His kingdom shall know no end, and His glory shall know no bounds. Oh, what a day to look forward to. Hallelujah.
And, yeah, we are called today to taste of that kingdom, to taste of that glory that is to come. We thank the Lord Jesus that, through His great love for every one of us, He has brought us into His kingdom, and He is going to bring us into His glory. What a Savior, what a One to be joined to.
Well, let us begin with a word of prayer this morning.
Lord, we are so grateful, Lord, that You have included us, that You have considered us. And Lord, You did not cast us away. You redeemed us. You saved us. You brought us into Yourself, into an inheritance incorruptible.
Lord, You are preparing us for the day of Your kingdom and Your glory, when it will fill all the earth, all the kingdoms of the world, and the worlds to come. Lord Jesus, it is going to be a glorious time.
And Lord, we want a taste of that glory today. We want to taste of what You are doing in this last hour, Lord. Lord, be with us, Lord. We know that we always depend on Your Holy Spirit, Lord, to clear the air of all resistance, Lord; to bring us under the power of Your blood, Lord, that we might enter Your presence and hear Your word, Lord.
Lord, lift us out of any lethargy or tiredness there might be today. We stand in the good of Your resurrection, Lord, in Your life today, as we come to hear Your word. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, I have two verses I want to begin with out of the book of Nehemiah. We all know that this is the theme for the conference, and I just wanted to share a brief word this morning concerning, I guess, being prepared as we come into this.
Nehemiah 6:3:
I am doing a great work. Why should the work cease?
And then Nehemiah 6:9:
For they all made us afraid, saying, “Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that the work not be done.”
So what we see here in Nehemiah is a great work. And we also see the great resistance to that work, the great warfare against that work being accomplished.
This story of Nehemiah, this account of Nehemiah, is not about the nation of Israel in general. You may remember that the nation of Israel had gone into Babylonian captivity for seventy years. The nation of Babylon was overthrown by the Persians.
And in the year of Cyrus the king, I think his first year, he gave the Jewish people who were in slavery the right to return to Jerusalem, and to build the wall that we refer to as the wall of testimony.
Fifty thousand Jews had returned through the leadership of Zerubbabel ninety-one years earlier. Ninety-one years earlier, a group, a remnant, came out.
Brothers and sisters, I have said this before: they represented about four percent of the total number of Jews in captivity. Four percent. A remnant came out to return to build Jerusalem.
And now it is ninety-one years later. They had built the house, they had built the temple, they had restored the priesthood, but the wall remained unbuilt. It had not been completed.
So this story is not about the nation of Israel in general. They were still in captivity under the Persians. They were still, you know—Babylon means confusion. That is what it means. Remember the Tower of Babel? The Lord brought confusion to the languages. That is what it means.
And spiritually, they were in spiritual confusion. Because they could not go to Jerusalem, and they still wanted to honor the Lord in some way, to remember the Lord, they set up this system of synagogues.
It was not the Lord’s perfect plan by any means. It was kind of a substitute. And they raised up the synagogues.
There were two main flaws with the synagogue. It was not the place where the Lord had put His name, where He was going to stand behind His people, where He was going to dwell in the midst of His people. That was the temple, where He would dwell among His people.
Remember, all through the desert, He was in the tabernacle of testimony. That is where His presence was seen and known, brothers and sisters. So His heart, God’s heart, was Jerusalem. God’s heart was not the synagogue.
But they had become basically satisfied with that. The Lord was not satisfied. God was not satisfied, but they were satisfied. They were content with that. Basically, they had become religious, and they were still in spiritual captivity.
But this story of Nehemiah is about that remnant that had returned. They had returned to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, the place where God set His name, the place where God would be satisfied to dwell, the place where God’s heart was pleased.
They had returned to worship Him in His way, under His ordinances and with the priesthood. They had rebuilt the temple. By this time, the temple had been rebuilt, and the Lord could dwell among them in that temple. Praise the Lord.
And they had the lamb sacrifice. In the synagogues, they could not have the lamb sacrifice, brothers and sisters. Do you realize how important the lamb sacrifice is? It is the only sacrifice that satisfies God: the sacrifice of His only Son, which the sacrifice of the lamb pointed to.
They could not do that in the synagogue. God said, “You can only do that in My temple in Jerusalem.” But now they had returned to do that.
Brothers and sisters, we are not here to meet our desire. We are not here to satisfy our conscience. We certainly do not want to just be a religious people.
