HomeARC ML 0004
"FOR GOD'S SAKE, FOLLOW GOD!"--MO October 22, 1970 NO.4--DFO
(Transcription of a tape from Europe made in October, 1970, when we only had 3 Colonies and 400 disciples! Praise God, we now have hundreds of Colonies and thousands of disciples following God!)
1. IT JUST THRILLS US TO SEE HOW IT'S GOD WHO IS DOING ALL THIS!--No one in particular, no personality cult, no individual who has to be there, but the Lord and by the power of His Holy Spirit! So its thrilling to us how the Lord is working and that God has started this, God is keeping it going, and He is going to conclude it in His time.
2. HE WHO HATH BEGUN A GOOD WORK IN US IS GOING TO PERFECT IT UNTO THE END! For He is the Author and the Finisher of our faith, who hath delivered, who doth deliver, and who will yet deliver! Praise the Lord! Amen. In spite of the problems and questions, the Lord is in it and I know God is working.
3. I WANT TO DEAL WITH SOME OF THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU HAVE ASKED and some of the problems that you have posed. I've been lying here praying about the situation, and I got a very clear answer from the Lord just as we have in every case where we really look up to Him for guidance and leadership. That's what you've got to do!
4. YOU CANNOT LOOK TO YOUR OWN WISDOM, you cannot rest in your own understanding, you must look for the supernatural, miraculous and powerful leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. It's impossible to solve these problems on your own. Lean not to your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths.
5. SO REMEMBER THAT YOU CAN NOT POSSIBLY SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS IN YOUR OWN WISDOM, your own strength, your own mind, your own understanding, your own trying to put two and two together. But you're going to have to ask the Lord by the supernatural, miraculous power of the Holy Spirit, to give you downright, outright, upright revelations, Heaven right, straight from Him, to show you exactly what to do.
6. NOW THIS IS WHAT WE'VE ALWAYS BEEN DEPENDENT UPON: HE'S THE ONE we've always had to look to for leadership in all the former decisions and in the laying of plans and programmers. Some of you know me well enough, you've lived with me long enough, you've watched me in operating long enough to know that I never make a decision on my own if I can possibly help it.
7. I NEVER EVER MAKE A SNAP JUDGEMENT OR USUALLY EVEN A QUICK DECISION. Some people get very impatient with me because they think I'm so slow, because I can't give an immediate answer. This is because they're giving too much credit where credit is not due, and that's to me--that I am the one that ought to know, and I'm the one that is making the decision. But you know me well enough by this time, and you know by our history for years now, that this is not so.
8. MOST OF THE TIME I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. We always have to ask God and look to Him for His direct revelation, or His impression, or His leading, or His burden, or His guidance, with it being confirmed by the mouth of two or three witnesses, or by His Word, or by some fleece, or by some revelation, or by some leading. God has always worked with us that way.
9. WE'VE TRIED NEVER TO DEPEND UPON OUR OWN WISDOM, our own understanding, or what we think is the thing to do, but to look directly to Him and expect His direct revelatory, revolutionary, immediate guidance.
10. WELL, I JUST NOW HAD A LITTLE REVELATION on some of these problems you were discussing: I was just thinking about what I told you about the Early Church in Jerusalem. As we were discussing the problem you were asking, "Well, how in the world are we going to train so many disciples with them coming in at the rate of one a day?" I know you asked that question sincerely and you weren't trying to be funny, and it is a problem to have so many disciples.
11. BUT I WANT TO TELL YOU THIS IS GOD'S WORK, and if this thing be of God, no man can stand against it and it's not dependent on any man, you understand? It is not dependent on any man or even any group of us. If this be of God, no man is going to affect it one way or the other. But if it were of man then the whole thing would come to naught!
12. BUT YOU KNOW GOOD AND WELL THE WAY GOD HAS BEEN BLESSING, the way He has been causing us to grow, the way He has been protecting us now through the years, the way He has miraculously, supernaturally, amazingly provided for us by literally manna from Heaven, you know God is with us, and you know God is in it, and you know God is the One who has done it!
13. DON'T FOR ONE MOMENT GIVE YOURSELF THE CREDIT FOR ONE LITTLE THING YOU'VE DONE, or say, "Look how big we are, look how we're growing!" lest you get like the people of the tower of Babel and God had to come down and strike and confuse and scatter! Because the moment you get the slightest bit proud of your self, or you think you're doing something or accomplishing something, watch out!
14. GOD WILL REALLY SET YOU BACK ON YOUR HEELS AND SHOW YOU WHO'S THE BOSS! GOD is the One who is doing all this, and if we follow Him we can't fail! If we follow the Lord, it's impossible for us to fail, because He is the One who's doing it!
15. ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS FOLLOW JESUS! Amen? Praise the Lord! He cannot fail, He cannot deny Himself. Even though we are faithless, yet He remaineth faithful, He cannot deny Himself, and He cannot break His word, He is going to see it through. God is going to carry us through. He has begun a good work in us, and He's going to complete it to the end. Do you believe that? Amen!
16. DON'T THINK YOU HAVE TO COMPLETE IT. Don't think, "Well, now God started this thing I know, but now we're going to have to finish it. "You'd better get that idea out of your head right now, because we can't finish it!
