Father, we are so thankful that we could be in Your presence this morning to worship. This is of highest value to us. It is so edifying to us, and we hope it gives You glory.
Thank You, Lord, for the time of worship. And now, as we fellowship together, we pray again that Your Spirit would be circulating among us—revealing, convicting, capturing, keeping, all those things that You do in the great mystery of Your perfecting work. Thank You, Lord, that we could be together this hour. Do help me, Lord, to share my heart, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
You know, I love to study the Bible, and I am now doing a Bible study on Matthew back in the city. I am just thoroughly caught in the book of Matthew. There is no other book in the Bible right now for me. I do not know about you, but when you read it and read it and get into something you do in the Bible study, it is wonderful to me. The juices flow.
One of the things that I discovered, even in the early chapters of Matthew, is that there seems to be a formula that Matthew is trying to convey to us regarding the kingdom of the heavens. Basically, the kingdom story in the Gospel of Matthew is this: the King is in heaven, and now He is breaking upon the earth through Jesus Christ.
This breaking upon the earth is causing great conflict. If you look at the whole Gospel, you see Christ come upon this earth, great conflict against Him, and it ends up with the cross. Then heaven rules in the resurrection.
But the formula you can see is that every time there is a kingdom proclamation, there is immediate resistance, and either a ruling or an overruling.
I say that because when we come to something like a planning meeting, as we did yesterday, the older I get, the more I realize how little our decisions really weigh into what God is doing. He rules and overrules.
When we look at circumstances like last year, when we could not even have a place, sometimes that is an overruling. This year we had a place and found it, but we should not necessarily say, “Ah, that means we should go ahead,” right?
What we have to say is, “By God’s mercy, we feel the Lord has told us, ‘Let’s plow into June,’” and let the Lord rule and overrule.
That is why it is so precious to come together at a planning time: we can sense a confirmation or an overruling. I came with something the Lord spoke to me about. I did not share it yesterday because, for me, it was a confirmation or overruling of what I thought.
That is the wonderful thing about the body of Christ. You do not have to have your own opinion and have that always be right. When you submit your opinion, you find out, “Was I wrong? Let’s see what the body has to say.”
Sure enough, the very word the Lord gave to me, somebody else spoke yesterday. I said, “Aha, I think that is a clue.” So I want to share that word with you. I have not even started my message yet, but you will understand.
It comes from 1 John. Almost everything I am going to share today was shared yesterday, so I should say, just listen to the recording of yesterday.
Here in 1 John 2, John, of course, is a great apostle of recovery. He is trying to recover things. There is this wonderful place in 1 John 2:12-14:
I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.
I write unto you, fathers, because ye know Him Who is from the beginning.
I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil one.
I have written unto you, little children, because ye know the Father.
I have written unto you, fathers, because ye know Him Who is from the beginning.
I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one.
As soon as I considered that, I realized that was all He had to say to me: the fathers. I realized what my burden is.
As I traverse the body of Christ, thank God there are so many people saved all over the world—people saved by the grace of God. Truly, there is more work being done beyond the United States than in the United States itself. There is a tremendous harvest going on right now.
But as I look around, and even look at ministers whom I respect for truly wanting to serve the Lord, there are many who come to the level of young men. That is to say, they know the Word, they have the Lord abiding in them, and they are able to preach, contend, and fight for the faith.
But the fathers—how many fathers do we know? Across the whole span of Christianity, when you listen to Christian radio or watch Christian television, how many could you truly say are fathers?
The fathers are those who know Him Who is from the beginning. In other words, they have seen something of the eternal Father, and it has reshaped the way they approach everything.
I thought of the number of fathers that the Lord has enabled to be found in our midst. Then I realized that the context of this chapter is this: he goes right on to say, “The world is passing away.” The fathers have got to sow the seed while they can.
Certainly, in 2 Timothy 2, Paul says to Timothy, “The things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” The thing is: fathers—spiritual fathers—can be male or female.
I hate to embarrass people, but that is just the way I am. Jessica is a father. You can hear it in what she says. She has seen and knows Him Who is from the beginning.
Where do you find an assemblage of such people? It is as rare as hen’s teeth. You can find all kinds of charismatic, powerful preachers who are at that level of young men, with the Word of God and the power of God. But how many fathers?