We have come out, brothers and sisters, in this way in order to please our Lord: to have a place where He would choose to dwell in our midst, a place where He could put His name, a habitation for the Lord, for God, where He can be present among us.
You know, that is one of the things I look so forward to on Sunday morning: the sense, as we corporately gather together, of the presence of the Lord. Now, of course, we can experience His presence in our individual lives; we have. But I have to say, I have never experienced it more than when we have been gathered around that table. And we thank Him for it.
It is the place built upon the chief cornerstone, which is Christ. That is what the house we want to build is built upon. It is built out of His life. That life comes from the chief cornerstone. It is built to be an expression of His life, to be a testimony to Him.
It is a place where He is the Head of His people, the Head of His body. We offer ourselves individually for Him to be Head of our lives, to be Head of each one of us.
We do not want a distant relationship with the Lord, which many are satisfied with. We want Him actually to be Lord of our lives, to be Head of our lives, to be over our lives, both individually and corporately; to hold Him up as Head; to live with one another as one unit and one spirit, in one love.
Maintaining the unity of the Spirit that has been given to us, we are to be a city on a hill, a testimony under His government, a city under His government, a light to all around us and to the world.
They had restored the priesthood, as I said. They came out to be able to worship Him. They set up that Levitical order once again, that priestly order, that they could serve God in the way that satisfied Him and not just satisfied their conscience.
Brothers and sisters, we are called. That is why we came out. We wanted to be priests to our God. Everyone is a priest. Everyone.
I recently was at another little gathering, and I was going to share on the Lord’s table. A brother came up to me and said, “Jerry, there is one in our midst that has real trouble unless an ordained person serves the table.”
And I said, “Okay.” So I had to start out by saying, “You know, praise the Lord, we are raised up a spiritual house, a spiritual priesthood. We are all priests.”
I said, “When you look at that table, what do you see? Do you see a cup? Do you just see the bread? Is that what it is? Or when you look at it, do you see the Lord Jesus Christ?”
That is what faith lays hold of: Him as the Lord Jesus Christ, the One whose body was broken and whose blood was shed. Brothers and sisters, we can enter into that meaning, that essence of the table, in faith, and we are priests before God. There is no person in between us and the Lord. Thank the Lord for that.
We worship Him. We come to worship Him, brothers and sisters. There are many reasons, but we want to please Him. We want Him to feel comfortable in our midst. We want Him to be satisfied.
It, of course, satisfies us, but our motive is that He might be satisfied when we come together. We meet together to pray. We want to pray as one man together, in one mind and the unity of the Spirit.
We desire to pray not just for things that we need or want or desire, which is okay. But when we come together, we are coming together to stand for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
That is what we have been called out to do: to stand with Him, to work with Him in bringing about His great eternal purpose.
Our brother Gunther shared on this verse last Wednesday night, Isaiah 45:11:
Thus saith the Lord,
Ask of Me things to come concerning My sons,
And concerning the work of My hands command ye Me.
How can you issue a command unless you know the will of God? So, when we know the will of God, we can stand for His will to be done, brothers and sisters. That is the work that we have been called to in prayer.
Matthew 18 speaks of binding and loosing. That is authoritative prayer. That is not just asking for things, brothers and sisters. This is what we have been called to. This is all a part of this great work that Nehemiah was involved in.
Brothers and sisters, the great work of Nehemiah is the great work of today: to finish that testimony.
And you might ask, “Jerry, just what do you think is the great work?” I think Ephesians tells us that God has an eternal purpose. And it goes on to say that it is to gather up everything in Christ.
And what does that mean, brothers and sisters? What that means is that a day is coming in which we will walk into eternity. And in that day, it will only be Christ. Everything that is not Christ or of Christ will be eliminated, will be put away, and only the things of Christ will remain.
That has to be effective in our lives personally now, and in our church now. But we are coming to that day when it will all be completed. It is a great work.
Brothers and sisters, it is the complete, full manifestation of the glory of Christ. That is the great work: the full manifestation to all the worlds of the glory of Christ—of His greatness, of His person, of His magnificence, of His beauty, of His nature, of His love, of His grace, of His holiness, of His purity.
Brothers and sisters, this is the great work that we have been called into.
The Lord gave the apostle John a glimpse of this glory, His future glory. And John tried his best, with all the limits that he had of vocabulary and understanding, to describe this glory that was to come.
And when he saw the glory—it is in Revelation 21 and 22—what did he see? Now, this is at the end of time. The kingdom age is over now. Satan and everything have been thrown into the fire, and we are walking now into eternity future.