17. SOMEBODY WAS ASKING ME TODAY, "WELL, NOW, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WHEN WE GET SO BIG like the Early Church did? What are we going to do then?--And what are we going to do when this happens?--And what are we going to do when we have some false doctrine entered in, and maybe years later...blah, blah, blah!" I got almost mad! I said, "Now wait a minute!"
18. "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M GOING TO DO TODAY, MUCH LESS WORRY ABOUT TOMORROW, much less worrying about years from now! That's absolutely ridiculous! I have to look to God right this minute for what I'm going to do today! How can I know what's going to happen tomorrow? Or how in the world am I going to tell what's going to happen next year or a few years from now? We don't even have that many years left!"
19. SOMEBODY SAID, "WELL, WHAT IF WE GET SO BIG AND POWERFUL like the Early Church did, and so popular and all of that?" I said, "Thank God, it took them over 200 years to get that far, and we don't have that many years left!" So, Praise God, I don't think we have time to go that far astray, to get that big, that powerful, that popular, that rich, and that recognised by the System. It was only when they got that big and powerful and popular and with too much plenty that they went astray--Power, popularity and plenty are dangerous! Remember that.
20. POWER, POPULARITY AND PLENTY ARE DANGEROUS, SO WATCH OUT! As long as we're still struggling for every penny and for every need, and as long as we're still weak and utterly dependent on God, and as long as we're still persecuted and unpopular there's hope, because all we've got is God and He's the only One that can possibly see us through.
21. WE HAVE TO UTTERLY DEPEND ON THE LORD as long as we are still persecuted instead of popular, as long as we are still weak instead of powerful, as long as we are still poor instead of too plentiful, we have to utterly depend on the Lord. Then I'm not too worried about us going astray, because we'll look to God for every little decision, we'll not make a single decision on our own, because we don't know what to do.
22. IT'S ONLY WHEN YOU GET BIG AND POWERFUL AND POPULAR AND PLENTIFUL THAT YOU THINK YOU CAN MAKE DECISIONS ON YOUR OWN, and you think you know what to do, and you think you can get along without God.--And that's where you run into a stone wall! That's where you crash! That's where you make your mistakes, and watch out for that.
23. BUT AS LONG AS WE ARE STILL WEAK, AND PITIFUL, GOD IS GOING TO BE WITH US, because we're going to be looking utterly to Him for rescue, utterly to Him for our supplies, totally to Him to protect us, and completely to Him in every decision and everything that we do, every way we go, every plan we make, every problem we have. We're not going to lean to our own understanding, but we're going to, in all our ways, every little thing, acknowledge Him and He will direct our paths.
24. THIS HAS BEEN SO MANIFEST AND SO EVIDENT, because God did so many things I never dreamed of, I never expected! In fact, I was looking for the exact opposite or the contrary, when many times God turned right around and did the unexpected and the absolutely unpredictable, the thing which was completely so far out, so way out, the only way out, that we hadn't even seen it! So the Lord seems seldom to operate according to "natural" expectation.
25. IT TAKES AN IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION FOR GOD TO DO A MIRACLE, and time after time we have gotten in such impossible situations that it had to take a miracle to get us out of it!--Or where we had to get in some place, God had to do a miracle to get us in!
26. SO QUIT TRYING TO FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF and to reason it out and to do it in your own understanding. Get down on your prayer bones and get desperate in prayer before God! Get your leaders together and fast and pray and cry out to God as Moses and his disciples did, and as I'm sure Noah and his family did, and as David and his family did. You can read their prayers and outcries in the Bible as the prophets of God and their little groups of disciples cried out to God.
27. LOOK HOW DANIEL PRAYED! Throughout those mighty revelations of God in that little short book of only twelve chapters, two or three whole chapters are given up solely to prayer and how he cried desperately to God. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know the answer. For God's sake, how in the world could he possibly tell the King his dream, how could he interpret it, when he didn't even know the dream!
28. GOD HAD TO DO THE WHOLE THING! God alone is the One who could do it, for God is the One who wants to get the glory, and God is the only One who can do it. Then He wants you to praise and thank Him and glorify Him because He did it. 'Cause if you could do it, you could pat yourself on the back for it, and say.
29. "WELL, LOOK WHAT WE'VE DONE! LOOK HOW GREAT WE ARE! LOOK HOW WONDERFUL WE'RE DOING!" WATCH OUT when you talk like that: You're headed for trouble! You better keep saying, "Wow, look what God has done! Look what the Lord's doing! Look how great He's working! Look how many disciples He's getting!"
30. GIVE GOD ALL THE CREDIT ALL THE TIME AT EVERY TURN FOR EVERY LITTLE THING, and He will never fail to continue to prosper you and empower you, and protect you, and keep you, and multiply you, and do all things just like He did for the Early Church! What did the Early Church do?
31. WHAT DID JESUS AND HIS TWELVE DISCIPLES DO when they were in a pinch?--They cried out to the Lord and asked for Him to help. Just as they did, all down through history it's always been the same: The Early Church, when they didn't know what to do, they didn't know what to do. How could they know what to do? Only God knows what to do!
32. THEY GOT DOWN IN PRAYER AND DESPERATELY PRAYED and cried out to God and He never failed them. He always gave them a supernatural, miraculous revelation or some answer, or gave them the power for greater witnessing. If He didn't give them an answer for the future, what was going to happen, or what they should do, He just gave them such a mighty anointing of power and boldness from on high by the Holy Spirit that they just didn't care what was going to happen!
