Brothers and sisters, it's a real joy to
be with you again.
And one of the things that's burdened my
own heart in these last years in India
has been the poor testimony of Christians in
my country.
There is a verse in Romans, Chapter 2,
which says, The name of God is blasphemed
among the heathen because of you.
And I believe that India has not rejected
Christ, but it has rejected the Christ it
has seen in Christians in our land.
I used to see the same thing twenty,
thirty years ago when I saw a lot
of young people from the United States come
to India to seek for God in Hinduism.
Many of them, not only from the United
States, from Europe as well, from very wealthy
families with unkempt hair and ragged clothes.
And I discovered that they had rejected the
Christianity that they had seen in their parents,
the hypocrisy, the unreality.
And they had turned away not from Christ,
but from the Christ they had seen in
their parents.
There was a…
One of our presidents, one of the presidents
of India, many, many years ago, I think
maybe forty years ago or so, he made
a statement once when some Christians, some Christian
leaders met him.
He was a Hindu, but he had a
great respect for the Lord Jesus Christ, and
he said to these Christian leaders, he said,
You Christians make such extraordinary claims, but live
such ordinary lives.
And I have…
That has rung in my mind since I
heard it.
Here was a man who respected Christ.
He wasn't against Christianity, but he saw all
the fantastic claims that Christians made in their
sermons, in their messages.
But when he quite honestly looked at their
lives, they looked very ordinary, just like anybody
else's.
And that's what I feared myself, to make
extraordinary claims and to live an ordinary life.
Jesus taught us to pray.
The very first prayer was, Hallowed be thy
name.
And the name of God is dishonored when
Christians do not live a heavenly life on
earth.
In the Old Testament, there was a verse
in Deuteronomy, Chapter 11, where the Lord said
to the Israelites through Moses that if they
submitted to God's Word, and God's Word was
their life and their passion, in Deuteronomy, Chapter
11, Verse 18, he says, You must impress
these words of mine on your heart and
on your soul.
Bind them as a sign on your hand,
and they shall be as frontals on your
forehead.
In other words, God's Word was to be
their guide in everything they did with their
hands, and to be always in front of
their eyes whenever they thought of doing anything.
The principles of God's Word were to guide
them.
And he said, You must teach them to
your sons, talking of them when you sit
in your house, when you walk along the
road, when you lie down and when you
rise up.
In other words, it's not just at certain
fixed times of family prayer that we were
to think of God's Word and the principles
of God's Word in relation to our children,
but it must be very natural for us
to speak to them about God's Word throughout
the day and write them on the doorposts
of your house and on your gates, so
that your days and the days of your
sons may be multiplied in the land which
the Lord swore to your fathers to give
them, that your days may be as the
days of heaven upon earth.
Just think of that, brothers and sisters, that
our days can be like the days of
heaven upon earth.
We know that we live in a world
where most people's days are like days of
hell upon earth.
And the calling of a Christian is not
just to preach the gospel, but to demonstrate
that the gospel of God is the power
of God unto salvation, and to demonstrate that
we have tasted heaven already.
And this is the message that we preach
in the gospel.
It was not possible in the old covenant,
but it is possible in the new.
When Jesus said that the least person under
the new covenant, under grace, could rise to
a greater height than the greatest person under
the Old Testament, that was John the Baptist,
he was referring to this.
Now, we don't know of anyone in the
Old Testament who lived like this.
Maybe there were, I don't know, but certainly
not to the extent is possible for us
under the new covenant.
Because in the new covenant alone we have
this wonderful promise in Ephesians, in Chapter 1,
where it says that He has blessed us,
verse 3, Ephesians 1.3, Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing
in the heavenly places in Christ.
Now, if those words are true, and I
believe they're true, it means that there is
no blessing in heavenly places which is not
already ours.
That's what it says.
Every single spiritual blessing that there is in
the heavenlies, in Christ, it doesn't say He's
going to bless me.
It says He's already blessed me with it.
Whether I appropriate that to my daily life
on earth is another matter.
But potentially it's already mine.
It's been given to me in Christ.
Every blessing in the heavenlies, it's possible for
me to live that heavenly life on earth
if I trust God and His promises, if
I open up my mind and every part
of my being to the influences of His
Holy Spirit.
It's possible for me to live that heavenly
life on earth.
It's possible for me to spend, to behave
towards my wife 365 days of the year
in a heavenly way.
That's the type of life God wants us
to live.
In the Old Testament, that was not possible.
This is not an Old Testament promise.
The Old Testament promise we could say, if
there were an equivalent of this verse in
the Old Testament, it would be, blessed be
God of Moses, who has blessed us with
every material blessing in the earthly places in
Moses.
That's how it was.
Their promises were all material.
Their barns would overflow, their fields would produce
in abundance, their cattle would multiply in abundance,
and their earthly enemies would be crushed, the
land would be theirs, and it was all
earthly.