And what does John see? He said, “I see a holy city coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for a husband.”
It is a glorious time. You know, weddings are glorious, are they not? Life afterward might not be so glorious. But we are looking at a glorious time.
But you know what? When we enter into this glory, that glory will never fade. That glory will never go away. That glory will be forever and ever, and we will be a part of it, and we will be in it, and we can experience it.
But he sees this holy city, and it is described as a city full of light and like jasper, clear as crystal. Now, brothers and sisters, jasper stands for life, and this city is full of life.
You know, there is the river of life running through it, and the tree of life on both sides of the river. It speaks of the fullness of the life of Christ in this city. That is glory, brothers and sisters.
It is all of gold. Gold is the nature of God. He says it is clear gold; it is pure gold, so pure you can see through it. It is amazing how pure this gold is. It is all Christ.
And brothers and sisters, it is a walled city. A walled city. Now, I looked into it a little bit. Apparently, this city is a fifteen-hundred-mile cube: fifteen hundred miles square and fifteen hundred miles high. That is the magnitude of this glory.
And even that does not express the fullness, but it gives you a sense of the largeness. So we have a fifteen-hundred-mile-square wall around this city that is two hundred and twenty feet high. The wall is a testimony.
All inside this wall is Christ. All outside of the wall should not come in. Brothers and sisters, that is why the wall of testimony is so important.
It is interesting. Remember the twelve pearly gates that we always talk about? They have the names of the tribes of Israel on those twelve gates in the wall. That is the Old Testament saints, the ones who believed in the Lord.
Not the ones who just followed the law, but the ones who really believed in the Lord, who believed in these sacrifices. Let me say it another way: Abraham was before the law. He was in the age of promise.
And when he offered up Isaac, it says he believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. These are the saints that will enter in, even those under the law, those who also laid hold of the promise.
Then we see that the wall has twelve foundations, with the names of the apostles. Brothers and sisters, this represents the church, the church age. All of us coming out of this age who have been saved in Jesus Christ are a part of this great wall, this wall of testimony.
And I love this so much. The city is holy, all light, no spots, no wrinkles. As for us individually as well, can you imagine that? In that day, in your life personally, no spot, no wrinkle.
The Lord will have taken care of all of that through His death on Calvary’s cross and His ascension. No sin, no death. And it says there will be joy unspeakable.
Now, it is one thing to have a moment of unspeakable joy. We may have had a few of those in our lives. But this speaks of continually having joy unspeakable because of the presence of the Lord.
We have all been transformed at that point into His glory. When we see Him, we will be like Him. Brothers and sisters, the other thing: no more self. Is that not wonderful? No more flesh, no more sin nature. It is gone.
I think that is so marvelous. We wrestle with that old sin nature all the time. How often it defeats us. But there will be none. This is the glory. This is the great work, brothers and sisters, that we have been called into.
It was God’s intention when He created man, but we know Adam fell. And what does the word say in Romans? We all have fallen short of the glory of God.
But praise the Lord, through His salvation in Jesus Christ, we can be put back into the place where we can be brought into His glory, transformed into glory, brothers and sisters.
Thank God. God was delayed, but He was not defeated in this great work.
Many sons to glory—that is you and us—to be a part of that great city, that wall of testimony.
That brings me back to the remnant I had talked about before. Oh, what glory lies ahead. I wish the Lord could touch my own heart to grasp the glory in some small way like John did. He saw it. It so affected him. He did his best to describe it to us.
They had, as I said, restored the temple and the priesthood at this time. But ninety-one years later, the wall still was broken down. The wall had not been restored. It had not been built up. The gates were burned and open.
In other words, what that means is that they were in a spiritual condition where the world could come in, where other things could come in, where things not of the Lord could come in, where the things of man could come in.
We know there was one person in their midst who was really against this work, and he was living there in the temple. I cannot remember his name. Y’all got it? Tobiah.
And so, thank the Lord, Nehemiah had him kicked out. That was the thing to do. In other words, purity had to come back.
Well, what had happened to these people, brothers and sisters? This is the remnant. These are the ones that wanted the Lord to be satisfied. But things had drawn on for a long time now. The enemy was still pressing them. The enemy was still discouraging them. The enemy was still opposed to them.
And they had become what I want to say—maybe a bit content. Maybe passive would be a good word. And probably some had returned back, frankly, to Babylon. It was just too much for them. They did not hold out.
They forgot. They forgot what they had been called to. They forgot this great work. They just did.
