Prepared

A voice of one calling: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Isaiah 40:3 If we're to receive the powerful presence of God, we must prepare ourselves. Henry Blackaby We tend to dismiss the Old Testament these days, which is to our harm. There is so much teaching and power in those Scriptures. They foreshadow the coming of Christ the King and they have so much to teach us. One of these is found in how the priests were instructed to prepare themselves for their coming into the inner court to minister to Him. Preparation had a central part in all of their worship. What part does preparation have in ours? How we prepare ourselves for corporate worship speaks loudly to how we prepare ourselves for our private times with Him. How often do we stay up late on the night before our corporate gatherings giving ourselves over to entertainment and a host of other activities that do not prepare the soil of our hearts for meeting with Him, but distract and take us further from Him? As a result, we're disjointed, distracted, unfocused as we come into His sanctuary. Worship leaders will tell you they spend a good part of the service trying to get the attention of the people gathered before them. We're not prepared to meet with Him. We are not treating Him as Holy. Our bodies may be present, but our hearts and minds are missing. The worst part of it is that we're not much bothered by it. We've made a kind of peace with it. We expect to have to "work" at getting the people's attention. This results in a lot of flesh centered efforts to stir hearts. Sadly, emotions may be touched, but hearts rarely are. We've come unprepared and we leave unchanged. How do we prepare? It's not in trying harder or having music and preaching that stir the emotions. Blackaby says that there is only one real way to prepare to come into His Presence, and that is in repentance. That's an ugly word to our flesh, but if we dwell on what it means, a turning away from the direction we've been going and unto the direction where He's found, it's a wonderful exercise. The enemy, working through this world, is fully committed to taking all of our attention away from Jesus Christ. He has seemingly limitless ways of doing this and he is often very successful. We need Him to cleanse us from all that has pushed Him aside in our lives in both our individual and public worship. We need to confess where we've allowed other things to come between He and us. We need to turn from all of it, be emptied of it. We need clean hearts, empty of all the things that are not of Him and have found their way in. When we have, we are prepared to meet with Him. To encounter Him. In the Old Testament, the priests needed to be ceremonially clean before ministering to Him. So must we. This is how we prepare. We empty ourselves of all the spiritual clutter so that He may now come and fill us with Himself. This is worship, and we can only experience it when we're prepared. How will you prepare to come to Him today? How will you prepare yourself to meet with Him when you gather with your fellow believers this Sunday? Will you come before Him distracted, disinterested, and leave Him no different than when you came before Him? Or will you come with clean hands and heart, empty of all the trash the enemy and the world have tried to fill your life with, and simply worship and adore Him? Will you, will I, be prepared? Blessings, Pastor O

Pathway

Your road led through the sea, our pathway through the mighty waters - a pathway no one knew was there. Psalm 77:19 In Psalm 77, the psalmist writes with a heart desperate for God. Desperate for His presence, His help, His deliverance. In his prayer, the deliverance of the people of Israel at the Red Sea comes to his mind. Think on that scene for a moment. Israel, a slave nation just coming out of Egypt and traveling to the land of promise, comes to the Red Sea, a natural barrier. Behind them comes the army of Pharoah, determined to take them back into captivity. They face an impossible barrier and are pursued by an unbeatable enemy. They could not see any means of escape. There was no way out....but God.... The great test of faith is to believe for the impossible when all visible circumstances point to everything being impossible. The Israelites could not see any way through the Red Sea. All they could see was the impossibility of the barrier before them and the sure defeat by the enemy behind them. But God saw everything differently. He saw the pathway that no one else could see. He was the pathway that no one knew was there. He always is. He still is. He opened the sea and the pathway was revealed, and it was only open to them. When the Egyptians tried to use it as well, they all drowned trying to get through. The lesson for us in our following in faith is to trust that He is and will always be our pathway through the impossibilities we face in life. We see no way through and no way out. He sees the way because He is the Way. As Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." He is always there, though most cannot see Him, or the pathway He offers. He and His path can only be seen by the eyes of faith. Have you such eyes? We all will come to our own "Red Sea." Our own impossible way. Will we crumble in despair, or will we look for the pathway that is there before us, seen only by the eyes of faith? You may be in such a place right now. Look up, and as you look up, see Him. He is the Pathway. He will lead you through and out, and that which blocks your way will be overcome and that which pursues you will be rendered powerless. He is the Pathway when there is no other way. He is the only Way. Follow Him. Blessings, Pastor O

