Yes, Lord, we are just but dust of the earth, yet You desire to dwell in earthen vessels—that all the power and the riches and the glory beyond today, that precious treasure that we have.
This morning, we just gather and praise You and thank You. Oh, Lord, thank You for drawing us into that nearness to Your heart this morning, and holding us there, and releasing praises and glory and honor that You are so worthy of.
And, Lord, we just stand completely in You this morning. We stand in You. We stand against anything of the flesh. We stand against any tactic or any words that would not be words of light this morning to us.
We just commit ourselves to You, just to stand in Who You are this morning, that You can express Your love, and Your mercy, and Your grace, and Your purpose in having us here together today.
Oh, may we see afresh all that You purpose, all that is for You. May we just see it so fresh and alive today, that we would be done with everything else and leave this place wholly for You.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Amen.
I do not know how many of you read Daily Light, but I thought it was really appropriate that the Lord would speak through it this morning. I just picked it up and read it this morning, and it said, “Consider what great thing He hath done for you.”
Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness,
that He might humble thee, proving thee, to know what was in thine heart,
whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or not.Thou shalt also consider in thine heart,
that, as a man chasteneth his son,
so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee.I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are righteous,
and that in faithfulness Thou hast afflicted me.It is good for us that we were afflicted,
that we might learn Thy ways.Before we were afflicted, we went astray;
but now we keep Thy word.
The Lord disciplines us severely, but He does not give us over to death. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is His lovingkindness toward them that fear Him.For He knoweth our frame;
He remembereth that we are dust.
Praise His wonderful name.
It has been so precious this morning to just gather unto Him and see what He has done for Himself. As we sit here this morning, we are here because He has brought us to Himself and enlarged our vision from all the blessings to be a blessing to Him on earth.
He has moved us from being self-conscious to being God-conscious; from just receiving all the blessings—and they are blessings—to moving into what is on God’s heart.
And what is on God’s heart? His dear Son.
From eternity, and for eternity, God’s heart is for His Son—and for His Son to have a bride, a body, for Himself, to express and manifest Himself through forever, to the joy of the Father’s heart.
How precious of the Lord this morning to draw us near to His heart—into that very heart of hearts. He is pleased to be in our midst this morning, dwelling in His body on earth.
We could just be still and sit here in the beauty of Him the whole day. What else is there for us to exist for? There is reality nowhere else. There is purpose nowhere else. And there is fullness nowhere else.
But I have been asked to share something of our beginnings. I wish we could just stay right today where we are, but I was asked to share something of how the Lord moved and brought us together. I cannot explain it. He did it because He did it. He did it for Himself.
So it was not by our own power, but it was by His Spirit. As I tried to think these last few days about how it all began, this verse kept coming to me: Oh, He began.
I saw it in that verse, 2 Chronicles 16:9.
For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth,
to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him.
His eyes run to and fro all over the earth in search of a man whose heart is totally His. I am paraphrasing some of it. And when He finds that man—singular, corporate—He says, “I will come down.” And that is what He did.
There had been about nine years—and for some of us it was longer, for some it was shorter. But for myself, it had been about nine years since the Lord had really captured my heart and brought me to know Him, and to be set free from my own iniquity.
In those nine years, the Lord put me with other saints. Some of you are here. We began to pray together, cry together, and laugh together.
I can see this now as I look back, because we are here today by the faithfulness of God, not our faith. Oh, believe me, I am the most undone of all of you. I really mean that today. But God is faithful.
Once He reveals Himself to you and you commit yourself to Him, He never, never lets you go. Oh, we can lose time, and we can break His heart, but at that right moment He comes back. He has never let us go, but He brings us into a freshness of Himself to take us on.
In those nine years, there were many prayer groups everywhere, all over the city. Praise the Lord. There were many groups, much teaching, and many experiences.
At times we settled in some of those experiences until the Lord knew that they had to dry up. There was always a knowing that there was something more—something more.
There was a little tract, over here on the bookshelf, called Himself. The Lord was so faithful to put that tract in our hands, and in my hands. Every time I moved to the left or to the right, that tract would fall in front of my face.