33. THEY WENT AHEAD AND OBEYED GOD and did His will anyhow. They just did what He had already revealed they were supposed to do: To get out and witness, and win souls, and preach the gospel in every nation, and make disciples of all nations!
34. WE'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT PREACHING THE GOSPEL IN ALL THE WORLD, and we've been talking about how we're doing it: "We're forsaking all. The church is not doing it, but we're doing it, and we're obeying Jesus. We're going into all the world preaching the gospel to every creature. Look at that bad, naughty church, they're not doing it but we are."
35. WELL NOW, LET'S WAIT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN GOD STARTS PUTTING THE SCREWS ON US right now to really take those verses literally, and not only just in our own country, but now we're going to have to send apostles, disciples and missionaries across vast oceans to foreign lands, where we're strangers in a strange country, speaking a strange tongue.
36. LET'S SEE HOW SMART WE ARE and how bold we are and how big we think we are and how much we're accomplishing! You're going to find out God's going to set us right back on our heels. We're going to be totally helpless and totally weak and unprotected and unprovided for except by God!
37. WE'RE GOING TO FIND OUT IT'S STILL NOTHING BUT GOD! God alone can do it and God alone can show us what to do, how to do it, and protect us in doing it, supply the needs, and lead and guide us every step of the way. So don't try to figure it out for yourself. Get down in prayer, and in desperate prayer and desperation together. Cry out to God and ask God for the solution, and God will never fail.
38. HAS HE EVER FAILED US? HAS HE EVER FAILED TO SHOW US WHAT TO DO? Even if He didn't show us right then what to do, He went ahead and did it Himself. Even if He didn't tell us what He was going to do, He did it. We sometimes didn't find out what He'd done until after He'd done it. So you don't even always have to know what He's going to do.
39. YOU DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TO KNOW ALL THE ANSWERS. Someone recently asked: "Well what shall we say when they ask this? What shall we say when they ask us that?" Well, one of the best answers is, as Dr. Irwin Moon said: "I can answer any question you ask me, only most of my answers are going to be: 'I don't know; I don't know!''' So, why don't you get smart and just say I don't know?
40. ONLY GOD KNOWS! People ask you, "Well what are we going to do now?" Just be honest and say, "I don't know; let's ask God." "Well what are we going to do next?" "I don't know, let's ask the Lord." The quicker you learn that you don't know, the better off you're going to be because only God has the answers!
41. ONLY GOD KNOWS WHAT TO DO, and only God knows what He wants done, and only God can do it. Do you get the point?--Now don't forget it! God has His own plan. God has His own way. God knows what He's doing. So for God's sake let Him do it and just look to Him to find out what He's doing, and what He wants you to do, and which way He's going!
42. ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS FOLLOW GOD. Don't you understand? Don't you get the point? Don't you understand? Amen. Praise the Lord? God is the One who's leading. God is the One who's doing. God is the One who's planning. God is the One whose programme it is. God is the One whose business it is.
43. SO FOR GOD'S SAKE, FOLLOW GOD!--Not yourself, not your own ideas, not your own plans and programmes, but for God's sake follow God! If I was going to entitle this little talk anything I guess that would have to be the title: "For God's Sake, Follow God!"
44. FOR GOD'S SAKE FOLLOW GOD! For God's work's sake, follow God! For your own sake, follow God! For God's people's sake, follow God! For God's plan's sake, follow God! For God's world's sake, follow God! For God's future sake, follow God! Don't try to figure it out yourself.
45. DON'T TRY TO REASON AROUND WITH YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING, but get down in prayer and cry out to God with strong crying and tears and desperation, and look to Him alone for the answers. God alone has the answers and God alone can do it. It's His business, His programme, and His plan. We're His people, its His world, it's His idea, and it's got to be His whole leading, His decision. It's got to be His protection. It's got to be His provision.
46. IT'S GOT TO BE HIS PROGRAMME--HIS PROGRAMME, HIS PROTECTION, HIS PROVISION.--Think of that! His programme, His plan. His protection: He's got to keep us. His provision: He's got to take care of us. And His prevision as well: He's the One that sees the future and sees ahead.
47. HE'S THE ONE WHO HAS GOT TO LEAD, BECAUSE ONLY HE CAN! He's got the programme, He's got the provision, He's got the protection, and He's got the prevision, to see the future and to lead and guide us. So don't try to figure it out on your own. You've got to get together in prayer.
48. DON'T TRY TO FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF. Get down in prayer and get God's answers. It's God's programme, it's God's problem. They're God's problems. Remember that as well as His provision, His programme, His protection, and His prevision; that they're also His problems. So look to God for His solutions.--Amen? It's all His business. Praise God? Well, if you don't get any other point, and I don't say anything else, or if you don't get anything but that, it's worth the whole thing.