And there wasn't a demonstration of the life
of heaven.
It wasn't possible.
This to me is the distinctive feature of
the New Covenant and the gift of the
Holy Spirit.
When Jesus said in Mark and Chapter 9,
these words that many people have tried to
interpret in various ways, Mark 9, 1, Jesus
said, Truly I say to you, there are
some of those who are standing here who
will not taste of death till they see
the kingdom of God, after it has come
with power.
In other words, there would be some who
would die, but some who were listening to
Him at that time would not die till
they saw the kingdom of God come in
power.
What does that mean?
Now, there are some who would refer it
to the very next verse, which is the
six days later Jesus took Peter and James
and John to the mountain and gave them
a demonstration of God's kingdom.
But I don't know that many people died
in those six days for that first verse
to be fulfilled.
He said, There are some who are standing
here who will not die till they see
the kingdom of God, after it has come
with power.
It's certainly not referring to the second coming
of Christ, because there's nobody who heard those
words who is alive.
I believe it's referring to the coming of
the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
And if that is correct, then the coming
of the Holy Spirit on the day of
Pentecost was the coming of the kingdom of
God in power, not to the whole world.
It hasn't come.
One day the glory of God will cover
the earth as the waters cover the sea.
That hasn't come yet.
But in that little group of people that
met in the upper room that day, the
kingdom of God came with power.
And they were to go out into the
world and demonstrate the principles of that kingdom
by the way they lived and by the
way they served.
That was the purpose of the coming of
the Holy Spirit, that when Jesus said, When
the Holy Spirit has come, you shall receive
power, and you shall be my witnesses unto
the uttermost parts of the earth.
What were they to be witnesses to?
Witnesses unto Him.
Witnesses to demonstrate through their life the life
that Jesus lived when He was in Nazareth
and Galilee.
That was the purpose with which the Holy
Spirit came.
And I am not surprised through the years
how the devil has brought such confusion into
the ministry of the Holy Spirit by placing
the emphasis on what I would call peripheral
aspects of the ministry of the Holy Spirit
and taking the mind of Christians away from
the central thing, which is the kingdom of
God had come with power.
And God has called you and me, in
whichever land we live, to demonstrate to others
what the kingdom of God is like, what
heaven is like.
Jesus said, If I be lifted up, He'll
draw all men to me.
God's purpose is that He demonstrates through our
earthly life, through our relationships, not only at
home but in the church, that this is
what heaven is going to be like.
How many of you want to be a
part of it?
And unfortunately, that's not how Christians have lived.
Certainly not in my country.
Most Christian preachers, whether in the United States
or India, are seen by the world as
people who are interested in making money at
the expense of poor people.
And that's not heaven.
That's not the life of heaven.
In heaven, we read the streets are of
gold.
They don't walk on gold.
Gold is going to be under our feet
in heaven.
Here on earth, they put it on top
of people's heads.
But in heaven, we walk on it.
And God wants a people on earth who
can demonstrate that gold is under their feet
already, right now.
That is what I mean by days of
heaven upon earth.
And the challenge that comes to you and
me is, am I demonstrating that by my
life, by my attitude to gold and money,
right now, to an unbelieving world?
If not, I cannot blame them for their
unbelief.
They don't believe because they don't see the
life in me.
They see me making extraordinary claims, but living
very ordinary lives, just like anybody else.
And they reject the Christ they see in
me, not the real Christ.
I believe there's a great need, brothers and
sisters, for Christians to fall on their faces
and repent.
Lord, forgive us because we have not manifested
the life of heaven in the way we
have lived on earth, in our attitude to
money, in our attitude to material things, in
our attitude to one another.
Jesus said, all men will know you're my
disciples when you love one another.
One would have thought, I mean, I would
have thought the world should have, Jesus should
have said something like this, that all men
will know you're my disciples when you love
them.
That means when the world sees us loving
them and being kind to them, they'll say,
oh, we're disciples of Jesus.
But that's not what he said.
That's a good thing to do, but that's
not what he said.
He said, all men will know you're my
disciples when you love one another.
In other words, it's the quality of our
relationship where we are loyal and true to
one another, where we don't backbite, we don't
seek our own, but seek the good of
the other in all our relationships, that's going
to make the world sit back and say,
boy, what sort of life is this?
This is not what we have.
And then they will see we're disciples of
Jesus.
That's what God wants.
And that's where the devil has attacked the
church and hindered its testimony through the ages.
Today we have clever preachers, new illustrations, plenty
of books, but the thing that the Bible
speaks of is days of heaven upon earth,
a life demonstrating what heaven is like.
In fact, there are a number of expressions
here describing how it is when a person
is born again.
It says here, the person who is born
again is described like this, is one who
has Hebrews 6 and verse 4, one who
has been enlightened and has tasted of the
heavenly gift, who has been made a partaker
of the Holy Spirit, who has tasted the
good word of God and tasted the powers
of the age to come.
