|
My hope in Him is action. That’s righteousness. Non-action is religion. If there is any religion in you, you need to get rid of it because it isn’t going to do you any good. It doesn’t matter what somebody else thinks. But when they see the glory of God on you, they can’t come against it. Hope is expectation. We hope for what we don’t have yet but have been promised. When you receive the hope, it is a seed that needs to be cared for. It needs to have water to germinate it and light for it to grow. We have expectation in hope. I’ve shared many times that if you want to be able to accomplish something you don’t yet know, you need to look for someone that can fulfill your expectations. You can do everything by trial and error but it takes a long time when you do it that way. But, for example, if your hope is to be a mechanic, you should find someone who is a successful mechanic and will have patience with you to teach you, and learn from them. Hope brings us a sense of desire to be fulfilled in what we feel God wants us to be doing. In Hebrews 11:6 it says we must believe that the God of creation exists. Many people don’t think so. When I was in my twenty’s, someone came up with the idea that God was dead. They believed there was no God. But they weren’t very smart because God is the only thing that holds everything together with His authority. When satan was going to take over he would not have had even close to the ability to keep the creation going. In fact, he tried to destroy everything God was trying to do. The other thing Hebrews 11:6 says is that we must believe He rewards those that diligently seek. There are four seeds we can labor in. They are found in Revelation 11:18. The first reward is being a prophet or laboring with a prophet. Those that labor with the prophets receive the prophet’s rewards through the prophet teaching them how to communicate with the living God. None of the gifts that God raises up is quite like the prophet’s. They are His, He anoints them, and they are accountable to God and not to man. The prophet is one that helps you remove the sins, the transgressions, and the things that hinder you from being able to fellowship with God. The second seed is being a saint. The saints are those that walk in the power of righteousness. The third seed is for those that fear His name. When you get the fear of the Lord, it changes and grows you into a place that you are solid and your anchor is in God. It brings character and stability to your life. The fourth one is destroying those that destroy the earth. When God comes back, He is expecting those He gave authority to on the earth to give that authority back to Him. He’s going to change everything. He will be Lord of all things and we will be kings and priests unto Him forever. We need to learn to recognize the promises and the commandments as seeds which, if we believe, we will take action. If we half-heartedly say I believe, it means that we believe it’s possible they exist but we’re not interested in knowing them or laboring with them or doing what needs to be done to have fellowship with Him. The saints are given righteousness because they want God and they want to please Him in whatever way they can; to have fellowship with the Lord and for the Lord to have fellowship with us and develop and grow us up to be strong children and then adults; sons of the living God. If you stop at being a child, you’re missing a great reward to become a son. God comes to us and knocks at our door and says, if you’ll invite Me in I will come and eat with you. I’ve found the best way I can fellowship with my wife is to take her out to eat because there are no other distractions or responsibilities. There are many secrets in the word of God. Jesus had no family upon the earth when He was here. He had no wife, He had no children, but His descendants were those that loved God and wanted Him and wanted His Father. It says in the scripture that Christ gave us the seed of eternity. If we realize we have the ability to have that seed placed in us and be taught by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit gives us the secrets of Christ’s ability to walk on the earth and not sin. We can have that if Christ is in us. That is a seed that will grow and increase and if it doesn’t grow, the Father will cut it off and throw it in the fire. Let’s look first at Isaiah 54:17, No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord. When it says this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord it means there are seeds available for you to have this heritage of rebuking the devourer in your life so you can be free to serve the living God as He wants you to. When you can begin to grab ahold of that, then you’ll begin to grow in very quick fashion. The Holy Spirit wants you to grow up into sonship and not just being a child that always needs to have their diaper changed. Now in Isaiah 55:1, Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; I can buy something without having money, that is, gold and silver. He is talking about having power that is a gift of God that won’t cost you anything as far as purchasing it. It will just cost your life; to die to your self-interests, to put the will of God on your life and in your life. Those words are seeds that as He speaks to us, have power to accomplish the words. …yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. There is no excuse for anyone to not be able to go to heaven. If you say I’m too poor to do it, that’s not true, because you don’t need any physical money. You just need a change of heart and a willingness to have a type of soil that when you get the seed it won’t be destroyed by all the weeds and thistles in your field (which is your soul). Verse 2, Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? Jesus is the bread of life. …and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. In