49. NOW, I'M SURE YOU'RE ALL GETTING DISCIPLES, and you're going to be getting them more and more, and faster and faster as God multiplies. It's going to be like a snowball.--God showed us that in a vision before we ever left the club in California:
50. WE WERE GOING TO "SNOWBALL", and the faster we grew the faster we were going to grow.--And that God was going to multiply us beyond anything we could possibly imagine! So what are we going to do about it? As you posed the problem:
51. "HOW IN THE WORLD ARE WE GOING TO TAKE CARE OF SO MANY NEW DISCIPLES? We don't have enough leadership. We haven't developed enough new leadership to take care of all these new disciples." I had said, "We shouldn't be having more babies than we're able to take care of."--Well, maybe I should have stretched my faith a little further.
52. WE OUGHT TO ASK GOD TO HELP US grow in spirit, power, anointing and leading of the Holy Ghost so that we will develop our leadership fast enough to take care of them, because God is going to send them in. He is going to multiply, and you know He's doing it. You know this is the Answer. You know this is His Will. You know this is His Word.
53. YOU KNOW IT IS HIS WONDER THAT HE'S DOING, and so you know God is going to do it. We can't stand against it. No man can stand against it. If this thing be of God, no man can stand against it, and if it were not of God it would have come to naught a long time ago.
54. WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO ASK GOD FOR HIS POWER! You say, "What in the world are we going to do with all these new disciples, a whole new disciple every day? We hardly know how to take care of the ones we've already got!" Well I want to ask you a question: What in the world do you think the Early Church did with 3,000 new disciples in one day? You're worrying about getting one a day, three hundred and sixty-five a year. If in the three locations we have now you got only one a day, that would only be a thousand in a year!
55. WHAT DO YOU THINK THE EARLY CHURCH DID WITH 3,000 NEW DISCIPLES IN ONE DAY? They only had twelve disciples, real well--trained disciples, apostles of God, trained personally by Jesus, for a little over three years. They could have said: "For God's sake, what are we going to do with all these new disciples?--3,000 new converts today on account of this tremendous outpouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost and all of us have been speaking in tongues, all 120 of us up here in the upper room, and only 12 of us are really well-trained! We've got these 120 new ones that haven't been with us very long, and now we've got 3,000 more today. What are we going to do with them all? Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo ... Lord help us!" You can just imagine!
56. I PRESUME THEY PROBABLY WERE WONDERING WHAT TO DO. Some of the doubting Thomases, some of those who were practical-minded and had their feet mostly on the earth, not too heavenly-minded, they were probably wondering: "Well, how are we going to take care of them? How are we going to teach them? What are we going to tell them? How are we going to train them? How are we going to feed them?
57. WHERE ARE WE GOING TO PUT THEM?" Well, Peter, dear old impulsive impetuous Peter always opened his mouth and stuck his foot in it, and was always leaping before he looked. Under the power and the anointing of the Holy Ghost he stood up with the eleven, they all stood up together with him apparently, and he let the crowd have it, and he got a tremendous harvest that day of 3,000 souls!--And you just read the next chapter and see what happened.
58. WHAT DID THEY DO WITH THEM? Well read it. Just read even the end of the fourth chapter: "They were all together, and they had great power, and with great power they gave witness, and they shared all things!" Just read it! (Ac.2:41-47; 4:32-37) We are always talking about the second and the fourth chapters and how that's God's financial plan.
59. WELL, LET'S EXPECT HIM TO WORK IT OUT! WE CAN'T WORK IT OUT. It's His plan, He's going to have to do it. He's going to have to provide room for them. He's going to have to provide food for them. He's going to have to provide the leadership for them and the training for them God has got to do it! We can't do it.
60. GOD'S GOT TO DO IT. You're worrying about getting maybe three disciples a day between the three Colonies of you. (In 1970 this was all we had!) Or maybe more, four Colonies. What would you think if we had five Colonies, six Colonies, ten Colonies.--And pretty soon you're going to have Colonies all over Europe and all over the world! (Mind you, Dear Reader: This was predicted in 1970 when we only had three Colonies!)
61. IF GOD IS IN IT AT ALL and He wants His message to get around the world, we're going to be spreading it around the world, and you know it! So what are you going to do? Well, God's just going to have to do it. I guess it's come to that!
62. I GUESS YOU'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO TRUST THE LORD: It's come to that! As the lady asked during the storm, "Oh, Captain, what are we going to do?" He said, "I guess we'll just have to trust the Lord." She said, "Oh my God! Has it come to that?" Well, hallelujah! Maybe it has now come to that!--You're just going to have to trust the Lord! Amen? Hallelujah? Praise the Lord? Yes, by God, it has come to that! You're just going to have to trust the Lord! Praise the Lord? Amen?
63. IT'S WONDERFUL, IT'S THRILLING WHEN YOU REALISE THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT! It's God's business, and it's His problem, so it's got to be His provision and His protection and it has come to that: you have just got to trust the Lord!--Praise the Lord? Well, you think that was a problem, 3,000 on that first day? Look a little further down there and you'll notice that just a couple of days later they healed the lame man at the temple and then they had how many more converts?
64. THE JERUSALEM CHURCH HAD 5,000 MORE NEW BOTTLES IN ONE MORE DAY! YOU GUYS ARE WORRYING ABOUT ONE OR TWO OR THREE A DAY! God help us! For God's sake if that little band of pitiful, bedraggled, motley, longhaired, weirdy-beardy, long-robed, barefooted ignorant fishermen, tax collectors, stupid bungling, blundering, blithering idiots like Peter and the rest of them, could handle 3,000 new ones in one day and 5,000 new ones in another day, what in the world is the matter with us anyhow that we can't have the faith of God to take in another 1 or 2 or 3 a day? What's the matter with us, huh? Well, we're looking at the waves! We're looking at ourselves.