It is fathers who can multiply and pass on the torch from generation to generation. It is fathers who are seed bearers. It is fathers whose lives, as much as their message, pass on a seed that produces other children, little children, and other young men who become fathers.
So what it interpreted to me simply was this: yes, the Lord is coming very soon. We need to scatter seed while we can.
I thought immediately of Marilyn DeVries. My kids are in their fifties. I bet they could tell you everything she taught them as they passed through the Richmond Family Conference. Now, that is a father.
She was so full of the Lord. She was so crazy in love with the Lord. I mean, she should have written the book Crazy Love; somebody else stole her title. But, boy, she just threw seeds everywhere. You put those junior-high kids in her midst, and they will never be the same. Isn’t that amazing?
We have fathers. The point is this: the Christian Family Conference is not a question of how good the speakers are. Half the stuff that has happened that has eternal value in those conferences was not even what the speakers spoke.
It was something somebody said in the children’s class, where they saw a young person working with an older person, and an older person touched the younger person’s life while they were working. So much is going on in scattering seed through the conference.
I do not have much stock in the over-the-hill-gang preachers—including myself. But I believe that when God has an opportunity to sow seed at the very brink of His coming back, He says, “Let’s do it.”
What have you got to lose, over-the-hill gang? What have you got to lose? Just gather together and sow some seed. There are some people who have never seen this eternal God before, and they may get that opportunity just before the Lord comes back.
To see some young people come into fatherhood—I think we have some post-teenage fathers. Think about how amazing and how rare that is.
I was a Baptist preacher for ten years, until Brother Kong killed me. I had no idea what it meant to know Him Who was from the beginning.
I was preaching the gospel, and people were getting saved. People called me an evangelist and then a revivalist because I was kind of into the Keswick thing. I had no idea how to stretch back your understanding to eternity and then bring it forward. I had no idea.
I am so glad I came. That was my thought. You may have had other impressions, and that is fine. I have come to a few conference planning meetings and been overruled in what I thought should happen. That is all right, because it is not so much how valuable my opinion is; it is that the Lord gets His way.
So we head out toward June. If the whole thing collapses like a house of cards and William and Mary turns against us, then that is why every time you take a kingdom action, there is a contention against it. Then there is either heaven’s rule or heaven’s overruling, and we learn lessons either way.
That is how I came to sense the affirmation when one of the sisters said that we have fathers, young men, and little children coming up through the ranks. That was all I had to hear. That was the amen for me.
With that in mind, I want to bring before you four of the old fathers in the Bible.
I have four members of the program—like the old guys at the Bowery Mission. You know them well. I want to read the Scriptures and talk about these fellows this morning.
The first fellow is Isaiah. I am getting to the part of Isaiah where he is part of the over-the-hill gang. He is a prophet emeritus, if you want to put it that way. We would not say he retired, but you understand.
In Isaiah 62, we have this thrilling, almost final passage in Isaiah—Isaiah 62:1-2, 6-7:
For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her righteousness go forth as brightness,
and her salvation as a lamp that burneth.
And the nations shall see thy righteousness,
and all kings thy glory;
and thou shalt be called by a new name,
which the mouth of the Lord shall name.I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem;
they shall never hold their peace day nor night:
ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers,
take ye no rest,
and give Him no rest,
till He establish,
and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
There is old Isaiah, standing on the walls at seventy-five years old—over the hill—and he has a new job. Why is he up there? Why is he standing there with Shear-jashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, his two sons? They are up on the walls, yelling, shouting, and carrying on. What is going on?
Isaiah’s lifetime vision was a vision of the testimony of Jesus. He saw Jesus from the very beginning, and it lasted with him all the way through.
In Isaiah 6, he saw the Lord upon the throne. The word Adonai indicates a man upon that throne, and then the angels say that it is the Lord upon the throne. Isaiah had to deal with the fact that there is a God-Man Who is his real King. Forget Uzziah—this is your King.
Then in Isaiah 7, a virgin will conceive, and His name will be Immanuel. In Isaiah 9, unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulder. He keeps seeing more and more of the Lord Jesus.
His ministry goes from being a prophet to becoming a watchman. He could see from a heavenly point of view. He had touched eternity when he saw the seraphim and the Lord upon His throne.