I find that a good description of what
it means to be born again.
To be really born again means this is
what a true child of God should have
experienced.
He should have first of all got light.
That's the first thing that always happens.
Like in Genesis 1, light comes into our
heart.
And tasted of the heavenly gift, made partakers
of the Holy Spirit, tasted the good word
of God.
And this last expression that I want to
draw your attention to, tasted the powers of
the age to come.
There are many things we can taste on
earth, but when the Holy Spirit comes within
us, He gives us a taste of those
fantastic powers that are going to be there
in the future.
The joy that floods heaven, I'm going to
have a taste of it right now.
I can't have it in its fullness till
Jesus comes again, but I can have a
taste of it every day in my life
on earth.
Jesus said once to His disciples, your joy
no man takes away from you.
See, that's the difference between heavenly joy and
earthly joy.
Earthly joy is something which, it takes very
little for it to be taken away from
me.
Something goes wrong, some loss, something I didn't
expect, and it's gone.
But not the joy of heaven.
The joy of heaven is full and permanent,
unchanging.
The type of joy that Jesus had when
He was on earth, where the night before
His crucifixion, He had so much of that
joy that He could tell people, my joy
I give unto you.
It's something like a man who was going
to go to the electric chair tomorrow morning,
just going around visiting, encouraging people today, sharing
His joy.
Just think of that.
That's how Jesus was.
He demonstrated that as long as He was
in the center of His Father's will, it
didn't matter if He was going to be
crucified, killed tomorrow, it didn't matter.
And to think that the Holy Spirit can
give to you and me this quality of
life, your joy no man takes away from
you.
One of the things that we experience in
India is pickpocketing.
You travel in a bus and by the
time you get down from the bus you
may find your wallet is missing.
And I've experienced this once or twice, and
the chap did such a neat job that
I felt he deserved it, because I never
felt a thing.
And when I got down from the bus,
my wallet was gone.
Well, the first thing I did was pray
for that man, because I suppose he was
a man nobody ever prayed for, and I
said, well, I can do one thing at
least for him.
Forgive him and pray for him, but then
the other thing the Lord said to me
at that time was that if my joy
was in my wallet, then my joy would
also have gone along with my wallet.
But if my joy was in the Lord,
then even if my wallet went, my joy
would not go.
And that was some years ago, and it
was quite a revelation to me.
And then I discovered how easy it is
for a Christian to have his joy inside
his wallet too, and not in his heart
really, no matter how much he may say
it's in his heart.
It could be in some earthly thing, something
of earth that means a lot to us.
That's what prevents us from having the life
of heaven on earth.
That's why Jesus said, you cannot be my
disciple unless you forsake all your earthly possessions.
You can have them, but if you possess
them, and there's a difference between having and
possessing.
I can, most people in India live in
houses that are rented, they belong to somebody
else, and they pay monthly rent and live
in them.
A very, very few, a very small percentage
of people in India live in their own
homes.
And I remember when, some years ago, when
I got a home of my own, I
was scared.
I was really scared.
I never expected that I'd ever have anything
like that.
And I said, Lord, if this thing, this
earthly thing, is ever going to mean anything
to me, I want you to take it
away.
I want you to burn it up, maybe
an electrical fire or something that burns it,
because I don't want this thing to take
the place you have had in my heart
all these years.
And I literally expected, one day when I
rounded the corner, to see it in flames.
And it happened for a while like that,
till I knew I was no longer attached
to it.
It had gone.
It's never gone up in flames.
I've lived there all these years, but I've
never possessed it.
It's not mine.
I understood that day a little bit of
what Abraham experienced when he laid Isaac on
the altar.
The Lord said, Lay him up, kill him.
And when he was ready to do that,
as he took up his knife, the Lord
said, No, you can have him back.
And from that day, he no longer possessed
Isaac.
He only had him.
Why is it that Christians are not able
to demonstrate the life of Heaven on earth,
in their family relationships, in business relationships, in
business dealings, in their conversation, in their attitude
to many things on this earth?
I believe the reason is that there's something
of earth that means a lot to them.
It could be a possession, it could be
a relationship, it could be a job, could
be their own reputation or their own opinion
about themselves.
Something is important.
Something earthly is important, and that clouds out
the vision of Heaven.
And then, yeah, we can still be good
Christians, we can still go to the meetings
and sing the songs, probably better than others,
the way we sing, but our life will
not be a demonstration of Heaven.
And this is what each of us need
to examine ourselves and see.
It's not a question of whether other people
in the Church think we're living that life
or not.
I've thought of God when He pointed out
Job to the devil.
When Satan came before God and God said,
Where are you coming from?
And he said, I've been traveling around the
earth.
Satan's not in hell.