the Bible times, those that didn’t have to work were fat. When Samuel came along and worked with Eli, Eli was really fat. When he got bad news, he fell over backwards and broke his neck and died. He was walking in the fatness of the world and not the fatness of God. He didn’t teach his children the ways of God. God brought Samuel into the picture so He would once again have a word into the children of Israel, His people. God wants us to be able to walk in the land of the living with plenty; extra. The land of the living is a place where you’re not only satisfied, but you have more than you actually need. That’s what fatness means in God. When they had an offering, they burnt the fat before the Lord. The Lord loves fat. They took the fat out of the animal they were offering and put it in the fire. He loved the fragrance of the fat being burned. He loves to see His children in the fatness of His provisions. That’s not being fat in the earthly monetary system, that’s fatness in knowing Him and learning to live like Him. Verse 3, Incline your ear… There are a lot of people you can speak to who never really hear what you are saying. There was a man I knew in his later years who would come to a restaurant where I was and I would take my dinner and go sit with him. He could tell the biggest whoppers of anyone I knew. But when I would speak to him about the Lord, I said, are you ready to meet the Lord? When I would talk about the Lord there would be a fog that would come over his face as if he never heard me. His face would never change no matter what I said. He could not hear what I had to say. But if I would talk about another subject he would come out of that fog and talk and tell me another story. He was so possessed with the kingdom of darkness that he couldn’t hear. If we don’t want to change we don’t hear either. So Isaiah is saying, take your ear and listen to what I have to say. Are you listening? Come unto me. Verse 3 again, Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; Those are strong words. Get your ear over here and listen to me. …and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. God made covenant with David and David walked in great power and authority upon the earth. He was an example of Christ that was to come. We are to be like David except not Old Testament but New Testament, which is Jesus. Jesus was the New Testament David. Verse 5, Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Those are promises that if you will listen and hear, your soul is going to live. That is pointing to Him, that if we will let Christ in, then that seed of Christ will begin to grow like He is so you can be a leader too; a king and a priest unto God. If we just quickly read over something we will miss the seeds of promises that are there; that if we believe it, it will begin to impart in us and grow us to be that very thing. He said He would make us an everlasting covenant. That covenant is everlasting as long as we stay in tune with Him but if we back away that everlasting is not everlasting anymore. That’s not God lying, because everlasting is as long as we stay in covenant with Him it will continue on as long as that lives. Verse 4, Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Those are two seeds. You have the seed of being a leader, and a commander to the people. That is not owning them, but teaching them how to open their ears and hear and receive everlasting life. Verse 5, Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. How did God glorify us? By putting His glory, which is eternal life, on us. Not the actual eternal life, but the seed of it that will become eternal life at the end if we stay faithful. Verse 6, Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: There are times that God is very loving and kind and gentle and longsuffering and we all should have at some point felt that. But there are also times when God is angry, and that’s not a time to come to Him and want comforted. When He comes with the anointing, don’t shut Him out but let Him do that work because He is growing a seed in us. Verse 7, Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: The wicked thinks in terms of how he can prosper himself. The way we should be thinking is, how can I help this person so they can prosper themselves at some point in time? …and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We keep building on the hope of Christ in us, the hope of eternity and the hope of God’s glory being upon us. Verse 8, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. The first place righteousness begins to work is your thought pattern, switching from you becoming prosperous to helping someone else become prosperous. I’ve seen God work through the 24 elders. When I make a request, He takes it to the elders and the elders make a decision on what I want. They look at how what I want will affect others around me. If I am selfish and it will affect those around me negatively He won’t say anything, which means no. But if it’s going to benefit those around me, then He will give the green light and say go ahead, or the elders will. That’s how the elders think because that’s the way God thinks. We have to go to the cross and die to take on the mind of Christ, that is, what you do needs to help and benefit those that are around you. Verse 9, For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: His ways produce seeds that are like Him. When He has a seed to give upon the earth, He doesn’t give it to those that don’t have His ways or His thoughts. He gives the seed to those that think and do like He does. That is, to help many. This thing that God does is two-fold. For those that plant seed, He has given us the ability to produce seeds. The other thing the word of God does is bring food from those that buy from the sower so they can eat. You have farmers that are