Out of his watchmanship, he became an intercessor. His greatest victory was when he and Hezekiah got together and interceded, and 185,000 Assyrians were destroyed. They saw heaven rule.
Then, after Hezekiah died, Isaiah had nothing more to do. That was when the Lord woke him up and said, “Wait a minute. I am giving you something more in the testimony.” You see, just to say, “I have seen the testimony of Jesus,” is not enough. The testimony keeps increasing.
He saw that the Holy One had become the Redeemer. Beginning in Isaiah 40 and going forward, there is a Holy One Who is a Redeemer. The Holy One must be God, yet a Redeemer is the near kinsman—He is a Man.
Then he sees that this Redeemer is the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, Who dies for us to bring us into redemption. What a testimony.
But now we find him up on the wall. What is his job now? A remembrancer. Asking an old man to be a remembrancer is really doing something, but this is his new job.
Before they had computers, kings had remembrancers. These men kept track of everything the king said. If he made a decree, they reminded him. They kept the history of the court.
You remember in Esther: one night the king could not sleep, so he brought in the remembrancer, it says in the Hebrew. The man reads about Mordecai saving the king’s life. Just so happened—heaven’s ruling.
The Son, the Messiah, tells the remembrancers to remind the Father: “Father, You promised I would have a bride.” Bride, get up on the walls. Remind the Father. Do we have to remind the Father that the Son wants a bride? Of course not. It is for us.
But they got up on the walls with a whole new life, to remind the Lord to do what only the Lord could do. This is the work of a father.
I think it was one of Lance’s messages that first helped me see that the church was a person. Isaiah, at the end of his life, saw that Zion was a person—a corporate person.
All of us probably grew up in a church organization. There I was, a Baptist pastor. We had a bunch of saved people, and we were all doing stuff. But when I saw that the church was a person, it was my undoing.
As the pastor, I used to whip people, feed the sheep, club the goats—all that kind of stuff. But when I saw that the church was a person, I realized you cannot do that to people.
If you have a testimony of Jesus, you see that the church is a person. It is a whole different thing. You do not treat it like an organization. You are not the organizational head. So God just chopped my head off. I resigned, tore up my ordination papers, and started substitute teaching—much higher and nobler work.
Isaiah was saying that somehow Zion is a person whom the Messiah desires. He does not merely want a throne in Jerusalem. Yes, He does, but there is something more.
And who benefits from Isaiah’s intercession? Shear-jashub—“a remnant shall return”—and Maher-shalal-hash-baz—judgment is coming very soon. They are up on the wall. Seeds are being planted, and those sons will plant them for the next generation.
A father has such a revelation of the testimony of Jesus that he sees the testimony is not just Jesus; it is Jesus and His Zion, His church, His bride.
The second fellow is Habakkuk—Habby, as we call him in the program. In Habakkuk 2:1-4, he says:
I will stand upon my watch,
and set me upon the tower,
and will look forth to see what He will speak with me,
and what I shall answer concerning my complaint.
And the Lord answered me, and said,
Write the vision, and make it plain upon tablets,
that he may run that readeth it.
For the vision is yet for the appointed time,
and it hasteth toward the end, and shall not lie:
though it tarry, wait for it;
because it will surely come, it will not delay.
Behold, his soul is puffed up, it is not upright in him;
but the righteous shall live by his faith.
Here is old Habby, up on the ramparts, quite similar to Isaiah, only a hundred years later. He has seen something that changed his whole life.
Habakkuk started out in protest. “Now, God, You are doing things wrong. I am a prophet, and I know what You should do. You should bless the righteous and chastise the unfaithful. Here You are blessing the unrighteous and chastising the faithful. That is unlike You, God. You are doing something wrong.”
He gave God a good piece of his mind. But, being a prophet, he knew better. He climbed up on the ramparts and said, “All right, Lord, I spoke out of turn. Let God squash me like a watermelon.”
The Lord said, “No, no. Let Me take you back to eternity.” As surely as He lives, all the earth is going to be filled with the glory of the Lord.
God says, “Come back and see a vision of My eternal purpose. I do what I want to do, and whatever I want to do is going to produce glory over the whole earth. Heaven rules, Habakkuk—not you and your understanding.”
When Job saw God, all his questions were answered. Our lives are made up of so many disparate parts. We are trying to get priorities straight: evangelism, pastoral work, family, time, golf—everything is pulling us in different directions.