65. WE'RE LOOKING AT CONDITIONS INSTEAD OF GOD.--That's what's the matter. You've got to keep your eyes on God. You've got to look at God. You've got to see God. You've got to see God! Did you hear that? You've got to see God! If there was any other theme of this beside "For God's Sake Follow God," it would have to be:
66. FOR GOD'S SAKE YOU'VE GOT TO SEE GOD! He's the only way you'll ever survive, and the only way you'll ever be able to heave that sigh of relief and say, "Well, thank God I don't have to solve it! Thank God I don't have to know what to do! When the time comes, God will do it."
67. HAVE YOU HAD ANY PROBLEMS WITH THE ONE DEAR LITTLE DISCIPLE YOU TOOK IN TODAY? Was there a great great problem, an insurmountable difficulty in deciding where to put him? Did you really have an awful hard time trusting God for enough food to share to feed him? Was it a terrible, terrible problem to figure out where to put him in the classroom?--To sit with the other students, to hear the classes, huh?
68. DID YOU FIND THAT IT WAS AN INSURMOUNTABLE DIFFICULTY TO TAKE IN THIS NEW DISCIPLE TODAY? Was it almost impossible to decide what to do with him or how to feed him or how to teach him? Come on now, how ridiculous can we get? You say, "Well, this disciple today, of course we've got room for him. We can see where to put him, if we have to sleep him on the floor in the barn or on the roof, or whatever we have to do.
69. YEAH, SURE, EVEN IF EACH ONE OF US GIVES ONE BITE OFF OUR PLATE WE CAN FEED HIM. Sure, sure we know where to stick him today in the classroom. We've got one more chair. He can sit on a table or on the floor, or hang him on the blackboard or something. Yeah, sure, sure, sure, we've got enough teachers to handle one more disciple today.
70. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE? What's going to happen when we've got so many more? What's going to happen when we get another hundred? What's going to happen when we get another thousand? What's going to happen when we need another base? What's going to happen when we get so big?"
71. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE SAID EVEN ONE YEAR AGO? Two years ago what would you have said back in Huntington Beach? "What would we do if God gave us 400 new disciples? What would we do with them? Where would we put them? How will we take care of them?" Well, of course you didn't know then!
72. BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT GOD HAD PLANNED, and exactly what He has in mind, and that was exactly His programme, and now you've got them! Think it over.--Well of course you couldn't have stood or borne the news then. Of course you didn't know what to do then. You're not supposed to know that far in advance! If you can ever get anything through your thick skull:
73. STOP! FOR GOD'S SAKE, STOP WORRYING ABOUT TOMORROW! It's today that you have to have faith for! It's today that God has provided the strength and the provision for and the protection for and the problems for, and today is all you have to worry about! You don't even have to worry about tomorrow, much less next week, or next month or, for God's sake, you certainly don't have to worry about next year! Oh my God!
74. SOME OF YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN WORRYING ABOUT WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN SEVERAL YEARS FROM NOW! Somebody asked me, "But what's going to happen to us years from now when we get as big as the Early Church did?" I said, "Listen, I'm only trying to figure out how to get to the American Express Office today. I'm trying to figure out how to get the mail today.--And how to make this tape today.
75. QUIT BOTHERING ME ABOUT WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO US YEARS FROM NOW! That's not my concern, that's not my worry, that's none of my business! That's God's business!" Why, if you had known, if you had really suspected even a year ago, when we had less than a hundred disciples that you were going to have nearly 500 today, it would have driven you out of your mind! You would have said, "Where are we going to put them? What are we going to do? Jesus, how are we going to feed them? My God, we don't have enough teachers to train them! Lord help us!"
76. SO SILLY, WORRYING ABOUT THAT FAR INTO THE FUTURE! It's so ridiculous even to worry about next month! Don't worry about any court cases that are coming up next month. God will take care of things when the time comes. It's foolish even to worry about next week!
77. YOU JUST PLAN THE BEST YOU CAN, DO THE PREPARATION AS FAR AS GOD HAS SHOWED YOU, and when the day comes God will provide. If He has to raise up a lawyer out of the jury or out of the audience in the courtroom, God will provide! If He has to make the state provide you with a lawyer, or a judge that's sympathetic, God will provide. If He has to get the whole thing thrown out on the very day, God will provide.
78. QUIT WORRYING ABOUT TOMORROW! THAT'S A COMMANDMENT! It's not optional. It's not something that's just good advice--it is an order!" "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Mat.6:34) That is God's warning, God's commandment and God's promise!
79. YOU TAKE CARE OF WHAT YOU HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF TODAY, because He has given you the faith for today. I dare say, there's not a single one of you who hasn't got faith for today. Today is here, and you already know what God is going to do or has done today, and He's already given you the faith for what's going to happen today. Amen? So you're not worried about today.
80. IT'S ALWAYS TOMORROW THAT THE DEVIL TRIES TO MAKE US WORRY ABOUT, so just stop it! Now that's an order: Stop it! Stop it right now! Quit worrying about it! Quit fretting about it! Quit discussing it with others and crying on their shoulders about: "What are we going to do tomorrow?" Praise God! When tomorrow comes, God's going to take care of it! Now let's get busy and pray about what we're supposed to do today!