He moves around the earth.
We read that in Job chapter 1.
And God said, Okay, you've been moving around
the earth, you've been watching people carefully, you've
been watching people's private lives, you've been watching
people the way they believe in their homes.
We're still doing that today, by the way.
And then God said, Have you seen that
man, Job?
The man who lives out there in the
land of Uz?
It's not a man like him on the
face of the earth.
I know there are a lot of hypocrites
who take my name, but not this man.
He's different.
That verse has challenged me many times.
As Satan goes around the earth today, is
God able to say to him, Yeah, there
are lots of hypocrites among my children on
earth, but have you seen this man in
that town?
Have you seen this woman in that town?
I know there are lots of Christian homes
where they yell and scream and fight and
quarrel with each other, but have you seen
this home?
I want to ask you, brothers and sisters,
is God able to point out to you,
point you out to Satan, point your home
out?
Point you out because your attitude to earthly
things and to your own honor and dignity
are different from the people of the world.
You've forsaken your possessions.
You live on earth as one who doesn't
belong here.
Your citizenship is in heaven, and even the
devil knows it.
That's the type of Christian God is looking
for.
I've often thought of the disappointment God has.
The Bible speaks about grieving the Holy Spirit.
You know, it's not the Holy Spirit being
angry.
It's His being sad.
It's not that God is angry with His
children, but so often He's disappointed.
He's sad when He sees those for whom
He gave everything in heaven not living the
way He's called them to live.
That's constantly being a challenge to my own
heart.
I say, Lord, can you point me out
to the devil?
Can you look at me and say that
there is a person who is really sought
to put gold under his feet, who is
really dying to his own honor and reputation
and dying to his own rights and yielding
his will and his relationships.
There is a person in whose mouth is
the law of kindness, from whose mouth come
words, only words, that minister grace.
Not just in the pulpit.
It's easy to follow that rule in the
pulpit, but twenty-four hours of the day,
at home, in provocative situations, this is why
the Holy Spirit has come.
It's impossible to live this life without the
Holy Spirit.
It's impossible.
You can try and try.
God gave Israel fifteen hundred years to try
and live that life and they only failed.
I don't want to try.
I know I failed.
I'll be like those disciples going fishing, who
tried to catch fish and all night they
caught nothing.
But then Jesus came and flooded that boat
with fish.
And that's the message of the gospel, that
I can't make it.
You know, every religion in the world says,
do good and strive to be better.
And that's what Hinduism teaches.
That's what every religion teaches.
And I say Christianity doesn't teach that.
Christianity says, you just can't make it.
You might as well admit it.
The sooner you realize it, the better.
And you can get started.
But if you're going to take ten years
to realize it, you've got to wait ten
years.
It's when you recognize, I can't live this
life.
It's too high.
It's beyond me.
It's impossible.
If you think that the Christian life is
something attainable by a little more gritting of
your teeth and a little more determination, then
you haven't seen the type of life described
in the New Testament.
Think of a life where it says, rejoice
always.
Not most of the time.
Always.
In everything give thanks.
It's not just for most things.
In every single thing.
It even says in 1 Timothy 2, to
give thanks for all people.
Not just in every circumstance.
He says, I'm encouraging you to pray for
those in authority and to give thanks for
all people.
And it says, be anxious for nothing.
Now, you really think you can live this
life?
It's impossible.
And yet that's the type of life the
Bible always points us to.
Paul said, thanks be to God who always
leads us in triumph.
It's impossible without the Holy Spirit's help.
And this is the main purpose with which
the Holy Spirit's been given.
To lead us into this heavenly type of
life.
God has blessed us with every single blessing
in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
And if I want it, I can have
it.
I've often thought if my little boy comes
to me with a glass, he's thirsty and
wants water.
And that glass is filled with a lot
of muck and rubbish and stones and mud.
I can't give him the water.
No matter how thirsty he is.
I'll have to keep telling him, son, you
got a lot of rubbish in there.
Empty that glass.
I'll give you all the water you want.
But you gotta empty that out first.
And he doesn't want to.
He says, dad, I'm thirsty.
Give me something to drink.
And I'm longing to give him water, but
I can't give it to him.
This is a picture of how God waits.
We think He's reluctant.
He's not reluctant.
There's no need to tarry for the Holy
Spirit.
They had to tarry before the day of
Pentecost because He hadn't come.
But no longer.
If there is tarrying, it's because there's a
lot of muck inside the cup, which has
got to be emptied out.
And the longer we wait with that, there's
some little attachment here, some little thing that's
precious to me here, some little matter that
I haven't settled yet, some debt I haven't
repaid, some restitution I haven't made.
And I'm waiting.
And God's waiting too.
And we'll have to keep waiting till I
see that this thing is worthless.
Let me throw it out.
Lord, I want the life of heaven in
me.
I follow this in relation also to our
relationships.