Young people say, “Oh, I wish I knew how to prioritize my life.” Listen: you see the God of eternity, and He prioritizes your life.
Once you see the eternal God, Who is absolutely sovereign, it is an all-encompassing reality that solves all your earthly questions. All the disparate parts line up as if there were a magnet drawing the filings together.
But if you do not have this, the Christian life remains a confusing mixture down here on earth. Oh, but to see a vision of the Eternal One, His eternal purpose, and what He is doing—that changes everything.
Habakkuk saw the eternal purpose of God, and he started singing:
For though the fig tree shall not flourish,
neither shall fruit be in the vines;
the labor of the olive shall fail,
and the fields shall yield no food;
the flock shall be cut off from the fold,
and there shall be no herd in the stalls:
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength.
He passed that vision along, and the younger generation took it and ran with it right through the tribulation. Habakkuk was one of the last prophets before the Babylonian captivity, along with Jeremiah. He gave the saints such a vision that they could run through the captivity and still be faithful to the Lord.
“Revive Thy work in the midst of the years.” It is a fearful thing to pray that prayer, because the Lord revives with a strong hand.
When we say, “Revive Thy work,” we are always wanting Him to bless us, restore us, revive us, and refresh us. But Habakkuk also says:
In wrath remember mercy.
O Lord, I have heard the report of Thee, and am afraid:
O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years.
There is some undoing. Habakkuk had seen God’s ways, and he feared. You cannot see the eternal purpose of God without the cross doing its work in our lives.
There is a reviving that takes place as we let go of things that have kept us from life. Having seen that eternal purpose, Habakkuk is set free to sing.
“I am so glad Jesus let me see. Glory, hallelujah, Jesus let me see.” And you say, “Oh, Lord, help me not to be disobedient to what You let me see.”
If you are a father, you know you have seen things. But you have a responsibility to be sowing seed. We get an opportunity at the conference and every day in our lives. But if we do not see, there is no seed.
The third fellow is Haggai. In Haggai 2:6 and 9, we read:
For thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while,
and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land.The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former,
saith the Lord of hosts;
and in this place will I give peace,
saith the Lord of hosts.
Here is old Haggai. He is not standing up on the ramparts, and you might know why: there were no ramparts. Jerusalem was in ruins. There was no temple, nothing. He was standing on the ruins with Zechariah, his young cohort.
Haggai was an old man. He probably lived back in the days when there was still Solomon’s temple. So you are talking about somebody ready to retire.
Then these young fellows come back—the remnant. Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the others are going to rebuild the temple. Haggai stands on the ruins, looks at the pile, and says, “This could never be what Solomon’s temple was.”
When they laid the foundation, some people were excited, but others were crying. Haggai was in that bunch. “Man, this is not Solomon’s temple. No way. It is impossible.”
After they celebrated laying the foundation, the enemies stopped the work altogether for fifteen years while people watched HGTV and redesigned their homes. It was really impossible—totally impossible.
Then God chose Haggai. Standing on the ruins, he saw the glorious house of God.
He said, “The latter glory is going to be greater than the former glory.” Young Zechariah was just naive enough to believe the old prophet.
Within two months, it was like dominoes. Haggai said, “Thus saith the Lord: I am with you.” That hit Zechariah, and he began to reveal eight visions concerning the coming of the Lord and the building of that glorious temple—not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit.
Then Zechariah’s vision hit Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and they said, “We are going to start building.” Everybody got together and began to build.
The enemy came and tried to stop it. Forget it—they got overruled. A letter went to the Persian king, and a letter came back saying, “No, no, you have to let them build. Not only that, you have to give them some gold to help them.” Heaven ruled.
But Haggai had to see it. He saw the glorious church.
We can work on the church, especially if we are brothers in responsibility, and it can be discouraging when you hear all the stuff people can say, do, and think in the church. But when you see the glorious church, you go for the gold. You see what is gold, and you build what is gold.
The church one day is going to look like a bride coming down out of heaven—precious stones, jasper, transparent gold, silver. That is what the church is, and that is what the church is going to be.
When we see a vision, it is always of something perfected, which then enables us to do the work of perfecting. You do not start with, “This church is miserable, but I am going to make it something.” You start with, “This is the church,” and you come up to that vision, because that is the reality.
