All right, well, we’re thankful that we can continue in the presence of the Lord. I have a couple of verses I want to read first, and then we’ll pray.
There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves;
men fainting from fear, and from expectation of the things which are coming on the world: for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.
And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads; because your redemption draweth nigh.
Lord, we are thankful for the great blessing of being around Your table this morning, for the very living Word shared to us, and for the reminder of the preciousness of the blood of the Lamb in our so great a salvation.
Lord, we are thankful, too, that as we are in these days and see many things going on that we do not understand, we know there is one thing that is certain: Your steadfast love, Your heart, and Your desire.
Lord, as we come to Your Word this morning, we want to have the eyes of our hearts fixed upon You, that we could be those who are really found worthy of You in this hour—prepared, Lord, for Your great return, and having an understanding of the days and times in which we are living.
We are thankful that You give us Your Word, Lord, and we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of our hearts and give us understanding concerning it. In Your wonderful name, we pray. Amen.
This morning, what I wanted to share on is a simple question: What do you see?
As you look around the world today, as you see everything that is going on, what do you see? No one needs to inform us or tell us anything about the turmoil of the day.
These are really exciting days because we know these are the end days. But they are also very serious days because they are the end days. We are thankful for our Lord’s imminent return, but we know, too, that for the Gospel’s sake there are many upon our hearts whom we desire to be saved. We know even within the Body of Christ there are many of us who need to grow up and get ready.
We are thankful that He gives us this time, this age of grace in which we are living, to prepare our hearts for His return.
As we looked at those verses, these were the verses our Lord shared with His disciples when they asked Him about His return: “When are You coming back? What are going to be the signs of Your return?” That is the setting for what He shared. He went through various things in that Scripture, and then He concludes His teaching with the verses that we just read.
He starts off by saying, “Then there will be signs.” From the very beginning, He says, “Watch for the signs.” He is such a gracious God. The signs of the times, the signs that our Lord speaks of, are tremendous testimony of His great love, grace, and mercy toward us.
He does not leave us in the unknown. He does not leave us in a vacuum. He says, “Out of My love, I am going to give you some signs.”
We know that in the Old Testament, before He came the first time, there were signs. Many missed them. They did not see them. We want to be those who have the eyes of our hearts enlightened to know the signs of the times in which we are living.
All these signs point to one thing. The signs in the world may point in many different directions, but all the signs our Lord gives point to one thing: His return.
The signs are given for us to be prepared, for us to take these days very seriously, and to allow Him to speak to our hearts and work within our lives. When many ask today, “What is going on? What does all this mean?” the people I fear most are the ones who say, “This is what is going on, and that means this.”
Right now, we do not really know. We are in a time of waiting, watching, and praying.
This war in Israel right now could end within a few days, and we could go on about whatever. Or it could explode into a world war. We do not know. But we are watching and waiting. We know something is going on.
It is interesting that the Lord speaks of a contrast here. In Luke 21:25, He speaks about signs in the sun, moon, and stars, and upon the earth. Then, in Luke 21:26, He speaks about the powers of the heavens.
So we have a contrast between what is going on in the earth and what is going on in the heavens. But there is also a relatedness, because, as Daniel said, the heavens rule.
What is really going on? The main battle is not upon this earth. The battle is in the heavens, and those powers are being shaken. That is why we need to have the eyes of our hearts opened in a greater way, to have an understanding of what He is saying to us.
Because, as He said in Luke 21:27, then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. All is related to His return.
Then He gives us this wonderful instruction. He says one of those great “buts” in Scripture: “But when these things begin to take place.” Whenever we read Scripture, we need to notice these things, particularly when that little word but is there. It is getting our attention.
Notice that He says, “begin to take place,” not at the end. He warns us from the very beginning. When all these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing nigh.
He has given us these signs throughout history and throughout the days in which we are living to warn us that the end is coming. This parousia of our Lord, which our brother spoke of last week, is not a one-time event. It is a period of time in which He begins to return.
The parousia of the Lord is beginning, and we need to have the eyes of our hearts open to see what He is really doing in this hour and time.
It is interesting that He says, “Straighten up. Lift up your heads.” Various translations express it differently, but that is the essence of those words: lift your head up.