We heard earlier about watching over relationships.
I see another picture of heaven just like
in the book of Job.
I see a picture of what goes on
in the heavenlies in Zechariah chapter 3.
In Zechariah chapter 3, it says here that
the Lord showed Zechariah a picture of what
was going on in the heavenlies.
If we would understand something of what's going
on in the heavenlies, it would make our
life so much easier on earth.
If Job knew that what he was experiencing,
the loss of his children and the loss
of his property and his trials, was all
related to a controversy that was going on
between God and Satan in the heavenlies, it
would have made his life easier.
He could have faced those things with a
little more strength.
Now, he didn't know that.
He didn't have a Bible.
But today we know it, that when we
are going through something, there's something going on
in the heavenlies.
God's saying to the devil, he's going to
stand true to me.
Just watch, wait and see.
No matter what he goes through.
He's not going to grumble and complain in
that situation.
He's going to give thanks and come through
triumphantly.
Once we see that, we say, Lord, give
me grace.
I've got to go through this for your
sake.
Your name's got to be glorified through me
in this situation.
I can't afford to let you down.
It's not a question of what other believers
around me in the church think.
God's not primarily showing me to other believers.
He's showing me to the devil, up there
in the heavenlies, and say, see how he
goes through it.
In the same way here, in Zechariah, we
read of something that was going on in
the heavenlies.
He showed me Joshua the high priest standing
before the angel of the Lord, and Satan
standing in his right hand to accuse him.
Now Joshua was the greatest leader of Israel
at that particular time.
He was the high priest.
This is not the other Joshua.
This is the high priest Joshua, when Zechariah
was the prophet towards the end of Israel's
history.
Being the high priest, he was the man
with the greatest position, the greatest leader of
Israel.
And Satan was there to accuse him.
Satan primarily is after leaders.
He's there to accuse leaders.
And there are reasons he finds to accuse.
You know, when Satan accuses us to God,
he doesn't dare to tell a lie to
God.
He tells God something that I actually did.
Something, some area where I actually failed.
You know, an accuser is not necessarily a
person who tells lies.
He may speak the truth.
It's a spirit.
And Satan accuses Joshua because it says, verse
3, Joshua was clothed with filthy garments.
There were some things wrong in Joshua.
There was something filthy.
And Satan picked on that, and he pointed
it out to God.
And this is a picture of what's going
on in the heavens even now, with Christian
leaders.
Maybe there's some defect, some fault in them.
And I'm not talking about those who are
crooked, like the money changers in the temple
whom Jesus drove out.
I'm talking about sincere people like Joshua, who
still have some defect in them, who are
still unchristlike.
Some area of unchristlikeness there is, like there
is in all of us.
Now here we are standing before God, and
Satan is there to accuse us.
And the Bible says Jesus also is there,
if he ever lives, to intercede for us.
We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous.
It's like a court scene, where there's the
accuser, the prosecutor, and the advocate pleading our
cause.
And the Lord said to Satan, verse 2,
The Lord rebuked you, Satan, because the Lord's
chosen Jerusalem.
This is like a brand plucked from the
fire.
And the Lord said to those who were
standing by, verse 4, Remove those filthy garments
from Joshua, and clothe him with festal robes.
I've taken away your iniquity.
And this is a picture of what Jesus
does to us when we stand there naked
and stripped and exposed and Satan's accusing us,
and the Lord clothes us with his righteousness,
so that we are acceptable, accepted by the
Father.
Now the thing I wanted to come to
here, we know all that.
The beautiful thing I see here is what
Zachariah did after that.
It's beautiful to see it.
See, Zachariah had this Spirit of Heaven.
And when I see what's going on in
the heavenly, somebody's accusing this brother, and Jesus
is trying to cleanse away his sin and
clothe him with righteousness, I'm going to take
one of these two sides.
I'm going to either accuse him, find fault
with him, speak evil of him, criticize him,
or I'm going to take sides with Jesus,
then that's what Zachariah did.
And that's the sensible thing to do.
When he saw Joshua's filthy garments being taken
away and being clothed with festal robes, he
got so excited, he said, Lord, not just
robes, put a turban on his head as
well, with his face.
You see, he wanted to make his brother
even more glorious.
Now there are very few people on earth
like that, who want to make their brother
even more glorious than he is.
But those are the ones who've got a
taste of heaven already.
Their days are like days in heaven and
earth.
Their speech is like the speech of heaven.
It's very practical, this matter of our days
being like the days of heaven on earth,
of the kingdom of God coming with power
on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit
giving us a taste of that future age,
of that day when we'll be in heaven,
when we'll never accuse one another, but really
seek to make each other glorious, that I
can have a taste of that here on
this earth, when I see a brother or
a sister, when I see some defect in
them, some un-Christ-likeness in them, and
I see what's going on in the heavenlies
at this moment, and particularly if that brother
is a leader, boy, save me after such
people, and there he is accusing them, and
there Jesus is trying to take away their
iniquity and clothe them with righteousness, and here
I am, I have to decide which side
I'm going to take.