Brother Mac, for I think a couple of Wednesday-night prayer meetings, shared a word that was really on his heart. It was simple. It was out of Psalm 106. It said, “They soon forgot.”
Now, if you read Psalm 106, you will see that the Lord brings them out, and then they begin to forget about the Lord, and the enemy comes in. Then the Lord delivers them, and it goes through this about five or six times: how the Lord would restore them.
They would come back, but then they would forget the great thing that God had done. Brothers and sisters, it is ninety-one years later, and they had forgotten. Some had forgotten.
But God had not forgotten. God wanted that wall to be completed. He needed it to be completed. And brothers and sisters, He was not just going to wave His hand and the wall would appear.
He was going to do it through His people. He was going to have His testimony that He needed through His people. He was not just going to finish it with a wave of His hand, which He could do.
We are in a day that lies ahead of us where the wall needs to be completed. We have left our religious captivity to return, to serve Him and His purpose, to build His house, to restore the priesthood, and to build that wall of testimony. That is the great work. That is what needs to be completed.
And brothers and sisters, how important it is that He includes us in this work. He could do it without us, I know. But He does not want to. He loves us too much.
I think the enemy used this pandemic, in some parts, to slow this work down, to keep us apart, to keep us at a distance—hopefully that we might begin to forget why we were coming together in the first place, and maybe just be satisfied with zooming in, or maybe just be satisfied staying home.
He wants to cause us to forget. This morning, I want us to remember what we are called to.
The purpose of the conference in the very beginning was raised up in those days to make known this eternal purpose to God’s people. It was to know this great work: that Christ was to be fully manifested in glory, and He was going to use the church, His vessel, to do that.
We were raised up that we might be matured into the bride of Christ. That was the purpose of the conference. Today, we have the privilege of being a part of this great work.
Brothers and sisters, we also have the privilege of serving at this upcoming conference. And let me say this again: our purpose for this conference is that this great work might be made known among His people.
Many people know they are saved. Thank the Lord for that. Many people love the Lord and want to follow the Lord. But some still do not know what that great work is.
They probably think that their salvation was the great work. It is a part of the great work, but it is not all of it. This great work of having the testimony finally completed lies ahead of us.
We want to use the conference to encourage our brothers and sisters, encourage us to stand fast, to rise up, and to complete this great work. That is what we are hoping for this year.
Now, I have spoken of the great work, and I want to talk a few minutes about the great resistance. Some might call it the great warfare, because the great warfare has been going on ever since God created this earth and Satan chose to come in with Adam and Eve, and Adam fell.
There is a great resistance to this great work.
Now, brothers and sisters, when I was in my late twenties, when I first discovered that God had an eternal purpose, that tremendously affected me. It really got my heart. I was amazed. I was thrilled to know that the church was not just an organization, but it was, as our brother Stephen said, an organism—a living thing, with Christ being the Head of it.
Oh, a living thing, fellowship with Him in a living way. That was thrilling to me.
And you know, that initial thrill over the years may have faded some. But one thing has not faded, and that is the passion for what I have seen: a passion that the Lord be satisfied, that He have His testimony that He has desired.
Brothers and sisters, maybe the thrill of the early days is gone, but is the passion still there?
Remember, the prophet said, “You know, I tried to hold up. I tried to keep this down. I was through with it, but there was a fire in my bones, and I could not let it go.”
Brothers and sisters, that is kind of the way it is. There are times in this battle that we are in when we want to let it go. I confess that, myself, seriously. But there is a fire there. There is a passion down there.
May the passion never fade. May the passion that Kenny spoke on this morning really grip our hearts once again.
There are attacks on us by the enemy from without. It could be a lot of things. It can be sickness, diseases, obstacles he puts in our way.
But there is also the enemy within: our own self, our desire for our pleasure, our desire for us to rule our own lives. This self-life, brothers and sisters, is a great enemy to us, as well as Satan himself. It makes us weary and forgetful.
In Revelation, it says in the last days—I think it is in Revelation—that the enemy will wear us out. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever just been worn out? Brothers and sisters, that is his great resistance in us. We should be aware of it.
Now, if you are working twenty-four hours a day and not stopping, you are going to wear out anyway. But there is a wearing out that the enemy puts on us.
And I think it comes not so much from physical labor, but from mental anguish, from mental issues, from dealing with issues and problems in family, at work, and all of these things. Constant pressure.
And then we have the enemy who is constantly accusing us. Now, I know we have all, at different times, had experience of his accusations. He wants to weigh us down with accusations.
