Before we go on today, I need to
just make reference to one last Scripture verse,
and that's Genesis chapter 15, verse 1.
And it was here that the Lord appeared
to Abram.
I think this was perhaps the third appearance
of the Lord to him.
Perhaps the fourth.
I should go back and check, I suppose.
But in this appearance of the Lord, the
Lord said to him, I am thy shield
and thy exceedingly great reward.
This statement of the Lord to Abram at
this time in his life was very significant
because in the previous chapter he had taken
one of the greatest steps of faith a
leader ever has to take.
And I think at some time in our
life, God gives every one of us this
choice.
Perhaps you've had that choice already presented to
you.
Perhaps you passed the test.
Perhaps you failed.
I don't know.
God alone knows.
I'm sure if you failed, he gives you
another chance.
In most cases, I think he gives us
multiple opportunities to make the right choice because
of our propensity to failure when he presents
this opportunity.
The problem with God's opportunity is that they
come disguised, and only faith rips away the
opportunity to see what we're really being faced
with in the choice.
In this case, the choice was whether Abraham
would trust God alone to be the one
who blessed him and provided for him, or
whether he would enter into league with others
and lean upon them to be part of
his support base.
One of the critical issues we all face
is who we're going to belong to.
To whom do you belong?
Who owns you?
In Acts chapter 8, there was a certain
sorcerer who sought to own Peter and offered
him money, Peter and John, for the gift.
Their response was, I hope, one that you'll
always have the courage to say, Thy money
perish with thee.
You who work in pastoral ministry have that
temptation, I'm sure, presented you constantly by sometimes
affluent members, sometimes some that aren't so affluent,
who want to purchase favor.
You're always faced with the decision, What am
I going to do?
In this case, the king of Sodom wanted
to give to Abraham the spoils of a
war he had gone out and helped win.
In fact, without what he did, the war
would have been lost.
And yet, when it came time to divide
the spoils, Abraham lifted up his hand to
the Lord God, the possessor of heaven and
earth, and he understood that, who owned it
all.
And he said, I will not take from
a thread even to a shoelatchet.
I won't even take shoestrings from you, nor
anything that is thine, lest thou shouldst say
I have made Abraham rich.
And after he had made that choice to
lean wholly on God as his provider and
be only God's man, and not let anyone
manipulate him with money, that God appears to
him and says, Abraham, I am your exceeding
great reward.
I'm what you're going to get for serving
me.
I don't think that was a disappointment to
Abraham, because that's who he was seeking, God.
The Bible says in Hebrews 11, verse 6,
He's a rewarder of them that diligently seek
him.
And what's the reward?
Him.
He rewards you with himself if you diligently
seek him.
And the Lord said to Abraham, I am
thy exceeding great reward.
More than anything else, that's what I want
now and in eternity is the Lord.
Amen.
I want him.
And I hope that with that understanding you'll
begin to pursue him, seek him.
Then we have the glorious promise of Correction,
Romans 8, where Paul says, How shall the
Father not with him freely give us all
things?
And one of the terrible focuses that has
been generated in our nation is the focus
on things.
Use your faith to get things, name it
and claim it, and all this business.
And the Lord just says, Seek first what?
The kingdom of God and his righteousness, and
what?
All these things will I add.
He never told us to seek the things
or to name and claim the things.
If you're going to use your faith to
name and claim, name and claim spiritual realities,
spiritual priorities, the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and he will take care of the
things.
And once that focus is right in your
life, you don't have to worry about the
things, because the Lord will take care of
them.
And if you read Deuteronomy 28, you'll see
that Moses made it very clear that if
we would walk in his law and keep
his commandments, the Lord said, All these blessings
shall come upon you, and what?
Overtake you.
You don't have to seek them.
You don't have to go out after them.
You don't have to make them the focus
of your life.
You can't help it.
They will overtake you, and they will come
upon you.
And I hope you will do that and
teach your people to do that, and focus
them on the kingdom of God and his
righteousness.
Focus them on him and establishing a relationship
with him, and he will take care of
the things.
They that are with him, oh, that's the
prize, being with him.
Paul's words in Philippians 3, verse 15, that
I might know him, the power of his
resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being
made conformable unto his death, if by any
means I might attain unto thee, literally, the
out resurrection.
So let that be your goal today, to
be with him.
They that are with him are called and
chosen and faithful.