Never

“Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.” – Joshua 21:45 I heard someone share a quote from an unknown source. It simply stated, "You worry too much for someone that God has never failed." Think on that. Has He ever failed you or me? I grant you that He may not have answered your prayers as you wished. He may not have done as you asked, even pleaded, but failed you? Tragedy in this fallen world will at some point come upon all of us. He has not promised to keep us from it. Loved ones die, leave us, betray us. Businesses fail. Ministries fail. Defeats do happen. From a human standpoint, Jesus' life and ministry looks like a failure. So do the lives of the disciples. All died for their faith in Christ, except for John, who lived out his last years on an island prison. Did God the Father fail them? In my own life, I suffered a divorce I did not want or seek. I had to leave my ministry even though I didn't want to, and in my ministry I suffered many painful losses and betrayals. Did God fail me? On the surface you may say yes, but I tell you that He didn't. He didn't fail me because the pain, the suffering, the loss, were never the final result. In all of them, He had the final word, and His final word in all of them was "Victory." That mighty Scripture that we quote so often but forget even more, "For God works all things together for the good of those that love Him," has shown itself true and trustworthy in the midst of all. Yes, the pain was real. The suffering and loss were real. He was more real. His goodness and faithfulness was and is more real. What the enemy meant for my harm He always turned to good. Every weapon formed against me failed to succeed, just as He promised. There's an old hymn with the lyric, "He never has failed me yet." It's true. I know that in Him, I am more than a conqueror. Anxiety, fear, worry, these things will always be used by the devil to seek to bring us down. When he throws these fiery darts at us we need to take them right to His throne of grace. All their power is rendered impotent in His Presence. The darkness we walk through is passing. His faithfulness will light the way through. He will bring you out. That's His promise, and His promises never fail. Blessings, Pastor O

He Reigns

But the priests, the Levites, shall come near to me to minister unto Me. Ezekiel 44:15 Many can enjoy working among people in the outer court, but how many of us give time to draw near to God in the Holy Place? Watchman Nee Oftentimes in these writings I'll question whether it's something He would have me write on. If it is, He always brings some kind of confirmation, which is what He did concerning this one. Last week I'd been contemplating writing about how many of us professing believers spend most of our corporate gatherings that we call worship in the outer court without ever entering into the Holy Place, just as Nee said. That I should was confirmed by the message I heard last Sunday about the veil of the Temple tearing and giving access to a Holy God through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. The outer court was a part of the Temple. It was where His people would gather to carry out the business of the Temple. It's where most Jews dwelt. Only the priests had access to the Holy of Holies, and then it was only the High Priest. That all changed with with death and resurrection of Christ, when the thick veil was torn asunder, and the barrier between fallen men and a holy God was removed and all who had believed upon the work of Christ on the cross now had access. We are all, through faith in Him, now priests of the Lord. We all have access to "the Holy Place," to His Holy Presence. Sadly though, too many of us continue to dwell in the outer court. We have full access to His Presence, but we invest ourselves in the business of the church and His Kingdom, but we miss Him in the investing. Think about this. Think about how much time we may spend on church activities. They can be important activities, as much that was done in the outer court of the Temple was important. We can do a lot of good things in the outer court, but we settle for the good and miss the best. And all the while our spirits wilt, our hearts fail us, and we serve Him out of duty, not from a heart passion. We rarely, if ever, leave the outer court of activity for Him for the wonder of intimate relationship with Him. Not just one day a week, but every day of the week. I challenge each of us to really meditate upon how much of our time is spent in working for Him instead of living with and in Him? How much of our walk is religious activity rather than passionate worship? Burnout is a serious problem in the church, and not just with pastors. We're active in His Body but we never really connect with His heart. We know what we're to do, but we don't really know Him. If some part of this is true for you, make this day the day that starts to change. You have free access to the Holy Place. Come in from the outer court and into His Presence. Breathe the atmosphere of heaven. You can only experience that in His Holy Place.