Why does He tell us to straighten up and lift our heads? The real issue is that He wants us to have a change of perspective.
We naturally look around at the circumstances of the world—people, events, struggles, fears—and we can faint. Fear can come upon us. But He says, “Straighten up. Lift up your head.” Change your perspective, so that you do not feel overwhelmed by looking at the things of this world. Look up, because He wants us to see Him.
He wants us to get our eyes off the natural and onto the spiritual—to see what is really going on.
This has been one of the things the Lord has worked with man throughout creation and all through the Scriptures. God has simply tried to reach down to man and get us to change our perspective of what is going on.
Even the wisest man who lived upon the earth, apart from our Lord, gives us a hint about this perspective.
In Ecclesiastes 1:13–14, Solomon said:
I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven.
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
These are verses of contrast. Solomon shows us a great contrast in perspective: is it under heaven, or is it under the sun?
Under the sun is just our natural eye—what we see upon this earth. Under heaven is our spiritual eye. If we live under the sun, we will simply be discouraged, disappointed, despairing, and hopeless. There is not a lot of hope in this world.
Even the spirit of humanism, which is supposed to be the salvation, lacks considerably in one thing: the spirit of hope. There is no hope in man.
But as we live under heaven, we can be encouraged. We can be strengthened to press on. There is a hopefulness. Why? Because when we start seeing things from His perspective, we can begin to see that there is an end in view.
Everything that God does is with an end in view.
Throughout Scripture, God has been trying to get man to quit looking at things from a natural perspective, but to look up and see things from His eternal, heavenly perspective.
We can look at a few examples in the Old Testament.
Job was referred to earlier today. At the beginning of the book, Job knew a lot about the Lord. He was greatly blessed of the Lord, and in some of the things he shared, he knew the Lord in part.
But through the trials and sufferings of life, under the disciplining hand of the Lord, his whole perspective of both himself and God changed.
His eyes were opened to look up. He said:
I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth Thee.
His perspective had changed. We need that change of perspective.
We see something similar in Isaiah. Isaiah was one of the great prophets of the Lord, used greatly by Him. But there came a point in Isaiah’s life when he was greatly shaken.
When you come to Isaiah 6, his friend, cohort, and king—the one under whom he had prospered, a close confidant—Uzziah died. The year that Uzziah died, Isaiah was shaken.
We do not know all the details, but perhaps even unconsciously Isaiah had put some trust in Uzziah because he was a prosperous king. The Lord would say, “No, I do not want you to trust in anything upon this earth. I want you to see Me.”
When Isaiah saw the Lord, we have this beautiful testimony in Isaiah 6:5:
Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips:
for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
His whole perspective changed. His perspective of the Lord changed. His perspective of himself changed. His perspective of the people changed. He saw that they were just as bad off as he was.
It was not until the Lord touched him with that coal that he could go forth. Then he went forth not in the power of his own life, but in a new resurrection power, knowing that the Lord had called him and set him apart unto this.
You might wonder how I came up with this title, What Do You See? Well, it is a phrase used by the Lord among many of the prophets.
He would put something natural in front of them and ask a simple question: “What do you see?” Jeremiah saw an almond tree and a boiling pot. Amos saw a plumb line and a basket of summer fruit. Zechariah saw a golden lampstand and a flying scroll.
The Lord put something very natural before them—something they could identify with—and asked, “What do you see?” They responded naturally at first, saying what they saw. The Lord said, “You have answered correctly.” But then He opened their eyes and gave them a revelation of the spiritual meaning behind what they were seeing.
Why was He showing them this? Why was He showing them that? Let us look at a few examples.
In Jeremiah 1:11–12, it says:
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou?
And I said, I see a rod of an almond-tree.
Then said the Lord unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I watch over My word to perform it.
Jeremiah responded in a very natural way: “I see a rod of an almond tree.” The Lord said, “You have seen well.”
The word He was speaking of was the promise God had given to Jeremiah in the first part of that chapter, where He called him and said, “I have set you apart. I have called you to be a prophet to the people of God.”
They were not going to listen to him. They were going to reject him. It was not a very encouraging call. He was going to face fortified cities and all these forces of evil. But the Lord said, “I am with you.”