He says, “Who are you? Who are you? You are talking about being a testimony to the Lord. Who are you? Who do you think you really are? You are worthless. You are not able. You have already tried. You cannot do it.”
Brothers and sisters, the accusations of the enemy. Now, we know in Revelation 12 that we see a group of people who have overcome the accuser of the brethren.
And I want us to be aware, as we go into this conference, as we go through the remaining days that we have, the accuser of the brethren is not going to let up on you or me or this fellowship. He is going to accuse us, whether he has ground to accuse you or not.
Sometimes we give him that ground, do we not? Sin. We do not follow what the Lord wants us to do. We do not obey Him. We give the enemy great ground to keep us under oppression.
But there are times when you feel this great weight of accusation. You just feel so useless, so unworthy, and it is the enemy’s accusation. Well, what do we do? What did those overcomers do?
Brothers and sisters, it says they overcame by the blood of the Lamb. It was faith. They really believed in the power of the blood, not only in the matter of salvation, but toward our enemy. He cannot come in where the blood is.
Brothers and sisters, they believed in the power of the blood, and they needed the blood every day. They depended on it. None of us are perfect. We need the blood. But we need to believe it.
Once we say, “Lord, I come under Your blood. I feel the accusation. I know I am being turned away, but I plead Your blood over me,” at least that is what I do. And thank the Lord, the oppression lifts. And I am so thankful.
“Who are you to restore the testimony? What right do you have to be involved in this great work? You are really not much.” I have heard them all, and I have come under many of them, brothers and sisters, I have to confess.
But there is only one way through: faith in the blood of the Lamb. And it says they gave the word of their testimony. In other words, not only did they plead the blood, but they said, “Look, Jesus is Lord. This work is going to get accomplished. The Lord will use me.”
Now testify of His lordship in my life. And then it says they loved not their lives unto death. That basically means they were willing to submit their self-life under the cross. Instead of satisfying themselves, they wanted to satisfy the Lord.
And then, as I was thinking of the attacks of the enemy, I could not help but think of Lazarus. What was Lazarus’s condition, brothers and sisters? He was dead. He was dead.
Have you ever felt dead? I do not mean physically, but spiritually. Just dead. And he had all of these grave clothes on him. He was dead and bound in grave clothes.
Now, I listen to the news. Most of us do. And every time I listen here lately, I feel the grave clothes starting to wrap around me. It is heavy.
The enemy uses the condition of this world, the things that we know are contrary to Christ, and it disturbs me. But I am sure it disturbs God much more, and He is going to deal with it all. Thank the Lord.
For those who do not respond to His grace, His judgment will take care of it. But brothers and sisters, just that sense of death—the enemy wants to keep us in that as much as possible.
So he brings things into our lives, situations to bring in this sense of death, the pressures of life. He just oppresses us. Have you ever felt like somebody was just sitting on your spirit, just holding you down? It is the enemy. It is the enemy.
The whole atmosphere that we live in, brothers and sisters, is an atmosphere of death. Now, I do not want to be all doom and gloom, but we are to be a testimony in the midst of this atmosphere that Jesus is Lord.
But our spirits can be dulled, and we feel dead. We even come to feel like, spiritually, we are just irrelevant.
But I was reminded of what the Lord—and I have been in similar situations. So what was the answer? What did the Lord say to Lazarus?
He spoke this for Lazarus: “Lazarus, come forth.”
Lazarus was in grave clothes, but thank the Lord, Lazarus responded, did he not? Lazarus responded.
Brothers and sisters, you cannot get out of that condition and hope that one day it will go away. You cannot be passive. You have got to stand, stand your ground, stand up and fight. And you have got to mean business—business about being delivered from this condition.
Romans 13:11 says:
It is time that we should be aroused out of sleep.
Aroused out of that sleepy condition.
Romans 13:12 says:
Let us cast away the works of darkness, those grave clothes, and put on the armor of light.
Often, we find ourselves yielding to this condition, to this atmosphere. We are bound with grave clothes. And I want to challenge us all this morning who may be struggling with this: do you hear the words of the Lord today? “Come forth. Come forth. Come forth out of that condition.”
And your hearts may be stirred if the Holy Spirit speaks to you this morning. Do you hear His voice? Do you hear His challenge? You need to hear His voice: “Come forth.”
And you may begin to have your heart stirred, and you may say, “Okay, Lord,” but you find yourself still bound with these grave clothes. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?
I will tell you what you do. You stand in faith. You stand on the ground of the victory of Jesus Christ. That is what you do.
