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website at www.livingseed.org Let us sit
back and listen as the servant of God
brings forth the Word of Life.
Thank you, Brajato.
Let us pray together.
Our Father, we cannot express the gratitude in
our hearts.
It is beyond words.
You are so good to us.
We can testify that your mercies, they endure
forever.
They've endured with all the time that we
have pursued after you, as they have endured
over all the ages past.
This day again, we lean on these mercies
that are our assurance, the assurance that we
will again receive grace as we obtain mercy.
We pray, O God, that again you will
make a way for us.
Cause, O Rock of Ages, that we hide
our life in you.
We confess again that nothing in my hand
I bring simply to your cross I cling
even now.
I request that in the nakedness in which
I'm coming, you be the clothing that will
be presented unto your people.
It is in our most low state of
weakness, of infirmity, that you make your grace
much more abundant, sufficient, and your strength much
more effective.
Even so, Lord, all through today, we ask
that you will reveal yourself unto us in
your mercy.
Be exalted and magnified forevermore.
Thank you for answering us, for it is
in Jesus' name that we have prayed.
Amen.
I'd like to note again with us that
the Lord is speaking to each of us
personally, individually.
Of course, the message God is bringing to
us is also an announcement of his visitation
to his people and to our generation.
The message that hereafter, you and I will
see heaven open and we will see the
messengers of heaven bearing our requests expressly.
In all security, mounting up to the Almighty,
and we'll be bringing down expressly the responses
of our gracious Father, the Almighty God.
And doing this as Jesus is our own
ladder, rather than the ordinary one that Jacob
saw, bearing all that we have to cry
to the Father to heaven by Christ, and
bringing also down to us by him, according
to the limitless favor that our Savior has
with the Father, to answer us speedily and
to do great and mighty things which we
will be seeing in the course of time.
Please don't forget that when God came to
us yesterday, it was very, very particular, that
yes, we are concerned about all the needs
of the many, many Syrophoenician women around about
us.
We are worried about the degradation, the corruption,
the wickedness, the wars.
We are worried about even the famine of
the Word of God, the inversion of the
powers of darkness that are even encroaching on
the body of Christ.
We are worried about the needs all around
us.
We are deeply concerned that unrighteousness seems to
have taken righteousness hostage, seems to have kidnapped
godliness, and is now seeming to be the
one reigning over all our lands, our countries,
our various tribes and tongues.
They seem to be an audacious display of
darkness in our generation.
It's almost becoming so intimidating that if you
don't join darkness, you can't make it.
If you don't agree with unrighteousness, with corruption,
with daylight unrighteousness and wickedness, that you have
no place in our generation.
Yet all of this will be resolved with
crumbs.
God said all of the seeming, staggering need
of our generation, God only needs crumbs to
meet them all.
But how will the crumbs come about when
the children are not yet filled?
When we have not yet eaten, all the
bread is waiting in heaven to be released.
And it is on account of this that
hereafter we will see heaven open.
It's opening to release the abundance of the
divine supplies to fill the children.
The children must first be filled because it's
out of the abundance of the feeding of
the children that the father is intending to
serve the needs of our various peoples, people's
groups, the needs of a particular generation in
all areas and walks of life.
In the issues of our various professions and
careers, God intends to meet these needs but
is waiting on us to arise and to
sit at table and begin to consume our
own portion.
So the greatest need that we are here
to call on God for is that he
might release the abundance of his provisions that
are meant for us as the body of
Christ, so that the rest of the populations
of our generation might stop starving.
This morning, further to this, I hear God
calling on us therefore to set about in
anticipation of the open heavens that are already
imminent.
I hear God asking us to go and
dig ditches.
There is an abundance that heaven must send
down and adequate reservoirs, adequate receptors, adequate containers,
adequate space must be provided to receive what
heaven must send down in a very, very
short time to come.
I'd like to read the story, just a
bit of it, that carries this message in
2 Kings chapter 3.
I will not dare to try to read
the whole of it.
I will only read the portion that I
would have us to particularly note as we
share further, because the story itself is not
what is important for us at this point.
But it has to do with a great
need, a moment of serious need that arose
in the midst of the people of God
at the time of the reign of Jehoram,
the son of Ahab, and in the time
of the reign of Jehoshaphat, who was the
king over Judah.
I'd like us to note that this story
speaks about a tight corner in which not
only the army of Israel, but also the
army of Judah, and that of Edom, that
was confederate with Israel and Judah, in order
to go against Moab, that had rebelled against
Israel at the time.