I want to talk about those three things
in the concluding time we have here this
afternoon.
Called, chosen, and faithful.
They that are with him are called, are
chosen, are faithful.
We all know the words of Jesus in
John 13, You have not chosen me, but
I have chosen you and ordained you that
you should go and bring forth fruit and
that your fruit should remain.
We are not those who discovered him or
found him.
In reality, we are those who were found
by him.
He sought us out as that ninety and
left the ninety and nine in the fold
and went out to where we were and
found us.
Thank God that he did.
We are called.
So the Bible says in Matthew 20, verse
16, and you'll find it also in Matthew
22 and verse 14, everyone knows the verse,
many are called and what?
Few are chosen.
One little Sunday school girl said it one
day in one of my classes.
Many are called and a few are frozen.
Many are called, few are chosen.
I think all of you would recognize today
that you are called of God or you
wouldn't be in this room.
You are in the ministry because God calls
you.
Paul writes in his letter in Hebrews that
no man takes this honor unto himself, but
he that is called of God, as was
Moses.
So we are called into the work and
ministry and the thing that God has put
upon our life to do.
But the Bible says many are called.
Many are called, but few are chosen.
And I'm concerned today that you enter into
some understanding between the distinctive between being called
of God and chosen of God.
What is the separating line between those two
stages of progression in our spiritual development and
maturity and in the lives of our flocks?
Well, when we go back to Isaiah chapter
48 and verse 10, I believe the prophet
gives us some real insight into the distinctives
between the called and the chosen.
When you read Isaiah 48 and 10, it
says, Behold, I have refined thee, but not
with silver.
Silver in the context of this passage is
that which is blessing and increase and so
on to our lives.
And the Lord says, I have refined thee,
but not with silver.
I have chosen thee, where?
In the furnace of affliction.
Where does God make his choice?
He chooses every one of his servants in
the furnace of affliction.
Now that means if you're going to be
chosen of God, there's a furnace of affliction
that's coming to your life if you haven't
already been in it.
I suspect most of you have made a
few trips through it already and probably more
than you would want to make.
Many of you, no doubt, sitting here are
like Moses and Elijah, and I must confess
that all I'm saying today I'm preaching to
Ralph Mahoney.
But you would remember that both Moses and
Elijah, who I have to believe are undoubtedly
the two greatest prophetical ministries of the Old
Testament, I believe that because they are the
ones that appeared with him on the Mount
of Transfiguration.
That appears to be God's validation that they
were the greatest.
They are also the only two of whose
ministries it was prophesied their anointing and mantle
and ministry would be repeated in other people's
lives in later generations.
There would be a repetition of that anointing
that was upon them, and their prophetic ministries
would be replicated in later generations.
Deuteronomy 18 contains Moses' own words, "...the Lord
thy God shall raise up unto thee a
prophet like unto me.
Him shall ye hear, and all that he
shall say unto you."
While we know that that had its fulfillment
in our Lord Jesus Christ, it awaits a
fulfillment that we read about in the book
of Revelation.
That fulfillment is subject to some understanding and
interpretation, which I won't make today, but the
fact is that ministry of Moses was prophesied
to be repeated.
So when John came, we find in the
Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 22, the
people coming to John the Baptist and saying,
"...Art thou that prophet?"
What prophet?
The one Moses said would come.
"...The Lord thy God shall raise up unto
thee a prophet like unto me.
Him shall ye hear."
John's response was, "...No, I am not that
prophet."
Secondly, "...Are you Elijah?"
Why did they ask him that?
Well, Malachi had said in chapter 4, the
last two verses of the Old Testament, "...The
Lord your God will send unto you Elijah
the prophet before the great and terrible day
of the Lord."
So they asked him, "...Are you Elijah?"
Which was for to come.
And again, what did he answer?
"...No, I am not."
And so they said, "...Who are you?"
And he said, "...Well, I am just the
voice of one crying in the wilderness.
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, as
also said Isaiah."
It's interesting that John didn't know who he
was.
Because when you read Matthew chapter 17, the
transfiguration record, where Moses and Elijah appear on
the Mount with Jesus, and after it's over,
the disciples ask Jesus about this vision because
Jesus had told them this is a picture
that I'm giving you of my kingdom coming
in power.
And when it was all over, they said,
he said, "...Don't tell the vision to anybody."