The sad thing is, most believers take the
side of the devil.
They join him in accusation, in pointing fingers,
in criticism.
It's very rare to meet a brother or
sister like Zachariah, who wants the iniquity to
be taken away, and wants him to be
clothed with festal robes, and says, Lord, put
a turban on his head as well, who
wants to make their brother or sister glorious.
You know, these are the things that disturb
God.
In our church, we use instruments when we
sing, and I remember once, it doesn't mean
much to me, but I remember once when
two of the instruments were not playing together,
and it sort of rankled in my ear,
and I was disturbed by it.
And the Lord said to me at that
time, He said, don't disturb me, even if
those two instruments are not playing in tune.
What disturbs me more is that husband and
wife here were not in tune with each
other.
A couple of brothers here were not in
tune with each other.
Sisters here are not in tune with each
other.
And that was a revelation to me.
And I said, Lord, help me, from now
on, that the things that don't bother you
will never bother me.
And the things that do bother you, bother
me.
Two instruments not playing in tune, it's an
earthly thing.
It doesn't make a slightest difference to God.
You know, God's not even bothered if somebody
is singing out of tune.
We have some brothers in our church who
sing completely out of tune.
I never stop them.
They're making a joyful noise unto the Lord,
and I said, I mean, just because I
happen to be gifted with the ability to
sing in tune, doesn't mean my praise is
any more acceptable to God.
Perhaps that brother's praise is more acceptable to
God even when he sings out of tune.
It's the heart that God sees.
There are a lot of earthly things that
disturb us, even in a church service.
And I said, Lord, I never again want
to be disturbed by things that don't disturb
you one bit.
Because when I get disturbed by those things,
I'm not disturbed by the things that really
do disturb you, which is relationships, people accusing
one another, pointing fingers.
I said, Lord, give me grace that I
would root out from my life everything that's
earthly, everything that's human.
I want to demonstrate more and more in
increasing measure what the life of heaven is
like.
And if each of us take that responsibility
seriously, can you imagine what's going to happen?
It's like the bush which Moses saw in
the wilderness.
He's seen many bushes in his life.
But this bush was different, not because it
was bigger, but because it was on fire.
And it wasn't an earthly fire.
It was a heavenly fire that set every
twig and branch in that bush aglow.
That's how God meant the church to be.
The first dwelling place of God in the
Bible, that mention of God in the Bible,
is that bush.
You know that?
Even before the tabernacle.
Years later, when, I think it's in Deuteronomy,
where Moses was blessing the different tribes of
Israel, he speaks about, in one particular verse
down there, I think it's Deuteronomy 33, that
God who dwelt in the bush, that was
the first dwelling place of God.
God dwelt in the bush, then He dwelt
in the tabernacle, and then in Jesus, and
now in us.
We're meant to be like that bush where,
in the midst of all the other bushes,
we stand out.
Not because we're cleverer or smarter or richer
or better preachers or anything, but that there's
something of heaven.
We had a very saintly man in India
in the early part of the century.
His name was Saraswinder Singh.
He came out from a Sikh family, and
I heard someone tell me about someone who
had, an elderly man who had met Saraswinder
Singh when he was a small boy in
the early part of the century.
He said there was something about his appearance
and his face and his eyes that made
me aware of eternity and heaven.
And I believe that's how every Christian is
to be, that when people encounter us, they
may fight us, they may criticize us, they
may stand against us, they may not accept
what we say, but they'll never forget that
sometime in their life they met a man
or a woman who reminded them that eternity
was more important than time, that heaven was
more important than this earth, someone who could
not be drawn by earthly things.
Just think, even if you're not great preachers,
we don't have to be great preachers.
If God, if preaching was the most important
thing, God could have easily made all of
us great preachers.
That's not difficult for God at all.
He's called some to be apostles, prophets, teachers.
But He's called all of us to demonstrate
in our daily relationships at home, in our
relationships with our neighbors, in the way we
conduct our business, the life of heaven in
an earthly body.
That's our calling.
And that is impossible without the power of
the Holy Spirit.
And that's why we need to seek God,
to be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit.
It is impossible to live this life otherwise.
We can grit our teeth and come to
a certain standard of life like they did
under the law.
I'm sure people like Elijah and John the
Baptist demonstrated a tremendously high standard of life,
but Jesus still said that the least person
in the New Covenant could rise higher than
that.
It's only possible through the Holy Spirit, where
the Spirit of God continuously shows me the
reality of heavenly things, and that affects my
life on earth.
I thought of Jesus' attitude to all the
money that was given to Him by different
people as voluntary gifts.
That was actually His money.