81. WHAT DID THE EARLY CHURCH DO WHEN THEY GOT ALL THESE NEW DISCIPLES? Well, I'll tell you what they did first: They began to stack them up there in Jerusalem until Jerusalem must have been splitting at the seams! I began thinking and praying about the problem, "Well now Lord, what are we going to do with all these new disciples, when all of our present Colonies are full and they don't have room for all of them?" The Devil tempted me for a minute to worry about it myself.
82. "WHAT WILL WE DO WITH ALL THESE PEOPLE ANYHOW?"--And I got to thinking: What is always the first thing you should think about when you begin to think and pray about God's answer, and you look to the Lord for an answer? What is the first thing the Holy Spirit always reminds you of? He always reminds you to look back to His Word!
83. WHAT DOES HIS WORD SAY? How did they do it in the Bible? What happened in His Word? What happened in the Book of Acts? What happened in the Gospels? How did the Early Church handle the problem? Look for a similar situation in the Word, always look to the Word first. The first thing God did was to say by His Holy Spirit: "Well, I've got it all down in the Book. Think about the Book!"
84. THINK ABOUT SIMILAR SITUATIONS IN THE WORD: "WHAT DID THEY DO THEN?" And, good night, that's when I got the shock! Here we are worrying about two or three new disciples a day, when they were getting them at the rate of three and five thousand a day! So I thought, "Oh Lord! What in the world did they do with them?" Well, then I got another little shock.
85. HE ALSO KIND OF MAKES YOU LOOK BACK INTO YOUR OWN HISTORY. What's happened in our own experience? How did God handle this problem in the past when we ourselves got too big for one location? What happened then? Well, I'm going to shock you. I might even scare you a little bit.
86. WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL GOT TOO BIG FOR EGYPT? Huh? Did they want to leave Egypt? They had the fertile Nile Delta, the Land of Goshen, for all their flocks and their cattle and they were living off the fat of the land. They had the cream of the crop. The early pharaoh who was a friend of Joseph had given them the very best land in all of Egypt, the Nile Delta, the land of Goshen. Why they weren't about to begin to want to leave voluntarily!
87. THEY WEREN'T ABOUT TO BEGIN TO WANT TO EXPAND OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL AND ACCORD! They hadn't the faintest notion to want to start hiking across hundreds of miles of Sinaitic Desert to get to some place that they had never even heard of, and where they had never been and couldn't care less about! Are you beginning to get the point?
88. SO THERE AROSE IN EGYPT A PHARAOH THAT KNEW NOT JOSEPH, a ruler who was no friend of the Israelites, and he began to persecute them and to oppress them and to lay heavy burdens upon them that they could not bear, until they began to cry out to God for help!
89. UNTIL IT GOT SO MUCH THEY COULDN'T STAND IT ANY LONGER and they said, "We don't know where we're going and we don't know how to get there, but we can't stand it here any more! We've got to leave no matter what happens! We've just got to trust God! We'll just have to go out like Abraham, by faith, knowing not whither we go, and expect God to lead us!" Now have we done that in the past? Has that happened in the past to the Children of God in the Bible?--Why it's happened so many times it's pitiful!
90. LOOK BACK AT ALL THE EXAMPLES: The world got so bad in Noah's day there was no place to go, there was no where to look! Everything was so bad and so rotten that the only place to go was straight up! So that's exactly the direction God took him! Amen? He went straight up with the ark! And he got out of that hell of a mess and that hell of a world, and God delivered him from all of his enemies, and God rescued him in a supernatural way! It was in a way that I'm sure they had never planned or never expected by the wildest stretch of their imaginations, because how could they imagine such a thing as a worldwide flood when it had never even rained before?
91. HOW COULD THEY IMAGINE RAIN AND A FLOOD AND A BOAT? Who ever heard of such a thing, a boat? Why there was hardly a body of water big enough around there to sail a toy boat! So why this great big boat nearly three blocks long and seven stories high sitting there high and dry on dry land hundreds of miles from any water? "Why this is ridiculous--and building it on dry ground at that!"
92. IT WAS ALL TOTALLY UNIMAGINABLE, UNEXPECTED AND UNBELIEVABLE! It was so out of reason, so ridiculous, so far out, why, they would have surely thought that Noah had flipped his lid, that he had flipped out for sure! He must have gotten on the wrong kind of drugs, because nothing like that had ever happened before, and so it couldn't possibly happen!--But it did!
93. AND GOD DELIVERED THEM, AND GOD SPARED THEM BY SUPERNATURAL MIRACULOUS MEANS! Oh they had to do their part too!--They had to obey God and do the little dinky part of building that great big boat out of wood with their own bare hands, and they probably even had some helpers. They had to do what they could, but then God did what they couldn't. Yes, God does help those who help themselves, but He also helps those who can't help themselves!
94. HE HELPS YOU IF YOU DO YOUR PART AND OBEY and help yourself as much as you can. Do what you know you can do, and then stop worrying about the rest that you can't do: God will take care of that part. God will do what you can't do. You do what you can, and God will do what you can't.--Is that clear?