seed sowers and city people that buy the seed to eat. God is looking for the farmer to help them reproduce seed. We have to learn to figure out how God increases things. God has His way of increasing and it’s easy for Him. God knows how to increase us and to bring us into a place of walking in the fatness of who He is. That’s part of the fatness of who He is. He can bless something and make it increase and we say, how in the world did He do that? Verse 11, So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: The word of God comes out of His mouth. When David asked the Lord, shall I take this city, and God said yes, then he knew that what God said would happen and he went and did it. …it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. I’m kind of a business man. When I read that, I said God, anything You want done on the earth that nobody wants to do, prepare me to receive that seed so I can do it for You. I love to prosper. I love to walk in the fatness of God. And I’ve said for years, I’m so wealthy, I don’t know how wealthy I am. His word is going to prosper and it’s not going to come back until He finds someone He can put it on that will accomplish what He wants done. And if you don’t do it, He will take it off of you and put it on someone else. His word is going to accomplish what He wants done because He’s God and He can do it. He just needs a vessel to accomplish it, and they will walk in the prosperity of God. Not the prosperity of the earth that takes money. This doesn’t take money; it just takes obedience and wanting Him; wanting to please Him, wanting to let Him be God in your life. I have people that want to know how I can do some of the things I do, that just aren’t “righteous”. Righteousness isn’t walking around arrogant that I’m doing the things God wants done. No, I’m doing the things God said He wants done and He’s given the righteousness, or the power to do that; therefore I walk in righteousness and I don’t have to be self-centered to try to appeal to everybody to make them think I am some righteous, holy pastor. I’m just a child of God, growing into sonship, and I do what He tells me to do and that’s all I need to do. He promised me that He would prosper me if I would do that. If that’s the case then I don’t need to be stingy and hang on to my money in case God forgets me so I’ll have something to live on. My hope in Him is action. That’s righteousness. Non-action is religion. If there is any religion in you, you need to get rid of it because it isn’t going to do you any good. It doesn’t matter what somebody else thinks. But when they see the glory of God on you, they can’t come against it. If they do, they won’t do it the second time. Verse 12, For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: If you prosper in God by receiving His word and letting that word work in you to accomplish the will of God then it’s really not you doing it but it’s the word which has the power to accomplish because what God wants done He can do. …the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. 1 Corinthians 2:5, That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Your faith is faith if it’s action. That is righteous faith. In Isaiah 54:17 it says that by the righteousness of God we condemn wickedness. We can condemn the wicked for what they are doing because it’s the heritage of God’s children. Verse 6, Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to naught: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. Wow. What a promise. I think of that often. We haven’t seen with our eyes or heard with our ears; it hasn’t even entered into our minds what it’s going to be like. It’s entered into my mind what it might be like but I don’t know fully what it’s going to be like. Anything that isn’t common to us is kind of a scary thing because we don’t know what it’s going to be like. But I can trust God that He does the right thing. In what He has created, the beauty and the ability to make and have everything function correctly is beyond our imagination. Verse 10, But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. When I read that I said, God, that’s what I want. I was longing and waiting to have someone teach me the deep things of God, and now I’ve found Him. So I’m going to hang around God and His Son and the Holy Spirit because They can get me there. Verse 11, For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? I was told when I first got started in this that I should stir up the spirit man in me. So I went back to the room where I was staying and I started stirring up my spirit man. The Holy Spirit came to me and said, don’t stir up the spirit man in you. Stir up the Spirit of God in you. …even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. That’s why we speak in tongues. If there is something we don’t know, if we pray in the Spirit, our spirit declares it and brings it forth. If we are obedient to the word of God, that word will come in that gifting of speaking in tongues which is what our soul wants because it’s saved. Then it will come forth even if we don’t know what it is or how it’s going to be. Verse 12, Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Freely given! Like Isaiah said, buy without money. Verse 13, Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. We have no excuse. It’s what you decide to do, not me. I can’t take you there. I can teach you what you need to do to get there, but it’s your choice. Learn to know His ways and His thoughts and to be like Him. With Christ in us we have the hope of glory. God is laboring to bring us into this. It’s huge what God is going to do with this whole thing. Each one of us needs to get it set that we are going through; when He wants us to be changed He can put all the pressure He needs to, to get us there. 
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLarry Troyer |
||