Jeremiah was a priest. As he thought about the almond tree, he would have remembered Aaron’s rod. In Numbers 17, the leaders who had challenged Aaron placed their rods before the Lord, one from each tribe. Aaron’s rod blossomed, bloomed, and bore almonds.
What does that speak of? Resurrection life. The other rods were dead. There was death there, but Aaron’s rod spoke of resurrection life.
The Lord was saying to Jeremiah, “You are not going in the power of your own life. That is simply death. You are going forth in the power of resurrection life. You are going forth in the power of My victorious, overcoming life.”
That is a great word for us today, too. We do not go forth in the power of our old self. We make it through each day through the power of His resurrection life.
We know our Redeemer lives, and He lives in us. He is on the throne, and He is living in us—mysteries we do not fully comprehend. But that is the truth. That is the power of His life in which we can go forth today.
As we look at things and ourselves, we will faint. Fear comes upon us. But if, by God’s grace, He can open the eyes of our hearts to see, we are not going forth in ourselves. We are going forth in the power of His resurrection. Praise God for that.
Another prophet we mentioned was Amos. Amos lived during Uzziah’s time, before Israel had been taken into captivity. Amos was speaking in many ways of God’s coming judgment.
In Amos 7:7–8, it says:
Thus He showed me: and, behold, the Lord stood beside a wall made by a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in His hand.
And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line.
Then said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumb-line in the midst of My people Israel; I will not again pass by them any more.
Amos responds naturally: “A plumb line.” Now, what is a plumb line? They are actually getting outdated because of lasers and all today. But I remember when I was in high school working for the state highway department on a survey party.
To show you how old I am, I actually surveyed Interstate 64 before it was built.
You would have a string, and at the bottom there was a weight—usually with a little pointed, chisel-like end. We would hold that plumb line, and you even had to learn how to hold it. At first, it would wobble everywhere. But as you became accustomed to it, it would come to one exact point.
Right there, at that one little point, you put a little nail. You do not miss it by an inch. It is specific. Plumb lines are very specific.
If we had missed that plumb line by an inch or so, Interstate 64 could have gone to Gordonsville instead of Charlottesville. So it is very specific.
The plumb line is a law. There is no grace in a plumb line—do not take that spiritually now, but just in the natural. There is no grace. That is it, and you have to follow it.
The Lord said to Amos, “I am about to put a plumb line in the midst of My people Israel, and I will spare them no longer.” The Lord was putting a standard right in the midst of Israel and measuring them by His holy and righteous character.
Prophetically, it speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our standard. He is our plumb line.
Israel was not measured against their works or all the outward things. It was their heart and their holy character. They did not measure up. When the Lord said, “I will not spare them,” judgment came.
But it was judgment in the form of discipline, intended to bring them back to the Lord. He loved them so much. He did not throw them out. He loved them and wanted them to come back.
We are thankful that some went through that discipline and came back to Jerusalem. They could testify that even though their sins were many, His mercy was more. Praise God for that.
In the relative world in which we live, there is one standard: the life of Christ. The life of Christ is an absolute standard. He is full of grace and truth, but He is the absolute standard. It is not Christ less something or Christ plus something. It is Christ—Him and Him alone.
That is what we need to be focused on in these last days. That is one of the keys in these last days: one thing necessary—knowing Him and following Him.
Then we come to Zechariah. Perhaps some of us are more familiar with this particular prophecy. In Zechariah 4:2, we know that Zechariah was involved in the recovery work among the people of God in Jerusalem. Haggai and Zechariah were there, and it was all in the spirit of recovering the testimony of God in Jerusalem.
And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have seen, and, behold, a candlestick all of gold, with its bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps thereon; there are seven pipes to each of the lamps, which are upon the top thereof;
and two olive-trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.
Zechariah looked at this, and in the next verse he said, “My lord, what are these?” The angel speaking with him said, “Knowest thou not what these are?” Zechariah answered, “No, my lord.”
That is encouraging. The Lord showed him this vision, and Zechariah asked, “What is it?” The angel asked, “You do not know?” He said, “No, I do not know.”