I'd like you to note that they came
to a point where there was a very,
very dire need.
A need that bordered on survival, and they
needed for God to intervene, just like we
are looking to heaven for a desperate supply
to attend to our dire need in this
moment of our lives.
And I want to note that as they
went to confer with Elisha, Elisha would have
driven them away, except that he could respect
the presence of Jehoshaphat, who was mindful of
the ways of the Lord in his day.
And when he would speak, would you note
in verse 14 now, that he called for
a musician, a minstrel, as we would read
in the Old King James.
In verse 15, the Bible says, but now
bring me a minstrel, a musician, and it
came to pass when the musician played, that
the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha.
And Elisha said, Thou sayest the Lord, make
this valley full of ditches, for thou sayest
the Lord, ye shall not see wind, neither
shall ye see rain, yet that valley in
which you have dug the ditches shall be
filled with water.
And this water will be sufficient that you
may drink, both you and your cattle and
your beasts, and even this is a light
thing in the sight of the Lord, he
will deliver the Moabites also into your hand.
Now, would you like to come to verse
20 to note that it came to pass.
It came to pass that in the morning,
when the meat offering was offered, that behold,
there came water by the way of Edom,
and the country was filled with water.
Needless to go on to note that thereafter,
God also arranged that they could pursue and
overtake Moab, and they recovered all, and they
occupied where Moab had occupied before.
There was a full restoration.
There was a very clear deliverance, but also
a complete restoration.
The visitation of God for our lives in
his opening the heavens in response to all
of the cries of his children, some have
even gone ahead of us into heaven, who
have interceded, who have labored, who have waited
for this movement, this visitation of God.
But it pleased God to respond to them
and to us in our own day.
Now, but God says we have a part
to play.
There is a necessary role that involves you
and I.
Now, this role is about our preparing for
his coming, so that it's not wasted.
Now, God had come on this before, some
years back, and sent us by this word
to go and prepare vessels for the reviver.
He came to mobilize us to go labor
in discipleship, so that the vessels that will
run with the fire that God will release
from above, with the help that will come
from heaven, with the anointing of heaven, the
grace of God that will come upon our
lives, will be made available for God to
use.
Today, I hear God saying, at the moment
that we are at the threshold of that
visitation, this labor of digging ditches by raising
disciples, we must do it even much more
intensively, with a sense of urgency, with a
sense of purpose, having in mind the fact
that the time now is really very short.
We must go dig ditches by providing more
and more vessels for the torrential rain of
God's visitation that we are expecting, as the
heavens will open unto us beyond our imagination.
We need to provide the vessels that will
collect the visitation of God in their lives.
Now, but I want to note with us
that God will have us first to go
to provide the space in our lives.
Even in the area of our commitment to
discipleship, He wants the capacity of our lives
to increase.
He wants to see more of our resemblance
of Jesus, as it is the life of
Christ that He can use.
God is asking that we should be particular
to ensure that our commitment to grow in
discipleship, our commitment to engage much more the
opportunities of learning at His feet, and of
following the lives that He may have already
introduced to each one of us much more
closely, in order to miss nothing of the
provisions He's making for us to learn Jesus.
He wants first ourselves to dig deeper, to
dig deeper into our lives and make provision
for our growth in an accelerated manner.
It will be His joy when He arrives
that He's finding each of us carrying the
measure that is the measure of Christ.
With what measure we offer to Him, that's
the measure He can feel, and that's the
measure that He can also pour out to
other lives.
Are you all together already like Jesus?
Are there areas that do not carry the
life that God can feel and can use?
Would you like to commit yourself this morning,
particularly as we are pressing on, or whatever
time of day it is with you, would
you like to determine that you will dig
ditches?
First the ditch of your commitment to learn
Jesus.
Go and dig more space.
You have not yet given God the space
that He's looking for, as long as you
are not all together like Jesus.
Don't rest on your oars.
Don't begin to congratulate yourself when the time
is almost at hand and it is Jesus
God we'll be looking for to use when
He descends in abundance upon our lives as
the heavens open unto us.
Also, I hear God asking that you should
dig ditches in your life of your hunger
for God, your hunger to be used of
God, your hunger to spend and be spent
for the purpose of God.
Also, you may have surrendered to God.
Did you really surrender all?
Go and check and confirm that you are
all together a living sacrifice unto the Father.
You've offered your life and you are already
dead to death.
You are already completely dead to whatever could
be a personal convenience, a personal interest, a
personal profit.
You are living only for Jesus, for He
died for all, so that those who live
should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto
those for whom He died and rose again.
You should check again.