And here was Judas performing it all the
time, and it never disturbed Him.
That's wonderful.
In heaven, money has no value.
Gold was under Jesus' feet.
It couldn't disturb Him.
He longed more for Judas' soul than for
that money of His.
I remember once a Christian confidence trickster came
to my house.
I didn't know he was a confidence trickster.
He claimed to be a full-time Christian
worker, and he told me some...
I'd never seen him before in my life.
He just came to my house and told
me some sad story, which I believed.
And he said he needed his fare to
go from my hometown to Delhi.
He said, Give me half of it.
I'll get half somewhere else.
So I went into the room to get
some money, and I prayed.
And I thought I should give him the
whole fare.
So I gave him the whole thing.
I said, You don't have to go and
look for the rest of the fare.
Just take the whole thing and go home.
And a week or two later, when I
went up to New Delhi and I met
someone, I discovered this fellow was a crook.
He just goes around with his stories and
fools people.
And the first thought that came to me
was, Boy, the fellow cheated me.
And the Lord said to me, You've lost
some money.
He's lost his soul.
Pray for him.
So I said, Okay, I'll do that.
And I prayed that God would bring that
man back to my house, and that I'd
be able to speak to him and lead
him to repentance.
Now, interestingly and amazingly, a couple of months
later, I saw him on the streets again.
And he said, Can I come and see
you?
I said, Sure.
And he thought he was going to get
some more money out of me.
And he came and sat down and told
me some more.
And I listened to him for two or
three minutes.
And then I said, You know, I know
everything about you.
But I said, You don't have to get
scared.
I've forgiven you.
I prayed that God would bring you back
here.
I said, Why have you done this?
And he broke down.
And he said how the devil had got
a hold of him.
And I said, Now, I would suggest that
if you're really repentant, you make a list
of all the people you cheated.
Go back to your hometown and take a
job.
And little by little, repay all those people
you cheated.
And that will prove that you're really repentant.
Has somebody cheated you?
In your business perhaps or some other way?
Are you more worried about the money you
lost or his soul?
See, that's very often.
It's in money that we really discover whether
we are heavenly minded or not.
The Bible says Jesus was tempted in all
points as we are.
So he must have been tempted in this
area of money and this temptation came through
Judas who was cheating him all the time.
There's many, many areas like this where situations
reveal that we have not forsaken all our
possessions.
There's still some muck inside this cup.
And we are praying that God will fill
it with water.
And He doesn't.
And we wonder why.
The answer is this.
No one can be my disciple unless he
forsakes all of his possessions.
When we come to the end of the
Bible in Revelation, it speaks there about the
lost days.
And it says in Revelation in chapter 12,
there's a little expression here.
I don't know whether you've noticed it.
It says in Revelation 12 about, verse 12,
Revelation 12, 12.
This is talking about the time when Satan
is cast down to earth and they overcame
him, verse 11, by the blood of the
Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and
they loved not their lives to death.
For this reason, rejoice, O heavens, on you
who dwell in them.
It's saying, rejoice, you heaven-dwellers.
And it's possible to be a heaven-dweller
even while I'm on earth.
And in contrast to this, it speaks in
chapter 13 and verse 12 about earth-dwellers.
It says about the Antichrist and he makes
the earth and the false prophet exercising all
the authority of the first beast in his
presence.
He makes the earth and all those who
dwell in it to worship the Antichrist.
Earth-dwellers.
And I saw this once.
There's a contrast here between the heaven-dwellers
and the earth-dwellers.
There are two categories of people among Christians.
There are Christians who, when they live on
earth, are heaven-dwellers, and there are Christians
who, when they live on earth, are earth
-dwellers.
It's been true throughout the centuries.
It doesn't happen automatically that when we're born
again, we automatically choose to live a heavenly
life on earth.
We have to make that choice.
And that's possible only if I have deliberately
forsaken everything precious.
I've often told people in our church, I
say, make a list of all the things
on earth that are precious to you.
Maybe your children.
I'm not talking about illegitimate things.
We've forsaken illegitimate things, unlawful things.
I'm talking about lawful things.
Maybe sport.
Maybe music.
I'm talking about Christian music.
Maybe that's very precious.
But it's an earthly thing.
There are so many things, lawful things, money
that you've honestly earned.
Make a list of all the things that
are precious to you and say, Lord, I
forsake them.
There's nothing on earth I desire beside Thee.
Nothing.
And no one.
Make sure your husband or wife or children
are not more precious to you.
But you can really say to Jesus, Lord,
I desire nothing on earth but You.
If You give me this other person, well
and good.
If You don't, that's fine.
You're enough for me.
That's the person who's forsaken all.
I remember the time when, 23 years ago,
when my wife and I were engaged and
I really loved her and she loved me
and we wanted to marry each other and
circumstances were such that at that time, well,
it looked as if it may not be
possible.