It said, “Once it was the blessing; now it is the Lord.” It went on and on, and then it said, “Now it is just Himself alone.”
In about 1966, there was a real brooding for more. We were not satisfied. There was more to know.
I have to give you just a little experience. At that time, my children were living in Florida, and I would get on the plane and go from Florida to Richmond, back and forth.
Mary Ann Mays, who had been in the same church that I was in when I first came to know the Lord, had moved from Richmond to Charlotte. I always had to change planes in Charlotte to get to Richmond, so we would meet at the airport.
I have precious memories of the Lord speaking to me in that airport many times. But on this particular occasion, with this longing in my heart, I had been down keeping our grandchildren and was ready to come home and rest.
I stopped in Charlotte, and Mary Ann was going through a very trying time. But she met me, and we had precious fellowship. She said one thing to me: “Lou Ellen, if you ever run across that book, The Ultimate Intention, would you get me a copy of it? I will pay you for it. Just mail it to me.”
Do write down the name of this book: The Ultimate Intention, by Vern Fromke. I did not know anything about it, but I said, “Of course.”
I got on the plane and came on to Richmond. My husband met me at the airport and said, “Oh, Lou Ellen, there is a new teaching beginning tonight down in Chester. It is on the priesthood, and we are supposed to pick up Ray Walker and go down there.”
My heart just dropped. I said, “Honey, do I have to go? I am so exhausted. I just want to go home and go to bed.” He said, “Well, that is fine.”
One thing God gifted me with was a husband who would say yes to the Lord in my life and say, “You obey the Lord.”
He said, “Well, you can rest, and I will just go pick up Ray and go on.” We went home, and as we were sitting at the dinner table, the Lord said, “You get ready and go.”
So I said, “Well, yes, I am supposed to go with you. Come on, we will go.” We picked up Ray on Hermitage Road and went down to Chester to begin this series with a brother coming up from Norfolk. He was a precious brother and really had the priesthood teaching. It was tremendous.
I walked into the Newmans’ home, and there was a breakfront with books on it. You know what is coming. I hardly knew Betty, but I looked, and there was one copy of The Ultimate Intention lying on that bookshelf.
Of course, you know how impulsive I am. I grabbed it as though somebody else was going to get it before I did, when the Lord had put that book there for me. I held that thing to me. I did not know what I had; I just knew I had gotten that book for Mary Ann.
The next morning—I think it was October 1966; I have a date in it—the Lord cut off the telephone and the doorbell, sat me down, and I opened that book.
From page one, it began by showing God’s ultimate purpose and His heart for His Son. It transferred you from just what we could get to what God was after for His Son.
I could not get enough. I could not stop reading it, and the Lord saw to it that I did not, night and day. I would go to the phone and call Ray, and I would read whole chapters to her.
We would say, “Amen!” We would shout, sing, and praise the Lord. I got another copy and sent it to Mary Ann, because by the time we had finished it, mine was a ragged thing.
We had been a long time trying to get Ray delivered, trying to get Ray healed. But God used her to show us that He was after more than either of those things—that the very prisons, or the very circumstances, that we are in are His way of getting us from self-conscious blessing to God’s heart for His Son, that we would become worshippers.
In that book was a flyer, a brochure, for a family conference to be held in Wabana. Brother Vern Fromke, who wrote the book, was one of the speakers. That was all I knew, but that was enough for me.
I asked Ray if she would go, and she said yes. I asked my husband if I could go, and he said yes.
Just three weeks before we went, God sovereignly arranged for Ray and me to be at a deliverance ministry—the epitome of deliverance ministry. Neither one of us knew that the other was going to be there.
It all happened within a matter of hours. My husband called me and told me that somebody wanted me to go with them to this deliverance ministry. The same identical thing happened to Ray that morning. We did not even have an opportunity to call each other.
When I got there, I walked out on the campus and stared Ray in the face. We knew God had brought us there together for something. Neither one of us had wanted to go.