Joy

Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice. Philippians 4:4.....Joy is the serious business of heaven. C.S. Lewis His word tells us that we're to be joyful in all circumstances. I think, if we'll admit to it, that we wonder how that can be possible? Maybe it's so difficult because we don't understand just what His joy is. We equate it with happiness. Happiness depends upon what is happening. Joy is a condition of the heart, and the heart is where His Son abides through His Holy Spirit. Joy is not at root a feeling, it's a state of being. Happiness is an emotion affected by our circumstances. It can evaporate quickly, but if His joy is our strength, then we live in an endless hope and well-being that no outward conditions can diminish. The best example of this that I can think of is with something a woman said to me many years ago. She was in a miserable marriage and family situation. Trouble seemed to afflict her and her family in seemingly endless ways. Like Paul, she admitted that there were times she was tempted to even "despair as to her life." Yet, she said that in such times, she would remember that she was saved, she was His, and her focus was not on the present but on His promise to her of eternity with Him. She knew that was real, more real than her present situation. She could rejoice in that because she knew her pain, severe as it was, was a passing pain. She would rejoice not only in her future hope, but her present one in Christ. She was not alone. She was not left comfortless. That which sought to crush her would not because of the inward power she had in Him. She rejoiced in her present and future victory over all of it. That is joy. The fruit of a settled and deep knowing and experiencing of Him that nothing could defeat. Maybe today you too are confusing His joy with your happiness. Happiness is fleeting when all you can see is what is around you. Joy comes from looking both inwardly to who is with you, and upwardly to who is always watching you and moving on your behalf. That is how you experience the joy of the Lord as your strength. That is how you rejoice always. So, rejoice always. Again I say, rejoice! Blessings, Pastor O

Withered Heart

And He said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." .....He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. Mark 3:1,5 Chris Tiegreen, commenting on this passage said, "We must own up to our withered hand." Withered hand. Withered heart. Withered soul and life. At root, we are all "withered." The meaning of the word is "dry and shriveled." I think this marks a great part of every life being lived without Him, no matter how things may appear on the outside. That will not change until we own up to that which is dry and shriveled in our lives, as well as to what it has produced. Dry and shriveled relationships, marriages, families. Dry and shriveled livelihoods and yes, ministries...and churches. Our great problem is that we resist, strongly, to admitting that anything in our lives is withered, and if we do, we usually place the responsibility for it on something or someone else. We rarely see it as being a problem stemming from the conditions of our heart and soul. Tiegreen said, "Our fallenness (sin) is all we have to offer Him. In His mercy, it's all He asks." Someone said that we cannot be saved until we realize and admit that we need to be. Our sinful pride and self-reliance in all things keeps us from admitting that need. The result is always going to be a shriveled life. Jesus told the man with the withered hand to "stretch it out" to Him.This is our need. This is what we must do when we come to Him. Jesus wanted the man to stretch all of his hand out, with no part of it held back. It is the same in His invitation to us. We must "stretch out" all of our being to Him, with no part of ourselves held back. Ourselves and every aspect of what has been, what is, and what will be, given over to Him. When we release all from our withered hands to Him, He in turn restores all that the withering has touched. I have worked with people in all kinds of ministries for more than 40 years now. Many will be aware of the withered areas of their lives. They can admit it, but they can't bring themselves to surrender it to Him. Can you? We cannot escape the reality of our withered hand, but we can see it healed. Fully healed and restored. All we need to do is bring it to Him, give it to Him, and leave it with Him. He invited us to come. Can we? Will we? Will you? Blessings, Pastor O

Altars

And David built there an altar to the Lord. I Chronicles 21:26 Everyone has an altar....everyone brings offerings. Chris Tiegreen There was a time when most evangelical churches, particularly holiness churches, had an altar at the front of the sanctuary. It was to be a place of prayer, of consecration, a place to offer ourselves completely to Him. In many churches, they have disappeared, and that can be a topic for another writing, but their disappearance does not for a moment take away the truth of Tiegreen's statement. Everyone, including you and me, has an altar and we bring our offerings to it. It can be an altar dedicated to pleasure and comfort. It may be an altar that we bring our offerings and sacrifices to for success, money, and fame. As Tiegreen writes, We have no shortage of gifts to bring to our altars, because the world has no shortage of altars. Throughout their history, Israel kept the Lord's altar in the Temple while at the same time erecting countless other altars to all the false gods and idols they were also worshipping. Where in our lives are we doing the same? Some of them are painfully obvious, as listed above, but others are not so easily identified. They cloak themselves in religious "robes." Perhaps one of the most deadly is "ministry success." Countless pastors, teachers, and worship leaders have visited this altar, including myself. We come to His altar, but in our hearts there exists another, a rival to Him; our work, our ministry. Our recognition. We can hunger for that. Oftentimes more than we hunger for Him. There is only one legitimate altar we may come to; His. All others are counterfeits. There is only one acceptable offering we may bring to His altar; ourselves. In response, He will send His holy fire upon the offering. The result will be revival. Renewal. Awakening. Watchman Nee said that without the altar there will be no heavenly fire. Nor will there be without the proper offering of our lives. All of our lives. There's an old hymn with the lyric, "I never will forget how the fire fell when the Lord sanctified me." May we have such a testimony and may we have such a result. Bring us to Your altar Lord. Send Your fire. Send it now. Blessings, Pastor O