The fourth fellow—give me a little latitude here, because I know not all of you agree—is Barnabas. I believe he wrote Hebrews. If you think Paul wrote Hebrews, fine. If you think Apollos wrote Hebrews, fine. Just bear with me. I know it was Barnabas.
In Hebrews 12:22-24, we read:
But ye are come unto Mount Zion,
and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to innumerable hosts of angels,
to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all,
and to the spirits of just men made perfect,
and to Jesus the Mediator of a new covenant,
and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel.
Here is old Barnabas, over seventy years old, just before AD 70. Barnabas has seen something. He has seen the great High Priest, and he has seen that those brothers and sisters he spoke about in Hebrews 11 are standing on Mount Zion along with Jesus.
Barnabas was loved by everybody. He was one of those few prophets with such love in him that you could not help but love him.
He began in Jerusalem, selling his land and bringing the money to the church. What a generous heart. He was a big-hearted fellow.
When things were going on among the Gentiles in Antioch, the brothers sent him because he had a great heart. He was full of the Holy Spirit and encouragement. So they called him Barnabas, “son of encouragement,” though his name was actually Joseph, a Levite.
Then he went up to Tarsus, found Saul, and brought him back to Antioch. He said, “Here, join me in the work.” His whole life was one of building people up.
Even Mark, when Mark had been written off by Paul as damaged goods, Barnabas took him in. “Come here, Mark. If you are going to do the Lord’s work, you do not quit.” Mark said, “Okay,” and he wrote the Gospel. I am glad Barnabas was around.
But Barnabas had a burden: there is something about the purpose of God, something about the testimony of Jesus, something about the glorious church that includes Jewish Christians. The whole thing is not complete without them.
He looked at his Jewish brethren who had been saved, and he sensed that Jerusalem was about to be destroyed. His Jewish Christian saints were holding onto the shadows.
Barnabas was burdened about it, and he wrote the letter to the Hebrews. That is my basis.
How could he help his brethren come through? He saw a vision, and the vision was Mount Zion.
Isaiah saw that Zion was a person. What did Barnabas see Mount Zion was? People.
The Jews thought that when Messiah came, God would restore a temple, a palace for the king, and a wonderful city. But Barnabas says, “Look, you are now standing on Mount Zion.”
Does he mention one material building thing? No. What is Mount Zion? Mount Zion is a multitude of angels. Mount Zion is God the Judge. Mount Zion is the spirits of righteous men made perfect. Mount Zion is those people from Hebrews 11. Mount Zion is the church of the firstborn.
That is who is in the kingdom, and you need to get in the kingdom. Mount Zion is the kingdom, and the kingdom is beings, including, at the very top, Jesus.
What Barnabas saw, which enabled the writing of Hebrews, was this: Jesus is the great High Priest. That is what would help the Jews get through.
“Look who is at the top of the mountain. Lay aside those impediments, those Jewish things holding you back. Run with patience, and look at the top of Mount Zion. Who do you see there? Jesus, sprinkling His blood to cleanse you.”
He is the great High Priest. All you have to do is draw near unto the throne and find grace, help, and mercy for this time of need. That is where the kingdom is.
It is not a place. It is not a building. It is not a temple. It is people who have been saved and are together—fathers who see what is going on.
Barnabas encouraged those brethren to let go of the old stuff, go outside the camp, and join Jesus on His mountain—Mount Zion.
All four of these fathers were fathers at a time of crisis, and unfortunately the saints never picked up on it.
It is amazing that the end of the world is going to come, and the saints will not know it for the most part. There are those who know and sense that something is about to happen.
We have had this Israeli conflict, and most Christians have no idea that it could be connected to the very end. Something could trip, and our whole nation could be destroyed—financially ruined. It is so close, but most Christians have no idea.
Just as in their days, they had no idea. Isaiah was prophesying in the days of Manasseh, when everything still seemed fine in Judah. But Zion had been corrupted from within by the sinfulness not only of the people but also of the priests.
Habakkuk was the same way. The Chaldeans were coming into Judah, but the people said, “What is going on? The enemy could never take over Jerusalem.”
Haggai stood on the ruins of Jerusalem and the temple. There was a crisis. The remnant had returned from Babylon at great sacrifice, but when opposition arose and the work stopped, everybody went to work on their own houses.
