, though, because I don’t think the Lord tests us so much as He works in us.
“Let Me try working this in you. See if you obey Me here. Let Me help you here. Will you yield to Me here? Will you respond to Me here?” Those are the tests I think the Lord does for us, for our benefit, because He wants to do something in our lives.
There are thousands of tests, like I said. One of them, James says, is like the tongue. He says no man can tame the tongue. Once you say something, you can’t grab it back. The damage is done.
All these tests in our lives are the disciplining in our lives: how we spend our money, how we spend our time, and what we do with our energies.
There’s a tract I saw one time in Florida. I can’t find it anymore. It’s called Others May, You Cannot. Other brothers and sisters might get to do something, but maybe they’re not where they’re supposed to be. Maybe they are; they can, and you cannot. Some people will be affluent; some will not. Some will be healthy; some will not. Some will have a particular mission; you may not. I don’t know.
But I always remember that tract. The point is, everybody’s laboratory—everybody’s test tubes—might be different. The Lord knows what He has to work on with you. He knows what He has to work on with me.
Also, regarding how He builds, He builds not only through the character He wants to work in us, but through the parable of the talents. There is something that He wants from us. We’re servants.
It’s called the parable of talents. The servant was given a talent from his master, but he was disobedient with it. That was the problem. I ask myself, “What is my talent?”
One thing I know anybody can do is pray. “Bob, did you pray? I gave you how many years, but did you really pray for what I wanted, what I needed, what I wanted to do?” Was I faithful to that?
I remember my mom. She was ninety-two years old. She passed away at ninety-three, but she was still in her apartment at ninety-two. She said, “I’m just bored out of my mind.” She was watching so much TV. She was a Catholic believer. I respect that. She knew of Christ, and she respected Him.
I said, “Well, you know what, Mom? I don’t know how long I’m going to live, but if I’m living and I can’t drive anymore, you know what I’m going to do?” She said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I think I’m going to be praying for people and praying.”
Pray for people. Pray for situations. Pray for God to have His way. Pray for His kingdom to come. Just pray. She said, “Well…” I don’t know if she ever did. I doubt it, but I left her with that.
The point is, we can do that. There’s one talent. The Lord is after us. It could be serving. It could be a cup of cold water. It could be coffee. It could be visiting someone.
Jesus said, if you’re faithful in little, He’ll make you faithful in much. He also builds through body life. He’s given us talents. He wants to work His character, and then there is body life too. We know all the hand-and-foot metaphors in Scripture. The hand can’t say, “I don’t need the foot.” It’s all for building up.
What comes to my mind here, where I’ve failed, is our brother Dennis Domer. I would meet him at the gym. We went to the same gym, and we would talk. He would tell me how lonely he was.
Dennis was different, but he loved God. When he died, I grieved. I know he’s with the Lord. I know the Lord has him, and he’s in a good place. But I grieved that I didn’t say, “Well, Dennis, how about after we work out, we go get a cup of coffee at Starbucks? Just spend an hour together.”
I could have done that twenty-five times. It was after he retired that he told me that. I think we heard him say here, “After you retire, what do you do? You go home with the Lord,” if you remember that quote.
And Caroline, I don’t mean to stir any hurt. I want you to see it as love. There was Fontaine. He would always grab me when he could after the Lord’s Table. He and I had a little hobby. I still have the same hobby: we collect silver coins—dimes, quarters, half dollars.
He would always want to say, “Hey, Bob,” and tell me something about quarters, half dollars, and silver dollars. We enjoyed the fellowship. That was an earthly topic, but we enjoyed the fellowship. We always said, “We’ve got to get together. Let’s get together for a cup of coffee. Let’s get together for lunch, and let’s just talk about silver.”
I said, “Okay.” I never did that. I just never did that. He’s in a good place, but the point is, there was some mortar in the body of Christ that could have been added with Fontaine, with Dennis. I’m just encouraging us: let’s be sensitive to what the Lord might want to do.
Another working in this laboratory, if I may call it that: David said in this psalm, “I don’t involve myself in great matters, things too wonderful for me.” He says, “I quiet my soul. I quiet my mind.”
So I say to myself, “What’s consuming me? What’s distracting me all the time?” Brother Jim pulled this out not too long ago. I might be listening to the economy. I might be listening about silver. I might be listening about Trump. Whatever it might be, is it consuming me? Is it sucking up my time?
He says, “I quiet my soul. I quiet my mind, my emotions.”
I’ll just wrap with this one thing too. There was a family when I went to Russia years ago to visit an orphanage. We visited a home—an apartment—and the wallpaper was literally rolled down from the walls. It was extremely old wallpaper, maybe forty or fifty years old, yellowed with age.
We were having food there in their home. It was a Russian family, and they invited us over for a meal. She said, “Excuse the mess. We’re moving.” I didn’t catch on.
Later, the brother and sister who were with me said, “What they mean is, they don’t have time to remodel. They’re after what the Lord wants to do in the church. They’re busy having people over. They’re busy going over, ministering, helping needs, building up, meeting, prayer meetings, Bible studies, more fellowship. They just want body life. They don’t have time to fix the wallpaper.”
They’re moving. Where are they moving? That’s what they meant. They’re moving.
Now, I know I’m not going to get done, so I’m going to have to stop. But I will just wrap here with how the Lord is wanting to build this church. We know that. He’s building it through His Holy Spirit, working on our character. He’s reminding us of our talents. He’s reminding us that there is body life involved in this building.
He’s not done, but everything we know as far as world prophecy is finished. I remember one thing—I may have said this once before. I read a lot of George Müller books, and in one of those Müller autobiographies, I was touched by his life.
He went to Israel in a horse and buggy, because that’s all there was back then. After he looked at Israel, he got back in his horse and buggy and said, “Well, Lord, You’re not coming, because Israel’s not there.” It was Palestine, I guess. He said, “You’re not coming back yet, because Israel’s not there.”
Now that prophecy has been fulfilled. So all I’m saying is, the Lord is near, and He wants to build His church. That’s what’s been inside of me.
I see this house and all that I went through, and I see all these thousands of opportunities that we have for the Holy Spirit to work on us. If He works on two or three issues a day, that’s a thousand test tubes a year that He has to work on in you or in me—only so that He can develop His character.
There are going to be problems along the way. We’ve got this old man that’s there, and there’s Jacob, who wrestles and struggles. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Will I let Him win when I wrestle with Him? Will I let Him touch me? Will I let Him make me not walk the same ever again?
I’m going to stop with that, because I want to honor my brother.
Lord, I just thank You and love You. We just pray that these things I’ve said might be reminders for all of us and encouragement in our lives concerning what You’re wanting to do. We love You.