It is interesting: this morning, Psalm 42—we were encouraged to meditate on that psalm, and Kenny shared on that this morning. But in Psalm 42:9, it says:
Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? But then in Psalm 42:11, he says:
Hope thou in God:
For I shall yet praise Him,
Who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
That is faith. He is saying, “Yes, I am in this condition. The enemy is oppressing me. But my hope is in God. My faith is in Him. I will praise Him. He is the health of my countenance.”
You know, when we are down and out, our countenance drops. But once we see the Lord, when we look off unto Jesus, our countenance changes because the life within us is stirred.
You have to mean business, brothers and sisters. You just cannot lay back and take it.
In Colossians 2:15, this is what our faith needs to stand on. Speaking of Christ, it says:
Having spoiled principalities and powers,
He made a show of them openly,
Triumphing over them in it.
At the cross, brothers and sisters, the Lord Jesus overcame the enemy. You think about that. When He was on the cross, and He went into those three hours when the presence of God lifted from Him, and He cried out:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
That was the hour of greatest temptation, the hour of His own great faith, when He stood in the face of the enemy and the hordes of demonic angels that were constantly saying, “Where is Your God now? Who are You to stand against the power of death? God has forsaken You.”
But the faith of the Lord Jesus overcame. And He was able to say:
It is finished.
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.
He had come out of that power of death that had gripped Him for three hours, and He overcame it.
But brothers and sisters, it says in baptism we have been baptized into His death, into His burial, and into His resurrection. What does that mean? It means spiritually you have been joined with the Lord Jesus.
And His work on the cross is that He defeated death there. He overcame death. He did not succumb. His faith held up.
And brothers and sisters, the faith that you and I live by today is not our faith; it is the faith of the Son of God in you. It is His faith. Your faith will never stand up to the accusation and power of death in the enemy. But His faith will, and we depend on His faith in us.
Remember the man who said, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” It is the Lord’s faith, brothers and sisters.
I have been crucified with Christ;
Yet I live; yet not I, but Christ who liveth in me:
And the life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God.
He does not say, “I live by my faith.” The faith of the Son of God. So important. Do you believe that you have that faith in you?
That is the faith that we believe in and exercise. Brothers and sisters, His victory is our victory. His victory is our victory. His triumph is our triumph.
It is not that we are victorious. It says He was victorious; therefore, we are victorious. Brothers and sisters, faith has to always lay hold of the truth, the truth in Jesus Christ. That is what delivers us, brothers and sisters.
And, like I want to say once more, it is not our faith; it is His faith in us. It rises up and takes the victory. Brothers and sisters, the grave clothes fall off, the air becomes clear, and you are back on victory ground.
But the Lord said one other thing to Lazarus and those around him. And y’all know it. What was it He said?
I am the resurrection, and the life.
I am the resurrection and the life. Not only do the grave clothes have to come off, but you have to possess the life of Christ in you. And it is not just life like our life. It is resurrection life.
It is life that has gone through death. It is a life that can face anything. It is a life that will make it through, brothers and sisters.
He is the resurrection and the life. Oh, Mary and her sister, they said, “Lord, we know You are going to raise Lazarus in the last day.” And it says the Lord groaned.
I think He was groaning over the fact that they did not see that He was there now. And where He is, there is resurrection life. When He comes on the scene, there is resurrection life. We need that resurrection life to make it through. Praise the Lord.
So, brothers and sisters, as we come facing the conference and facing our life that lies ahead of us until He returns, we are involved in a great work. It is the testimony of Christ Himself.
And there is a great resistance, a great warfare, but we can be victors in that. So let us pray.
Lord, we come to You today. It was just on my heart that I needed reminding of this great work, Lord, to renew the passion in my own heart for this great work.
Lord Jesus, that You could be pleased, that You could be satisfied. Lord, You could have that house of habitation. You could have that priestly worship You desire, Lord Jesus.
Lord, You could have that intercessory vessel that You need in prayer. Lord Jesus, that You would have the testimony of Christ that brings about His glory. Lord, His full glory lies ahead of us.
Lord, I look to You. Lord, I thank You that You have shown us something of what You are doing. But Lord, I also want to thank You for Your word that shows us, Lord, how to resist this adversary of ours.
Your word says, “Resist him, and he will flee.” Lord, we want to stand on Your word today as we go into this time that lies ahead of us. We resist our adversary in the name of Jesus Christ. May he flee. He will flee.
Lord Jesus, we look to You this morning. Lord, I really pray You will encourage all of our hearts. In Jesus’ name, amen.