There were mighty deliverances. There is deliverance ministry, amen. But three weeks later, He took us to Wabana, in July 1967.
We had come from the blessing, the epitome of it, to be slain before the Blesser. That is what happened.
We lived one solid week in the very presence of the Lord. If you turned to the left or the right, there was such an anointing. We had come home.
From all the meeting things, God brought us to sit at the feet of Jesus for a week, night and day. I am going to tell you what a dose we got.
Brother Fromke ministered every day. Brother Stephen Kaung, whom I knew nothing about and had never heard of, ministered every day. Brother T. Austin-Sparks ministered every day. I mean, the Lord loaded us double-barrel.
He just shot the gun at us on everything we had been standing on and left us at the feet of Jesus. But we had come home. We knew it. Then we started home knowing that we could not go back.
We did not know what was going to happen, but we knew the Lord had shown us Himself and brought us into Himself for His purpose. There was nowhere to go but to Him.
We came home and shared this with the other brothers and sisters—some who are here with us today. We began to pray that the Lord would have a home, that He would have an expression of Himself here in Richmond. That was our only hope.
Brother Katz taped every one of those messages for us so that we could bring them back to Richmond. We came back loaded.
That year, God began to deal in the lives of different sisters here in Richmond. Everywhere we went, it was settled: we could not go back. The Lord began to add. We listened to tapes, and we prayed.
The cry of our heart was that the Lord would get His testimony here in Richmond for Himself.
Between August 1967 and June 1968, Brother Stephen Kaung came through Richmond. In the tape ministry files, there is one ministry on the thorn bush that Brother Kaung gave in our home on Wagner Road, June 5, 1968.
Somewhere in that period, I got a phone call from Brother Ernest Chase in Norfolk. Brother Chase was the one the Lord used to put the Wabana conference together, and he is now with the Lord.
He said, “Sister Miller, Brother Stephen Kaung is coming through Richmond. He will come out to your home and minister to a few sisters, if you would like. Meet him at the plane, take him back to the airport, and send him on.”
Well, the heavens opened up. Brother Kaung came. I do not remember what that first ministry was, and neither did he when I asked him about it.
After he shared with us, we took him back to the airport. From that one little visit, he committed himself to come here every time he went to Norfolk.
The Lord began to bring people. Every time he would come, he would come from New York, minister in Washington, come here and share, and then go to Norfolk. This was the circuit, and he included us every time.
He saw that the Lord’s heart was for something here, and he committed himself to minister to us.
During that year, he gave his ministry on the thorn bush. That is another must for you to hear. It was on Exodus 3.
We have this precious treasure. It is not the pot; it is the treasure. It is not the thorn bush; it is the treasure—our Lord Jesus Christ in earthen vessels, in the thorn bush.
Need I say more? The Lord, in His faithfulness, has even brought our brother here to Richmond and settled him down at home in his home.
We continued that next year. The Lord began to give grace, and our prayer, no matter how it was expressed, was, “Lord, get for Yourself a home, an image, an expression of Yourself.”
We really did not know what we were doing. We really did not know what was going on. I just know the Lord was faithful.
We went to Wabana for three or four years, I think, and received the same ministry. We got loaded every time. I mean, we got shot every time. Every year there was more fullness in our lives and corporately. More of us went.
Year after year, there was more increase. We did not know what we were doing, but that is how the Lord began in our home on Wagner Road. There was no regular time.
In 1968, Brother Gene Grula from New York came and ministered in our home with Brother Kaung. We took the Lord’s table in our kitchen on Wagner Road. We did not know, I am telling you, but God knew, and He owned it.
In 1971, we moved out to Midlothian. We were sure nobody would come that far, but they did. Our home was flowing over before we knew it.
The sisters were doing the praying, the ministry when Brother Kaung came or someone else, the teaching, the work, and the taping.
I remember one brother saying in a ministry, “I do not hear any men praying here.” That was the truth, because at that time there were no brothers who had really come into their place.