95. DO WHAT YOU CAN, AND GOD WILL DO WHAT YOU CAN'T. Now that is the way it's always been. Like when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead: The people couldn't raise him from the dead, but they could roll the stone away from the door. So what did Jesus do? Did He roll away the stone?--No, He said, "Roll ye away the stone," and they did it. That was something they could do, so why not let them? Their obedience in rolling away the stone also was a manifestation of their faith that God was going to do what they couldn't do. Do you get it?
96. YOUR OBEDIENCE IN DOING WHAT GOD TELLS YOU TO DO SHOWS YOUR FAITH that God is going to do the rest, what you can't do. Jesus said. "Roll ye away the stone." Well now, they could have argued with Him saying, "What's the use to roll away the stone, Jesus? He's dead! He's been dead four days! He stinks, he's rotting! There's no use in us pushing and sweating and prying with a crowbar and worrying about getting the stone out of the way, Lord. The future of raising the dead is an impossible situation, so we might as well not even try to roll away the stone. We might as well not even try to do what we can do today because the future is so impossible. Let's just quit. Let's just quit today, and let's not do even what we know we can do. Let's not do even what God's already told us to do. Let's just forget the whole deal, because the future is so impossible! We can't do it, so let's quit!" Is that what they did?--No!
97. THEY MANIFESTED THEIR FAITH BY OBEDIENCE! When Jesus said, "Roll ye away the stone," they said "Wow! He's going to do what we can't do. He is going to raise the dead! We believe it, so let's get that stone out of the way quick! Let's make room for God! Let's hurry up! Let's make a way for the Lord, He's going to start working! Let's do what we can do, let's clear the way!"
98. "LET'S MAKE ROOM FOR NEW DISCIPLES, for He's going to send us more than one a day! Let's start to hurry up and train some leadership and push some people into positions of responsibility right now, today. They can do it! Let's expect God to enable them to do it. We know they can do it today.
99. "LET'S TRUST GOD that they'll be able to do it tomorrow. With these new disciples they'll be able to start a unit on their own. Come on, let's get them to work! Let's get them busy right now! Let's do it today! Let's do what we can do today!--Now!
100. "LET'S DO NOW WHAT WE CAN DO. Let's get out and scrounge around and expect God to supply the needs for today, and not worry about tomorrow. Let's get busy and teach the disciples we have right now to get ready to be leaders tomorrow.
101. "LET'S NOT WORRY ABOUT TOMORROW, BUT LET'S DO WHAT WE CAN DO TODAY, right now, today! Because look what God's going to do tomorrow! Wow! God's going to do mighty miracles tomorrow! He's going to do greater things than we ever imagined! Let's do what we can do today, so God will be able to do what He can do tomorrow!"
102. AMEN? HALLELUJAH? PRAISE THE LORD? Praise God? Well, why don't you say Amen? God bless you, I miss those Amens, Hallelujahs and Praise the Lords. Get happy! Shout! Praise the Lord? Amen? Okay, alright now, get quiet again so you can hear the rest of what the Lord's laid on our hearts.
103. SO WHEN THINGS GOT TOO ROUGH IN THE WORLD, NOAH WONDERED WHAT IN THE WORLD TO DO. They were probably getting a lot of persecution from all that wicked world. I'm sure they were. It must have been difficult to even build the boat and to think they were obeying what God said to do today, but they did it. They did it under pressure and under persecution, but it was also under what? It was under a threat of the judgements of God that were coming. Right? God said, "You'd better get that boat built, buddy?"
104. "YOU'D BETTER GET THAT BOAT BUILT, BUDDY, BECAUSE I AM GOING TO DO SOMETHING and you are going to wish you had!--Because when things begin to swim you'd better be able to float!" And so, under the pressure of the impending judgements of God, Noah got busy and did what he could do and his sons could do and their helpers could do, their families could do, and they built the boat and got ready for God! Get ready for God! Get ready for God! Did you hear that? You get ready for God! Do what you can do today, and get ready for God! Now that's all you need to do. So they got ready for God.
105. THEN LATER WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL GOT SO NUMEROUS THERE in Egypt that the land was not able to hold them? The Egyptians began to get worried about them because they were beginning to out-number the Egyptians, getting so numerous that they posed a threat to the System. "They pose a threat to our society!", the leaders of the world were saying.
106. "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW? We've got to do something with these people. They're growing too fast, they're getting too numerous. They're getting too powerful, they're spreading too much, they're getting too influential. We've got to do something about them! "Why do you suppose God let the worldly leaders, the System leaders, think like that and decide to do something?
107. THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL WERE PERFECTLY HAPPY AND SATISFIED there in the beautiful Nile Delta land, the well watered, fertile, comfortable, lush green land that was profitable and secure and plentiful and protected and provided. They would have just sat right down there in Egypt for the rest of their lives and enjoyed all the comforts of Egypt and all the provisions and the protections of Pharaoh. They would have luxuriated in Goshen for the rest of their days.
108. BUT THAT WOULD NEVER HAVE FULFILLED THE PROMISES OF GOD, because that was not the country that God has promised to Abraham. That was not the land that God had said he was going to give them. That was not their country. That land belonged to the Egyptians.--That land was Egyptian. That country belonged to the pagan people who were going to reap the hell of the judgements of God.
109. SO, WHAT DID GOD DO? They would never have been willing to expand or move or hit the road again, as they had done in the past, unless God had stirred up persecution, pressure, judgement, criticism, all the rest.