And they said, "...Well, Lord, if this is
a vision of your kingdom coming in power
that we've just seen, why do the Pharisees
say Elijah must first come?"
What was Jesus' response?
"...Elijah truly shall first come," pointing to a
future time when that would happen again.
But I say unto you, Elijah has come
already, and they knew him not, and then
the disciples understood that he spoke to them
of John.
So John didn't know who he was, but
Jesus did.
And I only throw this little aside to
you for your ministry today.
You don't need to know who you are
either.
Just go do the will of God.
And don't worry about whether you're an apostle,
prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher.
Just go do it.
And don't let people start hanging titles on
you.
These words I've just said were not titles
in the New Testament to begin with.
They were job descriptions, like carpenter, electrician, plumber,
etc.
They just described a function and an unction
that God gave to men.
And go do it, and don't worry about
it.
Fulfill the will of God.
John didn't know who he was.
Jesus did, but he fulfilled a ministry he
didn't even know he was.
But coming back to the point we're dealing
with here in Isaiah 48, he chooses us
in the furnace of affliction.
I have chosen thee in the furnace of
affliction.
I was going to say about Elijah and
Moses, and it relates to this very, very
passage, that at the height of their ministry,
both of them, at the pinnacle of their
ministry, prayed for God to kill them.
Boy, doesn't that want to make you an
anointed leader?
Moses in Exodus 32, Elijah in 1 Kings
18.
The very high point of their ministry, they're
both asking God to strike them dead and
take them to heaven.
They don't want any more.
Well, some of you, no doubt, have prayed
the same thing.
Anybody honest enough to acknowledge that with me
you've prayed for the Lord to take you
home?
You haven't prayed that?
Man, you've been exempted from a lot of
trials, tribulations, and furnaces.
I tell you, when God heats up his
furnace on your life, you're ready to go
to heaven.
You'd just as soon get out of this
earth.
I did.
I would.
But many times when I would have rather
gone to heaven than stayed on earth.
That's where he makes his choice, though, when
he gets us in the furnace.
I've chosen thee in the furnace.
Now, one of the things that we refuse
to acknowledge, for the most part, in the
Church and Western nations, is the gospel of
suffering.
We do everything in the world to escape
it ourselves, and I think we should.
I'm sure not here teaching you a course
on masochism.
I don't want it, and I try to
stay away from it, but despite my best
efforts, it comes.
Why?
God, in his mercy, sends it to me.
I need it, he does it.
But he brings these furnaces of affliction along
into our lives.
Now, we don't like to teach our people
that.
When they've got a problem, we immediately try
to pray them out of it.
And it might be appropriate to pray them
out of some of their problems.
The fact is that we really need revelation
on why people are in their problems, so
we pray the right prayer.
Romans 8.26 says, We don't know how
and we don't know what to pray for
as we ought.
I use both words because, depending on which
translation you look up, you'll find both those
words, and they're apparently both implied there in
the Greek.
We don't know what to pray, we don't
know how to pray.
Unfortunately, we want to promise our people Blue
Cross, Blue Shield, American Express and heaven with
a mansion and a crown and a harp
after that's all over.
And no problems, no trials, no tests, no
persecution, no suffering, nothing in this life that
will in any way make it the least
bit unpleasant.
Well, I just wish your gospel worked, because
as you well know, it doesn't work in
the real world of human beings.
And it doesn't happen that way for anybody.
Everybody has them, and many of them are
satanic attacks and many of them are divine
disciplines.
And we need revelation to know the difference.
We need to know by the Holy Spirit's
action upon us where people are and why
they're there and need to know how to
yield to the Holy Spirit's action in prayer
so we pray the right prayer for the
situation people are in.
One safe little principle is given us by
James in his epistle.
He tells us when we're in trouble, the
first thing we should do is submit to
God.
In every furnace of affliction, that should be
our first response, submitting to God.
Submit to God.
Then he says, resist the devil.
Submit to God first, because God may be
in it.
Now he makes his choice by our response
in the furnace of affliction.
Psalm 11, verse 5, says, The Lord trieth
the righteous.
The Lord tries the righteous.
Why is he trying us?
Well, we're going to find out in a
moment.
The psalmist also said, I think it's in
142, verse 3, let me just check that
reference to be sure I'm giving you the
address and not just the neighborhood.
David says here, When my spirit was overwhelmed
within me, then thou knewest my path.