And it was a very precious experience for
me to find out whether Jesus was more
precious to me at such a time.
He was precious to me before I met
her.
But is He still precious to me after
I met her?
And that's why God arranged that circumstance at
that time for me, where it looked as
if I may not be able to marry
her.
Her parents were against it.
And that's a very important thing in India.
And I said, Lord, it's still true.
I desire nothing but You.
If You want to take her away, You
can take her away.
That's fine.
I want to live for You.
And then God gave her back.
And I want to ask you, my brothers
and sisters, is there any, anything, any person
that's precious to you?
You'll never be able to live this heavenly
life unless you lay that person on the
altar and say, Lord, it's Yours.
Maybe your job, maybe something, may not be
a person, may be a thing.
This is what hinders this heavenly life from
being manifested in Christians on earth.
They're earth dwellers.
They're not heaven dwellers.
Paul had to exhort the Colossians.
In Colossians chapter 3, in verse 1 and
2, he says, if you've really been raised
up with Christ.
Now this was not possible in the Old
Testament.
There was no resurrection in the Old Testament.
Those people who were raised up like the
widow's son and all were raised up, they
died again.
But the distinctive feature about Jesus' resurrection is
different from the resurrection of Lazarus, is different
from the resurrection of anyone, even the ones
whom Jesus raised from the dead, in this
sense, that Jesus never died again.
And here it says that, the Bible says
that we have been, we have died with
Christ and been raised up with Him, and
he says if you've really been raised up
with Christ.
The gospel is not just that Christ died
for our sins on the cross.
It's more than that.
It's that I died with Him to this
world, and I've been buried with Him, and
I've been raised with Him, and I have
ascended with Him to the heavenly places.
And he says if this is really true,
verse 2, set your mind on the things
above, and not on the things that are
on earth.
In other words, even though we live in
this earthly body, let your mind be set
on the things that are eternal, heavenly.
We have to make a choice in that,
because God doesn't take away our free will.
It's not automatic.
There is no one experience that will guarantee
that I'll be like this forever.
It's a daily choice.
Jesus said, if you want to follow me,
take up your cross once for all.
No.
Every day.
And the fact that I took up the
cross and died with Christ to all my
earthly attachments yesterday, it does not necessarily mean
that I will die to all those attachments
today.
I have to take it up today.
There is no once for all experience in
the Christian life that deals with this problem
permanently.
I have to make a choice every day.
Jesus said that if you want to follow
me, you've got to take up your cross,
deny yourself daily, and take a
choice of my will, set my mind on
the things that are above.
Lord, this is worthless.
I will not be disturbed by this.
I will not allow this thing that doesn't
bother you to bother me.
And I want to be bothered by the
things that bother you.
Set my mind on the things that are
above.
That's the call that Paul gave to the
Colossian Christians.
And that's the call the Holy Spirit gives
us today.
And I believe this, that if we really
respond to this, we may live extraordinary lives,
and not just make extraordinary claims.
I mean, even a very simple thing like
a husband and wife living at peace with
each other, never raising their voice at each
other at any time.
That's an extraordinary thing.
It's not ordinary.
It's not ordinary in any country in the
world.
But imagine if we can demonstrate to others
such a life.
If we can demonstrate to others children who
long to follow in the footsteps of their
parents in living for God.
That's so rare.
It's so rare to find even among believers.
And we can always blame it on the
children and say, well, what to do?
But the word of God is true.
Train up a child in the way he
should go.
And when he's old, he will not depart
from it.
We have to take the blame as parents.
Not say children are different.
Noah, one of the great things about Noah
was that he practiced what he preached.
His three sons saw him working hard, using
his own money to build the ark.
And they recognized that their dad really believed
what he preached.
And they all followed him.
He got his whole family into the ark.
And where children can see that their dad
and mom really believed what they preached, their
heart and soul is for heaven, for eternity.
They may have their ups and downs sometimes
in their teenage years, but they will come
back and follow the faith of their parents.
This is the way we are called to
live.
But if I don't take the blame and
say, Lord, it's my fault.
I always put the blame on something else
like Adam did.
I'll never come to this life.
I have to say, Lord, forgive me.
I have failed you.
I want to live this life.
Help me.
Shall we pray?
Search me, O God, and know my heart.
Try me and know my thoughts.
And see if there's anything in my life
that's making you sad, anything that's making you
sad.
Show to me, Lord, that I can get
rid of it and live that heavenly life
on earth.
I want a deep repentance.
I want a surgery that goes to the
depth of my soul, a repentance for attachment
to the things of earth, for being disturbed
by things that don't disturb you at all.
Lord, I want to repent.
I want to repent at a deeper level
than I've ever repented in all of my
life.
Give me grace to honor your name, to
hallow your name, that your name can be
hallowed on earth in my life as it
is in heaven.
Help us, Lord, each one of us.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.