God does not try to intimidate us. Sometimes we feel as though God says, “If you do not know, I cannot use you anymore.” No. He says, “I will show you by My grace.”
Zechariah had an honest, transparent relationship with the Lord. That is so important in the days in which we are living, because we will see things that we do not understand. We need not be afraid to tell God, “I do not understand what You are saying or what You are doing.”
Daniel and Zechariah were men of God who said, “I do not understand what is going on.” That shows a person who is a genuine disciple of the Lord, because a genuine disciple is teachable.
We need to be teachable in this hour, to learn from Him what He is calling us to.
Then the Lord said:
This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Zechariah was involved in a great recovery work of God. The great comforting word that the Lord had for him was this: it is not by your might or power, but by My Spirit. That is how all of this is going to get done.
That lampstand represented the recovery of God’s testimony. Zechariah was from a priestly family. He knew what the lampstand was about. It was to hold the light. It was to testify of God.
Today, that is really the purpose of the church. That is why we are here as a lampstand. In Revelation 1–3, our Lord walks among the lampstands. What were they? They were the churches, the various local churches.
That is what He wants every assembly to be: a precious testimony of Him, upholding the glory of His Son, Jesus Christ. That is the call He has upon us in this hour.
The same word of encouragement comes to us: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.” It is Him. He is doing the great work. The work He began, He will complete.
Later in that chapter, Zerubbabel is holding a plumb line. Christ is the standard again. Then Zechariah speaks about the sons of oil and the olive trees pouring forth oil.
It speaks of the life of the saints—brothers and sisters exercising our priestly ministry, our kingly ministry, and our walk with Him. This releases the Spirit of God and brightens the lamp. As more and more of Christ within us comes forth, there is a brighter light shining from that lampstand.
The lampstand is simply to show the light, and the light is His life. That is what we want to be able to see and really come into.
In the days in which we are living, there is a lot going on. Each of these prophets had a change of perspective, from the natural to seeing what God had for them. This is what God is doing for all of us in this day and time. He is putting the question before us: “What do you see?”
Our brother Lance shared a quote related to what we are seeing, and I appreciated it:
One’s knowledge of prophetic events is vanity without some understanding of God’s purpose.
You can know all the things through Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, but unless you know something of God’s purpose—something of God’s end, what it is all leading to—it is vanity. It is vanity of vanities.
God always does something with His end in view. What is His heart? What is His purpose?
First, He wants to have that living, personal relationship with us on a daily basis—that life within us. Then He wants to dwell among us as His people. He wants to have a people together who are a living expression unto Him. He desires that corporate expression.
Then He has His end in view. What is His end? That His Son would have that eternal companion.
We hear a lot about the bride being made ready, but may it never become familiar to us. So many things within Christianity and our Christian life can become so familiar that we lose their preciousness.
Even the forgiveness of sins can become familiar. We can say, “Oh, yes, my sins are forgiven,” and lose the preciousness of that great work that was done.
We speak of fellowship together and being built together. These are familiar words. Lord, restore the freshness of it. We always have to keep God’s purpose and end in mind. Almost every message should have that as its goal: preparing us for the end, for the bride to make herself ready.
This is not an abstract thing. It is a reality and a fact that He is doing a great work of preparing us as His people.
He uses His Body, His church—the warrior, the family of God, the house of God. All these descriptions speak of that living corporate expression of His people upon this earth at this point in time, with one goal: to testify of Him and prepare His people for His return.
When we begin to see this, we gain a whole different perspective on why the Lord said to the disciples, “Lift up your head. Straighten up. You need to change your perspective.”
We are too earthbound. We are too attached to this earth, and too many things of it are governing us. We have to be set free of them to allow Him to do the great work He is doing.
This gives a whole new meaning to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1. When we think about the necessity for a change of perspective—from the earthly to the spiritual—this prayer takes on a whole new meaning.
In Ephesians 1:17–18, Paul prayed:
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him;
having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
How we need to have the eyes of our hearts—our spiritual eyes—opened, knowing His heart, knowing His purpose, and knowing His end. This is so vital for us in this hour.
Our Lord spoke of plagues, earthquakes, and wars. These things have been occurring throughout history.