No man cared for my soul.
David is describing his own experience after the
anointing.
Why was his spirit overwhelmed within him?
Well, like Joseph, like Moses, like every man
and woman anointed of God.
After God's word comes to you and calls
you, God tests and purifies the word.
Let me just run you through that real
quickly.
First of all, look with me in Proverbs,
if you will.
Proverbs, chapter 30, verse 5.
King James Version says, Every word of God
is pure.
As you well know, the Hebrew is every
word of God is purified, purified.
When God speaks to you and puts his
call upon your life and brings revelation to
you concerning ministry and what he's ordained for
you to be and to do, then that
word is purified.
How is it purified?
Well, if you go back to Psalm 12
and verse 6, it says this, The words
of the Lord are pure words, like silver
tested in a furnace of earth, purified seven
times.
Perhaps I can put it in a more
practical context so you'll understand what it means
to have the word of the Lord tried.
In the book, The Making of a Leader,
I dedicate one chapter to Joseph.
And I do so because for reasons beyond
my understanding and knowledge, somehow my life was
bound up in the life of Joseph.
Somehow in the realm of the Holy Spirit,
there was in Joseph's life a model that
my life was to follow.
And even as a very young child, immediately
after finding the Lord, I first met the
Lord when I was five years old in
Mesa, Arizona.
And then in subsequent visitations of God to
my life, when I walked away from the
Lord and rebelled against the Lord as a
teenager.
But after I made a recommitment when I
was 15 of my life to the Lord,
I would read those chapters in the book
of Genesis concerning Joseph without knowledge or understanding
what it was all about.
But every time I'd read that story, I
couldn't help it, something would come over me
and I would just break and weep and
weep and weep, and sometimes for hours.
I never understood it until later years.
But I know in retrospect it was because
I was going to be walking the same
path Joseph walked.
And God was trying to give me an
allegory and an analogy that I could reference
during those days of testing and trial that
would help me through them.
But I didn't have the good sense to
know that.
But Joseph's life started, his trouble started when
at age 17, God visited him and revealed
to him his calling.
You remember his dreams and his visions, and
you remember that the moment he shared them,
it did not meet with the glad reception
that he expected.
His brethren were immediately disdained him, and his
own father and mother were upset with him.
You mean to say that we're going to
bow down to you, Joseph?
But his brothers didn't even receive it with
a laugh.
They received it with a vengeance, and they
set out, as you know, to get him.
The first thing he found out after his
revelation and his call is that his brothers
were discussing his death, and he was in
a pit listening to how they were going
to kill him.
The next thing, they brought him up and
put him on the back of some camels,
and some slave traders bought him, and off
he went to Egypt and onto the auction
block and into the house of Potiphar.
The next promotion he got was being falsely
accused by Potiphar's wife and ending up in
the prison.
And he stayed there the better part of
the next thirteen years, bound in chains.
And I want to tell you, Egyptian prisons
aren't very pleasant places to spend thirteen years
of your life.
I happened to be in one for just
a few hours a few years ago, and
that was enough for me.
Not because I had done anything wrong, but
the Egyptians had just been defeated in a
six-day war that had humiliated them, and
they felt the Americans were responsible, and I
was an American that showed up at appropriate
times.
But without belaboring that incident, the point is
that this was a horrible situation.
The filth, the human excrement, the fleas, the
rats, the darkness, the irons in the shackles
that were upon him.
And when you read the account in the
book of Psalms, Psalm 105 and Psalm 106,
which recount much of Joseph's story, the Hebrew
is very interesting in that it says that
the iron entered into his soul.
He died inside, no longer capable of emotional
response, because thirteen years he thought back to
a dream and a vision God had given
him, and what tried him.
The 105th Psalm says, Until the time that
his word came to be fulfilled, the word
of the Lord tried him.
The greatest trial in your life is what
God has spoken to you that is frustrated
in its fulfillment.
Everything has gone wrong and backward after God
spoke, and you thought it was going to
happen tomorrow.
One year passes, two years passes, three years
passes.
For Joseph it was a countdown of thirteen
years, and he didn't ever expect it to
end, because God hadn't promised him by revelation
that it would be thirteen years.
He thought it was a false vision, and
that's the place he came to.
Now, the Bible says that he chooses us
in the furnace of affliction.
What's the basis of his choice?
It's how we respond when we're in the
furnace.