We had been praying because we knew there was order in God’s house. We prayed that God would send brothers. We were tired of doing it all. We knew it was out of order, and we began to pray for God’s order from the beginning.
There were some brothers, but they really would not take responsibility. Then, after we had moved into Midlothian in 1971, Brother Fromke came out in 1972. His ministry was on God’s order. Oh, praise the Lord.
He said, “If God cannot get His order, He will use sisters. He will use sisters until He can.” That was the beginning, I think, of brothers hearing.
In 1973, we had a conference in Richmond at Roslyn. There were fewer than one hundred people, but it was precious—Brother Kaung and Brother Fromke, and a little handful of us, scared to death, with the sisters planning that thing.
Some brothers from other areas would pray or come forth a little, but the brothers here still were not able to do that.
But at the second conference, the Lord had worked in the hearts of those brothers. The sisters did the mechanics, but when we got to Roslyn, we saw some of the brothers get up and take their place. We sat down, and we could sit down. We never had to come forward.
The Lord raised them right in front of our faces and said, “This is the answer to your prayers.”
At the end of that conference, there was a wedding—Kenny and Linda. That was the climax of that time.
We did not see it then. But looking back, oh, the faithfulness of God—to encourage, build, and get for Himself what it was that He desired.
Those conferences have been going on ever since. Now there are around six hundred, and we have had to move many times.
In the middle of it all, the Lord showed us that it was time to move out of our home. That was hard in one way, because we ate together every Sunday—forty of us.
Every sister knew where things were in my house as much as I did, and believe me, I let them do it. It was beautiful to see.
But God had taken us on. In the meantime, we had seen something of the expression of the Lord’s house and His family.
The Lord took us to Wabana, and from Wabana He took us on a short trip to New York—to Jamaica, New York, where Brother Kaung was and where there was fellowship.
We went up there and really saw family life. Those brothers and sisters laid their lives right on the line for us.
When we arrived, they were waiting and looking for us. We could not even open a car door. They were right there, taking everything and caring for us. They took us into the meeting place and fed us.
They found homes for us and cared for us. One brother and sister sent their children out and kept all of us in their home. They fed us every meal. We could not do one thing, but there was no strain—no strain.
They served us. They just laid their lives down.
I will never forget one thing that touched us so deeply. Sunday was the end of the meeting, and we were going to head for Richmond afterward. That morning I went downstairs, and Jean and Mary were making sandwiches—ham, roast beef—right in the midst of breakfast and everything else.
I said, “You are also fixing lunch?” They said, “Well, we want to fix your lunch so you will not have to eat on the road.”
I mean, everything. We were so touched. We came home praying, “Lord, get that in Richmond.”
To get back to the story, those were things that impressed us. From the time we saw the brothers stand up at the conference in Richmond, the sisters really prayed that God would get His people together here. And He began to do it.
We first came to the West End Community Center, on the second floor. We met there, and the children were in the next room. We did not stay there long; we outgrew it.
Then we moved to the Tuckahoe Women’s Club on Hermitage. I do not think we stayed there a year. The Lord was beginning to knit us together.
The brothers and sisters were in one accord. We sensed the Lord was going to give us a place to settle His name over and build us together.
In September 1977, Jerry said there was a place about three doors from where we were meeting—a beautiful place in Bellevue, on Pope Avenue.
How God took nothing! I do not think we had two thousand dollars. We went up there, and I will never forget Johanna was with us. Over the arch that goes into Pope Avenue, it said “Bellevue” in stone.
Johanna said, “Bellevue—beautiful view. That is what Bellevue means.” I have never been able to call it anything but that ever since. We saw Bellevue.
God gave us that place. When we went in, the sisters were in the kitchen, and the Lord spoke to us:
Be anxious for nothing;
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known unto God.And the peace of God,
which passeth all understanding,
shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.
At the same time, the brothers were on the third floor, and the Lord at home put His foot down: He was going to give it to us.
And He gave it to us, even though somebody else was in that house that very day saying, “We bought it. We have already bought it.” God showed us that He was giving it to us.
