Lord, how would you have us as your people to practically live out the holy lives that you have called of us in this specific culture at this specific time?
Listen, my people. I am about to do a great thing among you. I am about to heal many people of many diseases, both inwardly and outwardly. The greatest pursuit of the Kingdom you can be engaged in right now is making yourself ready to be vessels of that great work. Being ready means being holy, staying in my Word, bowing your hearts and wills and money and ambitions and desires and fears and every idol before me. I cannot use vessels of carnality. I cannot use vessels that are addicted to the wine of the culture, drunk with the entertainments and pleasures that keep you feeling full. I cannot use those who are oriented to the world and not to my Spirit. Oh my children, you must fast! You must empty yourselves of all but love for me and love for others! (Philippians 2:3-8: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”) You must deny yourselves and take up your crosses daily and follow me! (Luke 9:23) Following me doesn’t mean going to church and living the rest of the week as if you didn’t know me. Following me doesn’t mean you give me lip service and have ritualistic devotions every morning or evening and feel like you’ve done your religious duty, that I should somehow be pleased with you for that. Following me means commitment! You are either all in or all out! There is no in between, and if you think so, you have been utterly captivated by the devil’s lies. Following me means studying the way of my Son, Yehushua, and the life He lived on earth; it means studying Him and imitating Him. That is discipleship. Did my Son shrink from death, from duty, from the pain of flogging and mockery and nails and shame? Did He shrink from cold, deprivation, and hunger on account of having no place to lay His head? (Luke 9:58) Did He shrink from the exhaustion that comes with always being on demand by crowds of angry, hungry, importunate, ungrateful people who were looking for what they could get from Him, and not what they could do to honor Him? (John 6:26) Yes, indeed, Yehushua was a model for great suffering and great endurance. He was also a model of the church. The way my people were sent to Him to care for His needs–women like Mary Magdalene and Susanna and many others who sacrificed of their own means to provide for Him–is an example of how my church should be pulling together to make the gospel go forth. But how often does that happen? Perhaps you give a little of your padded bank accounts to try to spread some mission cause that is in some other country or city but which you don’t have to touch with your own hands. You refuse to get your hands dirty, my people! Will you break a little sweat to save the hungry? Will you pour out your lifeblood to save the persecuted? My children, will you sacrifice yourself to save the unborn who are being brutally murdered every day? Do you wink at compassion by giving a little money here and there to those who are doing the hard work? Have you considered that workers are needed to pray for the breaking down of demonic strongholds that keep abortion alive and well? Have you considered that feet are needed to go to clinics to seek to dissuade a murder that is about to take place, and that feet are needed to show compassion to women, to love on babies that need homes, and to educate those who are bound by sinful lifestyles? Do you share with them the hope of my gospel? Do you break through the darkness of Satan’s lies upon their minds by shining the brightness of my truth into their hearts? Do you show them the sacredness of the life I have placed within their wombs? Do you warn them of the great pain their own actions will cause them as they suffer in their own conscience for a lifetime because of their murderous deeds? And of course, that pain does not end at death but only escalates to a level that human language cannot express in the fires of hell. My children, pray to me, that I will direct you in the way each and every one of you should go toward advancing my Kingdom. I gift every one of you according to the works that I have prepared in advance for you to do (Ephesians 2:10). Do not be satisfied with easy-chair Christianity. Do not be satisfied staying in your comfort zone. If you feel no compassion, no zeal, no ambition for the cause of my Son in the world, then pray for me to empower you with my heart and soul! Pray for me to give you my eyes! But are you too lazy to even pray? Many of you are. Do you make a habit of taking the road of least resistance? Burnout is not solved by an endless cycle of leisure; it is solved by dipping deeply into the fountain of life I give to all who put their hope in Yehushua! I am calling out to you, Oh church of God; do not harden your hearts yet again! Do not make excuses for why you cannot listen! Decimate yourselves before me, my people! Ask me to create in you a pure heart and renew a steadfast spirit within you (Psalm 51:10).
Oh mothers of this generation, do not think that you are not on the front lines! Do not think that you are failing to fulfill the compassion to which I have called my church. You ARE the front lines. The generation that you are training in the truth of my Word is the army of tomorrow. And every child you have not aborted is every child you have saved from the Evil One and his ambition to steal and kill and destroy (John 10:10). Think not that what you do in the home is of no or little consequence. Think not that washing dishes and wiping bottoms is meaningless and merely mundane! You are showing your children the most intimate of love, even as my Son showed His disciples in the upper room as He humbled himself to the place of a slave and washed the filthy, dusty feet of all 12 of His apostles–even the one who was to betray Him! Many mothers suffer that dagger of betrayal as their children conscientiously turn their back on the grace of God shown to them moment by moment, year by year in the home. Does that make your work vain, dear mothers? Certainly not! Every tear you shed, every bottom you wipe, every dish you wash, every dust mite you clean is an act of love–a memorial of grace to your God. These acts are a sweet-smelling savor in my nostrils. They are practical Christianity at work every moment, every day. Indeed, for every one of my children who are working in mundane jobs and are servants of ungodly masters, you are storing up for yourselves a rich reward every time you perform an act of service in diligence and love that is offered in faith, obedience, and respect, for the glory of Yehushua Hamashiach.
Once again, my children, I appeal to you to pray for insight. Seek me for understanding in the calling to which I have called you. Do not look at others and decide you have failed because you are not doing what they do. Likewise, do not grow apathetic and think that the jobs I have for you will just miraculously fall into your lap. Do not be the evil servant who buried his gifts. (Matthew 25:14-30) Seek me for guidance to use them as I see fit. Do not follow your own ideas and understanding; search my Word and seek my ambition in your heart. Strive to do that which I have enabled you to do and given you a burden to do; yet, that burden will only come as you draw near to me and feel my heart through prayer. I love you, my children. Come to me!
Romans 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
John 13:14: “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
Hebrews 3:7-19: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
‘Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, “They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.”
As I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”‘
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,
‘Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.’
For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.”
James 1:27: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”