The interesting thing about Joseph is that his
gift kept operating even in the prison.
Do you remember that?
He kept his relationship somehow alive with the
Lord, so he was able to tell the
butler and the baker what was going to
happen, and that the keeping alive of the
gift, even in the furnace times, was his
eventual point of deliverance.
He never abandoned his gift and his ministry.
He kept it alive, and it was his
eventual deliverance.
He was chosen because in the furnace of
affliction he kept alive somehow, despite it all,
his relationship with God.
While I don't have time here today to
take Joseph's life apart, I could spend, I
suppose, a week on his life, because it
was so meaningful to me, and all the
dimensions of his hurt and God's ultimate healing
of his emotions and memory, and all the
things that were involved in Joseph's restoration, so
that when those brothers whom he should have
had killed and slain by any measure of
the life and society he lived in in
his time, instead he weeps when he sees
them.
Those who had subjected him to all those
years of suffering, and reaches out in love
and compassion to embrace them and ultimately bless
them.
And it's a miracle story of a man
who went through the furnace of affliction and
was chosen in the midst of it.
And Joseph, for a correction, Moses' life, receiving
the call.
Read Acts 7 if you want an understanding
of his life, because the New Testament sheds
more light on his call than the old.
When he goes out to his brethren to
deliver them, Acts 7 says, he assumed that
they would understand how that God, by his
hand, would deliver them.
But they understood not.
In an attempt to deliver his brethren, fulfill
the call and the revelation that was burning
in his heart, to free this slave people,
and that was his manifest destiny.
And he knew it.
And he went out to do it, but
unfortunately he didn't wait for God's time.
And he went out in the strength of
his own might and his own power to
do it, and killed an Egyptian and forty
years on the backside of the desert, until
all the learning of the Egyptians was taken
out.
And he didn't come out the silver-tongued
orator that he went in, trained as a
prince of Egypt to lead that nation and
probably be its next pharaoh, no doubt having
stood before its parliaments and spoken out on
political issues and having been trained in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians, he no doubt
went into the desert an eloquent orator and
a majestic man, but he comes out broken
and old and stuttering and stammering and can't
even speak for himself anymore.
And even under divine edict refuses to do
so until God gives him errand to speak
on his behalf.
And it was with that broken man who
was chosen in the furnace of affliction that
God delivers a nation.
And I could go on to recount David's
experience, who after the anointing came upon him
as a young lad of sixteen years of
age.
As you well know, David experienced three anointings
in his lifetime, and every one of them
were followed by severe tests and trials.
After he went out after the first anointing
and slew Goliath, then he becomes a hunted,
hounded young man that has to flee to
the wilderness for his life, a man whom
King Saul sent his army in perpetual and
continual search of to destroy, and who had
to live in caves in the wilderness and
survive by hook, by crook, and by trust
in God.
And it was there that he learns a
relationship with the Lord, that the Lord was
his refuge and strength, a help in time
of trouble.
And it was there that he has to
learn to await God's time of promotion and
appointment.
When he has the opportunity to kill his
enemy, he won't touch the Lord's anointed.
And all the lessons David learned as he
was thrown into the furnace of affliction, and
he went through them over and over.
But the Bible says he was chosen.
We are chosen in that furnace.
It's interesting when we go back to the
book of Numbers, chapter 14, we find that
the children of Israel were subjected to ten
tests in the wilderness.
And I don't have time to go through
those ten tests with you today, but I'll
just tell you they got a perfect score.
They failed every one of them.
But why did they go through that wilderness,
and why were the tests of the wilderness
so severe?
Well, when we come to the book of
Deuteronomy, and I'd like to look at a
passage there today, and if my memory serves
me right, it's in the eighth chapter, but
let's just take a quick look to be
sure.
Deuteronomy chapter 8, we have this interesting word
that starts along about verse 2.
Thou shalt remember all the way which the
Lord thy God led thee these forty years
in the wilderness.
For what purpose?
To humble thee, to test thee, to know
what was in thine heart.
Whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or not.
And God prepared ten tests in the wilderness
to test, to humble, to know what was
in their heart, to know whether they would
keep his commandments or not.
And verse 3 says, He humbled thee and
suffered thee to hunger.
He fed thee with manna which thou knewest
not, neither did thy fathers know that he
might make thee know that man doth not
live by bread only, but by every word
that proceedeth.