The point is, it is critical time now.
We are in injury time of our preparation,
and so you must confirm that your ditches
are ready.
Confirm that they are not small.
When the widow woman in chapter 4 of
the 2 Kings that we have read, when
she was asked to gather vessels, gather not
a few, and I think she must have
tried, and she gathered the vessels.
But as she shot in with the sons
and began to pour the oil when God
came down, when the miracle began to flow,
I imagine she must have regretted when she
asked the sons to bring yet another vessel,
and the sons said, sorry ma, there is
no more.
The vessels are finished.
And of course, that's how far the oil
could go, the oil stayed.
I would request that we be mindful of
the fact that the release from heaven will
be unlimited.
Let's prepare our lives in our seeking to
serving to be in such measure that whatever
assignment it puts upon our shoulders, there will
be capacity to bear it.
There will be room to contain it.
We will not be like that widow of
the prophet that had reason to regret that
our vessels were finished.
I imagine if she understood what was going
to happen, she will have used the little
resources left in her hand to take a
flight abroad, mobilizing for more vessels, until she
would need to have had to hire perhaps
some stores to keep empty vessels for the
process of filling them.
She would have actually become the richest person
in all of history if her vision, her
perspective, her understanding was enlarged.
God wants us to enlarge our hearts, to
enlarge our vision, to enlarge our expectation, as
he told us yesterday, to dig the ditches
for the visitation of God, for the grace,
for the provisions, for the help that God
is bringing to find adequate space to do
not just a little and stay, and yet
unrighteousness will still be roaming around, but to
be able to overpower and overcome all that
we need to overcome in order to take
over and to rule for the Lord.
Now, dig ditches in your life, dig ditches
of prayer, dig ditches of prayer.
Now, this is requiring for us to deliberately
exercise our hearts in praying, not superficially as
we may have been praying before, but to
gain depth in prayer, to pray deeply.
To be able to pray and touch the
heavens, to pray your life into communion with
God in the secret place, into communion with
God, even in the council room of heaven,
to pray until you are standing before God.
Pray your heart into an intimate communion with
the Father.
Pray until you begin to really pray.
We need exercise in prayer.
You know, digging is a laborious exercise.
When you are digging, you sweat.
When you are digging, you exert yourself.
Let's exert ourselves in all the areas of
our digging.
Don't be scratching.
They say dig.
Let's dig ditches.
Let's dig ditches in prayer.
Pray asking for the nations, asking for distant
lands.
Are you a professional?
Don't be afraid of praying to request for
God to give you the entire profession in
the whole world.
You will soon be flying to go and
instruct lecturers if you are in the tertiary
academic profession.
To be instructing lecturers in the Bahamas, to
be instructing lecturers in Fiji Islands, to be
instructing lecturers in Malaysia.
But pray, receive the ends of the earth,
and he will give them to you for
a possession.
We need to intercede for God to visit
the whole earth.
Prayer is one particular area in which we
need to dig the ditches.
God definitely is committed.
He said, assure readily, I say unto you.
I say unto you with all assurance that
year after you will see heaven open and
there will be an unlimited opportunity for us
to send into heaven and to receive out
of heaven upon the Son of Man.
Now, but how prepared are you?
If he has committed himself to doing it,
we must be committed to receiving it, and
we must be prepared for what we will
receive.
For this, we need to dig ditches also
in asking.
We prayed for revival, but now much more.
We need to enlarge the scope of our
prayers in revival.
We need to deepen our expectation.
Pray for revival not only to affect the
preparation of hearts for heaven, not only to
affect the deliverance of people from sin, not
only to affect their deliverance from the oppression
of demons, not only to affect the breaking
of every yoke of all addictions, not only
to affect their personal walk with God and
the restoration of all backsliders never to backslide
again.
Pray that the visitation of God will change
the politics of the world, that we will
go from democracy to what God himself will
determine where the rule of the earth will
no longer be deliberate rebellion against God.
Pray that the whole earth will come under
the rule of God.
Pray that the economics of the world will
no longer be driven by self, be driven
by personal ego, be driven by selfish aggrandizement.
There will be an economy of the world
that is after the principles of sacrifice, of
love, and of Christ, that is sponsoring peace.
Here is the economy in which we presently
are that is encouraging wars.
It's an economy of strife.
Pray for an economy that will be all
-embracing and that will be much more interested
in sharing than gathering.
Would you like to pray that revival will
change our politics?
Revival will change even the educational spectrum of
the world, that revival will bring an end
to every form of way of life, that
the revival will change our legal systems, will
change the kind of judiciary we have in
every country.