There was the plague of Justinian, in which perhaps thirty to fifty million people died. There was the Black Death in the fourteenth century, which took perhaps seventy-five to two hundred million lives. There was smallpox in the New World, the 1918 flu pandemic—often called the Spanish flu—HIV and AIDS, and then COVID.
These things have been going on throughout history.
Earthquakes have also occurred throughout history. The 1556 Shaanxi earthquake in China reportedly killed around 830,000 people. The Haiti earthquake in 2010 killed around 300,000. There have been terrible earthquakes in Turkey, Iran, Syria, Japan, and throughout China.
Then there have been wars. World War II was the most destructive. World War I was originally called “the Great War,” because they thought it would be the war to end all wars. But it was not.
We need a greater appreciation for life. At this point, perhaps fifteen or sixteen thousand people have been killed in Israel and Gaza. I do not want anybody to misunderstand me, but that is not the greatest tragedy in the world. We look at Vietnam, where millions died, or the Sino-Japanese War, where perhaps fifteen to twenty million died.
The things we see now may seem like little skirmishes by comparison, but they are still wars, and they are taking human life.
So what is the difference? Why is this such an issue?
The Lord continues in Luke 21:29–31:
And He spake to them a parable: Behold the fig tree, and all the trees:
when they now shoot forth, ye see it and know of your own selves that the summer is now nigh.
Even so ye also, when ye see these things coming to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh.
“Behold the fig tree.” What does the fig tree speak of? Throughout Scripture, the fig tree speaks of Israel. We are not going to get into all the various interpretations, but the fig tree does speak of Israel. Some have called it God’s time clock.
The only thing I know is that God says, “Behold the fig tree.” So when something is going on in Israel, we need to be watching and praying. God is saying to us, “Behold it.” He is getting our attention.
Israel is a sign to us in this hour, and we need to be able to discern the signs of the times. Some of us have actually seen the rebirth or recreation of the nation of Israel in 1948. Then, in 1967, Jerusalem was unified, having been under Gentile control.
Whenever anything is going on, we need to take note—not merely from an earthly, political, economic, or natural perspective, but asking, “What is the Lord saying? What should we recognize?”
The Lord gives us wonderful instruction in Luke 21:34–35:
But take heed to yourselves, lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day come on you suddenly as a snare:
for so shall it come upon all them that dwell on the face of all the earth.
“Be on guard. Take heed. Focus your attention.”
To be on guard implies that there is potential conflict and enemy activity. Remember what the Lord instructed Adam and Eve in the garden. They were to guard, because there was a potential problem there. They did not guard it too well, and we have been suffering ever since.
The Lord says, “Be on guard.” The days in which we are living are serious. They are exciting, but they are dangerous. We can fall away.
What are we guarding? We are guarding our hearts. This is the seat where God wants to work within us. Our hearts are the throne of our affections.
Our brother last week spoke about first love. First love lives in our hearts, and it has to have that preeminent place. If our hearts are not right with Him, it clouds our whole perspective.
In Ephesians, Paul speaks of the eyes of our hearts being enlightened. That means seeing things clearly. We have to have the eyes of our hearts clarified.
Some of us, as we get a little older, have cataract issues. Our hearts can have cataracts, and then we do not see things clearly. Things become distorted. We need to have those cataracts removed from our hearts daily, so that we can see Him clearly and stand in the day in which we are living.
The Lord tells us what we need to guard our hearts from: that they would not be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness, and the worries of life.
Dissipation is just overindulging in something. It can be work, sports, social media, video games, pornography, or whatever distracts us. It can involve evil things, but it can also involve things that are not necessarily bad. We can overindulge in anything.
Drunkenness speaks of more than alcohol. People drink to escape. We find many ways to escape. Each one of us has a little Houdini within us; we are great escape artists.
We can escape to work, hobbies, activities, or even the gym. We should exercise, of course, but there is a balance in everything. We need to know His leading and guiding, not to be escapists, but realists—facing things head-on.
Then there are the worries of life. There is so much that worries us, and most of those worries never come about. The what-ifs: “What if this? What if that?” It never happens, but we can become so occupied with it that it weighs us down.
The Lord tells us this because that day is coming, and He does not want us to be caught like a trap—unprepared and caught off guard.