That is a present continuous operation.
Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of the Lord doth man live.
And let me tell you today who are
leaders in the Church, the only way you
will live and your Church will live is
on a continual diet of hearing his present
word.
We don't live by what he said.
We live by what he is saying.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceeds and continues to
proceed.
Proceedeth, present continuous tense, an operation out of
the mouth of God.
Let him that hath an ear let him
hear what the Spirit sayeth, current, present tense
unto the Churches.
And we live and our Churches live as
we continue to hear from God and move
on in life.
But where does that word come to us?
How do we learn?
How does God make us to know that
man doesn't live by bread only, but by
every word that proceeds out of the mouth
of God?
He makes us learn that out there by
taking bread away from us.
So we learn we don't live by it.
He takes prosperity away from us, so we
learn we don't have to have all those
material things to do the will of God.
He puts us into tough times to know
that we don't need all the trappings we
think we do to do the will of
God.
And we find out that what we ultimately
need is only one thing, the preceding word
of God.
The devil comes to Jesus after forty days
and nights of fasting and says, Look, here's
stone.
Turn it to bread.
Satisfy your need.
And he was hungry, the Bible says.
But what was Jesus' answer?
I don't live by bread, and I don't
respond to my own hunger.
I live by every word that proceeds from
God's mouth to me.
God hasn't spoken to me and told me
to turn stones to bread.
Unfortunately, many of us in our points of
need and the point of need in the
lives of our people are going ahead and
turning stones to bread.
And sometimes our doing so can be the
enemy's motivation and push on our lives, not
God's word.
And that's a sobering word, but one I
hope that some of you can sort out
and understand.
As you go on through this chapter, it
goes on to say in verse 15, Who
led thee through that great and terrible wilderness
wherein were fiery serpents, scorpions, and drought, where
there was no water?
God led them through it.
Oh, God doesn't lead us into trials and
tests.
Well, he led these people in.
He fed them in the wilderness with manna,
and thy fathers knew not that he might
humble thee, that he might test thee, and
then here is, of course, the beauty, to
do thee good at thy latter end.
To do thee good at thy latter end.
And it is a God who will eventually
work all things together for good to them
that love him.
But if we don't learn to love him
in the tests, in the trials, in the
furnaces of affliction, we are not chosen.
He chose them in the fiery furnace of
affliction.
I don't want to press this point too
hard.
I might warp you into an imbalance, but
I've yet to hear a real good sermon
in the United States of America on faith
for destitution, faith for caves and dens of
the earth, faith for being sawn asunder by
the sword, faith for being destitute, afflicted, tormented.
And yet all of those things of trial,
of cruel mockings and scourgings and bonds and
imprisonments and stoning and wandering about in sheepskins
and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented.
Who is that said of?
People who refuse deliverance, that they might obtain
a better resurrection.
Who is that said of?
A bunch of unbelieving, disobedient servants who didn't
have faith to appropriate what kings' kids ought
to get anywhere they go, glory to God.
Is that who it's said of?
It says of that holy company of whom
the world was not worthy.
That's the only group it says it of
in the Bible.
The world wasn't worthy of them.
They wandered in deserts, mountains, dens, caves of
the earth.
Were they unbelieving?
No.
Verse 39 of Hebrews 11 says, These, all
having received witness through faith, died in faith
and received not the promise.
Our concepts of faith surely need an overhaul.
Faith in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, which
I would commend to your memorization.
God dealt with me when I was 16
years old about memorizing this chapter, and I'm
glad I did.
But this whole chapter is men and women
who, through faith, walked out life through the
most difficult times of torment and persecution and
want and famine and destitution and hunger and
all the rest, and it was all by
faith.
And while I don't take away from some
of the good, wonderful revelations of faith God
has blessed us with in America, I say
our application of it is woefully inadequate and
woefully lacking.
And I'm not hitting out at any body,
I'm hitting out at the way it's being
applied and taught.
And we're leading our people astray, and hence
they are many called and very few being
chosen.
Because no one wants to walk the path
of suffering to the place of being chosen,
but they that are with him are called
and chosen.
And lastly, what else?
Faithful.
Two verses in closing, Nehemiah chapter 9, verse
7 and 8.
This is the testimony of Abraham, and the
Scripture gives a marvelous testimony concerning Abraham in
this passage, Nehemiah chapter 9, verse 7 and
8.