In fact, that revival will change man in
and out.
We change man in all his undertakings.
We change man in agriculture.
We change man in medicine.
We change man in the arts and crafts.
We change man in our drive of technology.
I would like us to actually set our
heart to dig ditches.
What you don't ask from heaven, you cannot
receive.
And it is the measure to which you
ask, believing that will determine the measure that
you can also collect.
So it's important for us to be committed
to preparing the ground for the abundance of
rain that the open heavens will release upon
the earth, for the limitless flow of divine
favors that we will be collecting upon the
Son of Man.
Would you like to commit yourself to digging
ditches?
Digging big, wide, deep ditches.
Ditches that if you dug before, you go
back to increase in every area of your
expectation of the visitation of God.
There's a need to mobilize our hearts to
pray and to mobilize ourselves, even together in
prayer, to ask God to send us the
rain that will cover everywhere.
We are dwelling in very dry valleys in
our experiences upon the earth.
And first, our hunger, spiritually first of all,
are overrunning the world.
Not to talk of the wickedness, the killings,
the wars, the hatred.
The peoples of this world are worried about
hate.
But the hate is part of the life
that they have adopted.
The life of sin, the life of rebellion
against God, the life of disobedience to his
set pattern and his set standards.
The only solution against all manner of hate
can only come by revival, when it is
the Prince of Peace who breaks down all
the walls of partition, when he becomes the
ruler of every heart.
Would you like to ask God, as we'll
be pleading with him, that he will show
us mercy?
He will show us mercy to be prepared.
Don't forget, as I want to begin to
bring you to the issues we are talking
about, in conclusion, that we need to prepare
first our own lives, much more than we
may have prepared ourselves before.
We need to dig ditches that will contain
what heaven is at the point of releasing.
Ditches by intensifying our availability to gain from
discipleship, intensifying our commitment to pursue our becoming
more and more like Jesus.
We need to dig the ditches of our
hunger for God, the ditches of our yearning
to be with him, to commune more and
more with him, and to be much more
and more pleasing to him, to enjoy intimacy
with God.
Ditches of hunger for intimacy with the Almighty.
We need to dig ditches in prayer, ditches
that are growing our capacity to pray, and
pray deeply, and pray effectively.
The praying that is not superficial, the praying
that is not casual, the praying that is
touching the heart of God, the praying that
is affecting the very care of the heart
of the Most High, is asking the things
that the Father himself is seeking to accomplish.
We need to dig ditches in our own
lives, ditches of requesting all of the world,
the nations, the nations of this world, all
the professional walks of life, all the areas
of human endeavour.
We need to expand the ditches and dig
deep, dig to collect all, dig to lose
nothing of what heaven will be releasing, if
we exercise ourselves more and more in prayer.
Why are we doing this?
We are doing this because it is the
measure of our eating that will determine the
quantity of crumbs that the rest of the
world can endure.
Why are we doing this?
Because whatever we don't ourselves feed upon, whatever
we don't feast upon, will not be a
feast available for the rest of our generation.
And if God doesn't visit us to the
measure as to bring transformation to our generation,
even what he has done in our lives
will soon be overrun by our generation.
We have had revivers in the past, but
they are now only read as history.
They are now only available in the archives.
Why?
Because in places like Turkey, in places where
the word of God actually took over the
lands, the word of God did not take
over the running of the life of the
people.
The visitation of God did not transform the
government of the land, did not transform the
economy of the land, did not transform the
relationships of the various people and people's groups
on account of the grace of God that
came down.
Let's ask beyond just preparing us for heaven.
Let's ask beyond just making our lives to
be available to serve God.
Let's ask that there will also be a
further impact that will influence the rest of
our world.
This moment, I perceive God saying, if you
have accepted that he's saying you, you personally,
that you will see heaven open and that
you will see the angels ascending and descending
upon the Son of Man, if you agree
that it concerns you, that he's talking about
you, you are that Nathaniel today, then there
has to be a preparation for it.
What are you doing about it?
If this is what you are expecting, then
where is the preparation?
Where do you plan to keep it?
How do you plan to apply it?
Is your life having the capacity to contain
it, to hold it, and to operate with
what heaven is going to release?
We need to dig ditches.
We mentioned yesterday the need for expectation.
Now, this moment, we are talking about the
need to be practical about this expectation by
actually preparing in earnest for it, arranging what
is necessary to contain it.
And part of it is that our prayer
for revival must intensify beyond what we may
have been praying in asking for revival in
the past.