The Lord gives us the answer in Luke 21:36:
But watch ye at every season, making supplication, that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.
There are three vital issues here: watching, praying, and standing before the Son of Man.
Regardless of our interpretation of standing before the Son of Man, it is a serious thing. We will all stand before the Son of Man at the judgment seat of Christ. When that occurs, various interpretations may suggest different times, but we will all stand before that judgment seat.
We need to be ready. We need to be watching. We need to be praying.
Watching means to stay awake, keep alert, and be ready. It means watching and guarding our hearts.
I remember many night watches in the military. Those of you who were in the military may remember them. You would go out for a four- or five-hour watch with your rifle, pistol, bayonet, or knife. You were out there in the dark.
I was in the aviation part of the Navy. I was a little nineteen-year-old kid guarding multimillion-dollar airplanes out on the ramp where they stored the planes. The value of what you are watching is way beyond you, and there is no comparison to what we are watching and waiting for. We are watching and waiting for our Lord. He is priceless.
The first time you go through a night watch, you are very alert. Your adrenaline is going. But after you have gone through several watches, you start to become familiar. A sound you heard on the first night becomes, “Oh, that is just that sound.” You start to let your guard down a little.
Then the adrenaline wears off, and you are just waiting for the end of the watch. Your mind starts to drift: “What am I going to have for breakfast? Am I going to have biscuits and gravy? Am I going to have fatback?”
Your mind drifts away from what you are supposed to be doing. That is why we need to be watching and on the alert, that we would stay fresh.
There is nothing that wakes you up quicker in the midst of a night watch than some strange sound or something that goes boom in the night. All of a sudden, you are really alert. We do not want those booms in the night to have to wake us up. We want to be awake already, on the alert, and able to press on through to all that He has for us.
The Holy Spirit is there as we watch and pray before Him, especially regarding the fulfillment of prophecy. We need to remember that prophetic events may be near or distant. If the Holy Spirit does not give us perspective, we may think two events are both happening immediately, when one is occurring now and another is for later on.
Some prophecies have partial fulfillments, and some have multiple fulfillments.
The prophecy of salvation may be the greatest multiply fulfilled prophecy in history, because people are being saved every day. Praise God for that.
As an example of partial fulfillment, look at the Day of Pentecost. Peter quoted Joel, but not everything Joel spoke of happened that day. There will be a day when it all occurs. We need the Holy Spirit to teach us and show us, with the eyes of our hearts, what is going on.
We cannot see merely from a natural perspective, but from that heavenly, eternal, spiritual perspective. We have the beauty of being with brothers and sisters and being able to share things. We may have a sensing: “Is this what is going on?” But we should not make absolute declarations and say, “This is that.” Rather, we can submit to one another and seek to hear what God is doing.
In addition to watching, the Lord says to pray. How many times in your Christian life have you heard about the necessity for prayer? Talk about a stuck record. We all hear about the necessity of prayer.
But if we know something of His heart, desire, and purpose, we cannot help but pray.
Once we are captured by Him, once we see that He is doing a great work and bringing us together with an end in view, we cannot help but pray. Praise God, we can join with one another in corporate prayer.
One of the main reasons there is not much kingdom prayer within the church today is a lack of vision, a lack of understanding of God’s heart and God’s purpose. This is why Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1 becomes more and more critical.
The days are exciting days, and they are serious days. We are approaching that end. Would we be those who recognize the signs of the times?
We have a beautiful picture in the Old Testament when David was getting ready to bring in the kingdom. We had the sons of Issachar, who understood the times in which they were living and knew what Israel should do.
We need that spirit of the sons of Issachar among the people of God today—that we would have an understanding of what He is doing and what the church, what His people, should be doing in this hour.
There are many things going on in the seen and the unseen, and this is where the eyes of our hearts have to be opened.
We need to recognize these things, not in a fearful way. The Lord said that fear and the fainting of men would come upon the world. We can see how quickly fear can grasp us.
To me, one of the tragic things that came out of the whole COVID pandemic was fear. I am not going to get into the pros and cons, but there was fear of COVID on one side and fear of the vaccine on the other. Everybody was fearful of something.