Thou art the Lord, the God, who didst
choose Abram, and brought him forth out of
earth the Chaldeans, and gave him the name
Abraham, and foundest his heart faithful before thee,
and madest a covenant with him.
And then over in Hebrews chapter 3 and
verse 2 of Moses, Paul writes again, and
he applies this to both Moses and Jesus,
who was faithful to him that appointed him,
as also was Moses, who was faithful in
all his house.
I guess what we all should be working
toward, if we're not, and hoping for, is
those final words of Jesus, Well done, thou
good and faithful servant.
The Lord didn't ask whether we prospered or
didn't.
He didn't ask whether we succeeded or we
didn't.
But he does commend our faithfulness.
Thou good and faithful servant.
They that are with him are called and
chosen and faithful, chosen in the furnace of
affliction.
And I would suggest today, if you're in
one, submit yourself to God.
Whenever Job had everything he owned stripped away
in one day, the last verse of chapter
1 says he fell on his face and
worshiped.
The Lord did him good in the latter
end, though, didn't he?
And he restored back twice as much as
he had before.
And that's the other side of the coin,
usually.
It will be either in this life or
the one to come, and it doesn't matter
which, actually.
But I will just tell you that before
every enlargement in your life, it will be
preceded by a valley of a shadow of
death.
So that you will say, like Paul wrote
in 2 Corinthians 5, Death worketh in me,
that life might work in you.
And I believe there is a reciprocal relationship
between the depth of the trial and test
and the dimension of the glory and blessing
God releases through our ministry in life.
Those two things are more or less equal.
The more you suffer, the more you bless.
The more you experience pain, the more you
relieve pain in others.
It was the Apostle Paul, you remember, who
was given a thorn in the flesh, the
messenger of Satan, to buffet him.
Surely he should have rebuked the devil and
it flee from him.
But he says, For this thing besought I
the Lord three times, that it might depart
from me.
2 Corinthians 12.
But after seeking the Lord three times, the
Lord said, Paul, my grace is sufficient for
you.
I'm not going to lift this off your
life.
I'm not going to relieve whatever that messenger
of Satan was doing to him.
I'm not going to take it away.
And Paul learned his grace was sufficient, not
to be delivered from it, but to go
through it and to endure it.
Now why did the Lord allow that to
happen?
He allowed it to happen to save Paul.
And I would say to you today, more
than what you do for God, God loves
you more than what you do for him.
You're more important to him than what you
get done.
And the point of the story is that
when you're anointed of God, as was Joseph,
as was Moses, as was David, as was,
you know, you name it, anyone that experienced
the anointing, if they were not thrown into
times of grave trial and severe testing, they
were destroyed by the anointing.
The anointing destroyed more men and women than
lived through it to come out faithful.
Most fail under the impact of the anointing.
When God puts a supernatural dimension of anointing
on your life and suddenly you're thrust into
usefulness, prominence begin to come, then the very
things that Moses warned about and God warned
about in Deuteronomy 8 start happening.
We begin getting lifted up in ourselves.
We think our own might and our own
power has done it.
We begin to believe our press reports.
We see ourselves as minor deities, and all
of a sudden we're set up for the
fall.
And I know that if you've walked with
the Lord many years, or any years, you
see the casualties along both sides of the
path of life.
Men and women powerfully anointed of God, but
who in the process didn't have a messenger
of Satan to buffet them, and thus became
victims of the anointing.
Paul said the reason he had it, again
2 Corinthians 12, is because of the abundance
of revelation given unto me.
There was given me the messenger of Satan
to buffet me, the thorn in the flesh.
Because of the abundance of revelation, Paul writes
in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, knowledge puffs up.
Because of all the revelation and knowledge God
gave him, what was the impact upon him?
To be puffed up.
What was God's mercy to him?
To puncture his balloon.
That's why the thorn in the flesh was
there, to constantly deflate the ego.
Some of you today here are wrestling with
some very difficult circumstances in your life.
But you should ask the Lord, God, is
this your mercy to me, or is this
the devil I should resist, or God I
should submit to?
And I think he'll answer that question if
you ask him.
Now I know there are some things in
our lives that we should resist and we
should throw off, and there are encroachments of
Satan that come, but it takes divine wisdom
and revelation and hearing the Word of the
Lord to know when to resist and when
to throw and when to submit.
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