The reason being, we are now at the
threshold of that experience.
And if it catches us unawares, if it
catches us unprepared, it would be unfortunate that
what men prayed for several centuries before now,
and what we have been praying for, even
we ourselves for decades, some of us began
to pray for revival as very young kids,
very young youth.
Decades have passed.
It would be unfortunate that when the revival
now comes, we are not ready.
We are ill-prepared.
God is saying this is the time to
go and dig ditches.
And not to dig a few, and not
to dig them miserly, but to dig them
abundantly, lavishly, because the visitation must be contained,
must be correctly applied, and nothing of it
must be wasted.
Heaven hates waste.
Our Father will not that anything be lost.
Let's pray that God will prepare us indeed
as we go on further.
Now it's clear that if this is the
focus, it means no one who is expecting
that he will be part of the Nathaniel
Company, the diggers of ditches, will be alive,
that himself is still doubting God.
Himself is yet to be committed to him,
has not come to Jesus.
Only those who have arrived can receive this
instruction with us all.
And so the first thing to be resolving
upon in this assembly is that you are
personally prepared to join the company of those
awaiting the open heavens, looking to heaven for
these heavens to be opened.
The heavens will be opened only for those
who are Nathaniel's, who have believed and have
confessed Christ as the Lord and as the
King that has been set in Zion over
all the years, as the Prince that the
Father has elected to reign over all creation.
I would like us to pray at this
point as we commend ourselves to God in
the six minutes we have remaining on this
lot, asking that he will show us mercy,
he will mobilize us himself by his own
spirit, so that we will not be left
out at this moment of the feasting of
God's mercies that he has chosen to release
upon the entire earth.
Would you like to bow your head as
we pray and as we commend ourselves to
the Lord, asking that, O God, please show
me personally mercy.
Show me mercy.
If I have not properly come, Jesus said,
come unto me, all you who labor and
are heavy laden, I will give you rest.
You can't be digging ditches when your life
is still under the yoke of sin, the
yoke of all manner of oppressions of darkness.
When you are still living in rebellion against
God, when your life is still heavy laden
with all manner of the burdens of the
chaos of this life and the deceitfulness of
riches, those who are like Nathaniel, they have
left all to follow Jesus.
They have come to all together be made
like unto him, and their own pursuit is
to become instruments that will live to serve
the purpose of God only.
Would you like to commend yourself to God
and say, Lord, help my life, therefore, to
fit in.
Help my life to become the kind of
life that you can depend upon in this
day of your power, in this day of
your visitation.
Help me to be not only willing, but
also available in this day of your power.
Would you like to pray to God over
this?
Bow your head, speak to God personally, unless
you don't think you are part of those
he's talking to.
Unless you don't understand that in this day,
wherever he has located you, you are that
Nathaniel that must be filled with his own
fullness.
So that out of the crumbs of what
drops in your filling your life with him,
that others will much more than be satisfied.
But it has to start with your own
life.
It has to begin with you receiving of
the fullness.
This makes it mandatory that you personally must
make space for what God is bringing.
You must dig ditches.
Brother, did you think you have already grown
enough?
You are already doing well?
May I put it to you that you
have only started and your time is remaining
very short.
The whole time has become very tight.
It means you must double up now.
It means you must arise and focus much
more than you may have done before.
Sister, has God pointed out a life that
should be your leader, your disciple, the hand
by which you will learn Jesus?
Were you very careless about throwing clothes?
Careless about even standing the rebukes, the reproofs?
You have often withdrawn, but time is running
out.
When will you actually be prepared, a correct
disciple that can raise others?
And this level will double when the heavens
open and the release of God's mercy comes
down in abundance.
People will overrun us.
The crowds will be pressing upon us.
But your life will not have been ready.
How unfortunate it will be.
Would you like to pray that, Lord, please
help my life to be fully prepared, to
be correctly made available, and to have the
capacity for what you plan to do?
Lord, we want to thank you for each
and every one of us.
We just want to pray, O God, that
wherever our position is, for those of us
for whom even the coming is in doubt,
you will sort that out in the course
of the moments we'll be passing together shortly.
For those of us that, yes, we can
say we have rested from sin, we've rested
from the love of the word, we've rested
from the dominion of darkness, but God is
saying now is time to take that yoke
of discipleship more earnestly.
For some of us, he's needing for us
to prepare, prepare for the level of revival,
dig ditches.
You will help each and every one of
us at each of our levels, and cause
that none of what you'll be releasing will
be lost in any of our lives, to
the praise of your glory, in the name
of Jesus.
Amen.