It is tragic how fear can grip us and govern us. So much we do not know. Fear brings paralysis. When you are fearful, you cannot even look up. You are paralyzed. Fear grips us.
We need to allow Him to meet us in a wonderful and powerful way. It is a very serious thing when we stand before the Lord. The first time we see Him, we will be standing before Him at the judgment seat of Christ.
We need to allow the Holy Spirit to work within our hearts now—to deal with us, put aside the things that are not necessary, put aside the things that distract us, and put aside priorities that differ from Him.
Our brother shared on first love last week, and I appreciated that. Another way of looking at first love is this: first love is what governs your life.
What is governing our life? Is it a first love of ourselves, or a first love of Him? We need to come to that place where He has that first love—where, using Jerry’s recent phrase, we are all in.
God tries to get our attention in many different ways through the years and throughout Scripture—through various words, and even songs—to wake us up. These are serious times in which we are living, and we need to wake up in these days so that we can really see what is going on.
Sometimes when something is far away and not touching us directly—such as the war between Israel and Hamas—the seriousness of it does not impact us as much. In the days in which we are living, when we watch something almost through a live stream, it has more impact.
Sadly, for many of us, it takes something touching us personally before we wake up. We do not want that. We want to wake up by hearing His voice and His call.
There was a huge flood in Dubai that they had never experienced before. In Brazil and Bolivia, the Amazon River has been drying up. There is a huge drought, and many tributaries are completely dry. There are wars throughout Africa—wars in Sudan that we scarcely hear about, where thousands are being killed in genocide.
There is so much going on that we cannot keep track of it all.
This is why we need to reengage our hearts with the Lord, so that we are not governed by the things upon this earth. Our burdens and prayers should not come merely from earthly things, but from His throne and from His perspective.
He is calling us to wake up.
He has a great heart. He has a great purpose. He is doing a marvelous work. It is fabulous, the people who are being saved throughout the world today.
As we watch and pray, we can pray more intelligently—with spiritual intelligence concerning what is going on. Many times, in the midst of a crisis, we do not know what is happening. We simply pray, “Lord, You are on the throne. The heavens rule. May Your will prevail in this.” That is a perfectly fine prayer.
As we go on, perhaps the Lord sheds more light and gives more specifics. But may we be those who are awakened for the exciting times, the serious times, and the dangerous times in which we are living.
The hope we have is that the great I AM is with us. He will never leave us or forsake us, and His abundant grace will be there to carry us through all the way.
We do not want to take the grace of God in vain and waste it. We want to receive it, respond to it, and grow in Christ—to be those who would be hastening His return, hastening the coming of the Lord.
May the eyes of our hearts be open, that we could see and look up, having that heavenly perspective. May our hearts be guarded in a greater way, prepared, and diligently watching and praying for His purpose and His end.
We talk a lot. We love to sing the song “Maranatha.” But are we really aware of the seriousness of what will occur when He comes?
There is a lot of joy. There is greatness there. I do not want to paint it in a negative way. It is an exciting time, but it can be a very eye-opening time, too. We want to be those who, by His grace, respond to Him and allow Him to meet us now, because we do not know how much time we have left.
Let us pray.
Lord, we are thankful that in Your great love, all throughout Scripture, You have a simple desire: that men would look up and see You, that the eyes of men’s hearts would be enlightened to see You, Your heart, and Your purpose.
Lord, it is not something we can do in ourselves. Revelation comes from You.
We are thankful, Lord, that You are waiting and anxious to reveal Your Son in us. It brings You such great pleasure.
Lord, we want to be those who are offering ourselves to You, that You could continue working within our hearts and lives, preparing us for the days in which we are living.
Lord, revolutionize our daily life. Revolutionize even our thought of watching and guarding our hearts. Revolutionize our prayer lives, Lord, that You could really have the people You are calling for in this hour and this time.
We are thankful for those we remembered earlier today—Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah. They were willing to leave the luxuries of Babylon and go back to what, in the natural eye, looked like a deserted and defeated bunch of old, burnt-out stones.
But when the eyes of their hearts were opened, they saw Your heart and Your purpose—Your jealousy for Jerusalem.
Lord, give us that jealousy for Your interest within each of our hearts. In Your precious name, amen.