Do not tell me they did not love the Lord. They were simply busy renovating their own thing, just like most Christians today, when we are right at the end.
Barnabas also lived in a time of crisis. It was perhaps AD 68—just two years before Rome destroyed Jerusalem, the temple, the system of worship, the priesthood, everything. Most of them did not have a clue.
There are always harbingers. It is like the robin in spring. You see a robin and think, “Ah, springtime is coming.” A father who has seen Him Who is from the beginning has some sense of the kingdom time zone.
A person who is a father, who has seen Him Who is from the beginning, has got some sense of the kingdom time zone. Those things are very near.
Heavenly vision is a fragile thing. You do not just have heavenly vision and that is it—you have got it forever. You can lose it by disobedience, by laziness, or by not being exercised. There are many ways.
Of course, the Lord has His ways of circling us back around into that which we have. I am thankful for that. But this is something we need to take seriously.
The Lord has fathers, and He wants fathers planting seeds. I saw the lineup yesterday for the children’s classes, and I see fathers—sisters and brothers who are fathers—who are going to plant seeds in the children coming this summer, God willing. That is a tremendous thing.
Seed planting. I hope it is true for all of you, and I hope it is true for myself. I actually believe today, more than ever, that I know the burden of the Father He has put in me.
There is something there I have seen. I always hope I can communicate it, but there is something there whether I can explain it or not. Based on that, I look forward to the conference coming up, in any role I can be part of.
The Gospel of Matthew—the whole theme—is that the kingdom of heaven comes by planting seed. The sower in Matthew 13 is the main parable of the whole Gospel. That is the way Jesus did it.
Matthew wants you to see: how does the kingdom grow? How does the kingdom come? Seed.
We need to share this with people who are so earthbound, even in their Christian faith. They have no idea of these eternal, wonderful things.
There is a work going on, which Habakkuk saw: all things are being summed up in Christ. All things are being headed up in Christ. The magnet of heaven is on, and all the filings are coming together under Christ.
Christ will be Lord of everything. He is the sovereign God. Who can stop that?
It is time to go to higher ground. Dear fathers—brothers and sister-fathers—praise God, we have something to give. As weakly and as poorly as we give it, in our age and infirmities, the Lord will still do what He wants to do.
But He wants some people to remind Him to do what He is going to do.
We are in such a finished work that it is almost like a joke that we have to work, but it is very serious business—very serious business.
I do not know what is going to happen, or when the end is coming, but there is something coming down. We need to be serious about what is going to happen this June.
We need to pray for our dear sisters and brothers who will be teaching the children, for the music ministry, the teachers, whoever the speakers are going to be, and the whole thing. Let us pray: seed sown.
When I need encouragement, you know where I go? CTM. I listen to an old message. It does not matter whether it is Johannes or whoever it is. Put it on. You do not even have to choose it. Whatever they have there, just hit it.
What a seed-sowing ministry. The dear brothers and sisters are doing this podcast on Lance. There are cockroaches all over the place, I know, but did you hear the latest one about the two things that stand in the way of the Antichrist coming? Wake up.
This is father stuff. It is seed sowing. I do not know what the Lord’s estimate is going to be finally of the Christian Family Conference over the years, but thank God we have sown seeds.
I am thankful that it sowed seed into me and gave me some kind of vision that there is more going on than meets the eye—my old Baptist eye.
Father, You rule. You rule; heaven rules. There is no stopping now the plans that You have for Your Son’s glorification and for all things to be brought under Him.
There is no explaining all the mystery involved, but Lord, we want to see a vision of Jesus that will keep us running in the race. We want to see some vision of that eternal purpose that will have us sing in the Shiggaion.
We want to see the beauty of the glorious temple of greater glory than the former. Oh, Lord, we want to see that we are now standing by faith on Mount Zion, where all the heavenly resources are at our bidding.
We are part of the life that comes out of that mountain, even the kingdom of God. Oh, thank You, Lord. Thank You for all that we have been given.
Oh, help us to be faithful, dear Lord. Help us, Lord. Have mercy on us, Lord. Do not let us waste seed. Help us to be faithful. Thank You, dear Lord Jesus. Amen.
Dear Lord, thank You. Thank You for the word. Thank You for giving us such comfort, and continue to remind us. You want to do a really big business with us.