We had nothing—I mean nothing—but He told us to pay the full price. That was the issue in which it really became ours.
We had not been there any time before we were bursting at the seams. The Lord was blessing us with brothers and sisters, and with many children.
The preciousness to me is that the Lord has been so faithful in bringing young families to Himself and capturing them early for Himself. That has been our joy: to see Him do that, and to see the young and the old flow together.
To know that God’s heart is full because He sees His Son here—He sees His Son and He sees His Son’s bride in our midst—it is awesome.
Most of you know the rest of the story: how we outgrew Bellevue so quickly, how God brought us here, and how we outgrew here until He gave us this. We sit here this morning by His mercy, by His Christ, and by His faithfulness.
He sees His Son, and He was pleased this morning to draw our sisters here into His heart afresh.
I know it is every one of our prayers that the Lord will get the sisters so knit together that we can be that prayer vessel for Him—to undergird what He is doing here, to undergird the brothers who are in such a place of responsibility, and to undergird their families.
To get God’s heart: His Son fully formed in us.
When we first began, we prayed over many things. We prayed for everything. I had the notes here from our first meeting of the sisters in Bellevue. I wish I had time to share some of them with you.
How precious He has been in bringing us together, sisters. As I said, we did not know what we were doing, but from the first, He led us to pray. We were praying for everything you needed and I needed, because it was just a handful.
But above that, at some point He showed us there was a deeper need than our need. His burden was for us to pray His burden in.
I think that is when we shifted gears and gained a burden for His burden—for His Son.
I trust that in what He is doing now, we can trust Him in one another.
The main thing I would say right now is this: find a sister that you can truly trust yourself with, that you can be who you are with, and get a prayer partner. Pray over one another.
The things we used to be able to do are harder now because we have all grown. God has given such increase. It is as though He has drawn us here on Tuesdays to really undergird His burden: to have a home in our midst. That is God’s heart.
We do not have time to go over those first notes. I had hoped we could, because you would see what I am saying. We prayed over everything.
But from the first time the sisters met at Bellevue, the Lord began to settle us. It had been scattered before then, but that is when He brought us into a sisters’ meeting.
The first meeting of the sisters was at Bellevue on March 8, 1977.
We sang “Far Above All.” From there, our eyes were on Him, and He filled us. We praised Him and worshipped Him for a long time. He did it all by the Holy Spirit. We just came unto Him.
It took about three weeks of the Lord leading us to get into Ephesians. You would see this from my notes. The first time we began to read from Ephesians, the very thing that one sister had on her heart would be what another sister had on her heart that very day.
That happened two or three times. The third time, we all agreed: “We believe the Lord wants us to get into Ephesians,” because that was where we were.
There were precious little illustrations of what the Lord was after. I will never forget one that Marzee shared. She came in so vibrant one beautiful spring morning and said, “I just pruned my plants this morning. Without pruning, there is no growth. But pruning brings fruit.”
Things like that would send us right back to the Lord, and He would show us that He was building us into His house. He was the Head of His body, but He wanted a body to express Himself through.
We began to read the whole book of Ephesians every time we came together, beginning at verse one, and just letting the Lord lead us.
The verse that stood out to us is still as true tonight as it was then. It is Ephesians 3:10.
He is talking about the mystery hidden in Christ through the ages. Then, in Ephesians 3:8, he says:
Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given,
to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery,
which from all ages hath been hid in God,
Who created all things;to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places
might be made known through the church
the manifold wisdom of God,
according to the eternal purpose
which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Can we just pray?
Lord, there is no end in You. You are the beginning, and You are the end. We are in the now, and You are over us. You have brought us thus far. You have gone before us. You have laid down Your life that we might walk in life.
Now, Lord, in the now of this day that we are in, I commit myself to a faithful God Who has never failed.
The end of all things will be to see You face to face.
Oh, Lord, our hope and our help, our anchor, our fullness, our now, our all in all. We look toward that day when Your eternal purpose is fulfilled, when everything will be summed up in Your Son, and to Him will be all glory and all honor.