110. GOD HAD TO DO IT OR THEY WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WILLING TO MOVE OR EXPAND into a land of their own. They needed a land where they could expand as much as they wanted to and have their government and their own people, their own kings and their own religion and their own freedom to expand and to grow and to be the witness that God wanted them to be.
111. THEY NEVER COULD HAVE DONE THIS IN THE SYSTEM, they never could have done it in Egypt. They never could have done this in the cramped quarters of the little land of Goshen. They thought that was plenty. They thought, "Now, Lord, we've got plenty here now. Just let us stay here. This is great! The Land of Goshen is just nice and comfortable and it's very fertile and has lots of rain and lots of water from the Nile, and our flocks are increasing and our herds are fat and we've got protection of a good Pharaoh.--This is the place!
112. "SO WHY CAN'T WE JUST STAY RIGHT WHERE WE ARE? We're getting along great here, Lord. We're increasing by the process of multiplication: Multiplication is the name of the game!--We're having so many children and we're growing and we're getting along great. So why don't we just stay right here?"--Well, because God had other plans. God had other purposes.
113. GOD IN HIS GREAT PREVISION HAD OTHER PROVISION--Pro-vision! God in His great foresight, had other protection and another place in another land, just as it says in that dear little song "Mountain Children" that Tabitha sings and we play so often. We've got a copy of it with us, and when I get a little low or a little discouraged I want you to know I play that song and it thrills me, because I know it's the very voice of the Holy Spirit!
114. IT'S THE VOICE OF GOD SPEAKING THROUGH YOU. He gave you those words and those words were part of what encouraged us to go and take this leap of faith (to Europe and the Mideast). Because one night when we almost gave up you dropped in and sang that song for us and I thought, "My God! How can I fail these kids, much less fail You Lord! How can I fail them when You've revealed to them what You're going to do? You've revealed to them what You're planning! How can I fail, Lord? I can't fail them, much less You! We've got to go through with it."
115. GOD GAVE THAT SONG! IT WAS PROPHETIC AND IT THRILLED OUR HEARTS! I've listened to it over and over again, and have thought again and again, "Oh God, that is the theme! That boils it all down to one simple little song: What You've told us, what You've showed us, what You're going to do, and what we've got to do. We have got to obey!"
116. WE CAN DO THE "WENTING." As my mother used to quote, "As they went they were healed. "God told them, "Go thou. Go thou and do this! Go thou and do that! Go wash at the Pool of Siloam. Go home and tell your loved ones." And "As they went, God healed," or "as they went, God gave them the power." We have to do the "wenting".
117. WE'VE GOT TO DO THE OBEYING. We've got to do what we know God has told us to do! We have to first of all do the forsaking, the dropping out, the dedicating to God, the utter dedication, the complete 100% commitment to God. We don't have to know what's going to happen tomorrow or what He's going to do in the future or what's going to happen as a result.
118. WE DON'T HAVE TO KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TOMORROW! All we have to know is what God is going to do today. Obey God and do what He has told us now.--Right now! Do it now, you've got to do it now! You can't wait for tomorrow! Today is the day of salvation. You cannot do it tomorrow!
119. OH, I WISH I COULD TELL YOU THE SAD LITTLE STORY OF THE BEAUTIFUL YOUNG FRENCH GIRL LINGUIST! She was a brilliant student of languages, a professional interpreter, a professional translator who knew several European languages fluently and whose profession was to work with some of these great commissions and governments in translating and giving a running interpretation of the proceedings during their counsels and conferences, like you hear at the United Nations on the ear phones. You hear the running interpretation of what is being said, and that was her kind of work.
120. WE MET HER ON THE TRAIN TO PARIS, and God gave us all day long in a seat facing opposite her. God woke me out of a sound sleep and said, "Get up! There's somebody you've got to talk to!" "But Lord, I'm sleepy. Lord, I'm tired. I've been on the train all night, I can't get up."
121. "GET UP, THERE'S SOMEBODY I WANT YOU TO TALK TO! She's in the room right now. You can feel it. You can feel those vibes, you can feel the vibrations. There's somebody here that's important, somebody here that you've got to talk to!" "Okay, Lord! Alright!"
122. SO I SAT UP, AND BEHOLD, TO MY DUMBFOUNDED AMAZEMENT THERE WAS THIS GORGEOUS GAL sitting immediately opposite us who broke into wreaths of beautiful sunny smiles! She smiled right at us, so friendly and so sweet, and said, "Hello!" whatever else she said I don't remember, but it was in French. However, we finally discovered she could speak English.
123. SO WE BEGAN TO TALK TO HER about this and that and finally about the Lord, and she was so ready! She was not just ripe fruit, but over-ripe fruit! We hadn't even picked it off the tree--it just fell in our laps!
124. SHE JUST FELL RIGHT IN OUR LAPS, SHE WAS SO RIPE AND READY, and so hungry and in tears. She had been looking, searching, longing, and this was it! This was what she'd been waiting for! Finally when we stood up to go as the train arrived in Paris she said some very significant things: She said, "But what do I do now?"
125. BOOM, THE HOLY GHOST HIT ME AND I SUDDENLY SAID, "COME, FOLLOW ME!--And I will make you fishers of men!" I was so shocked at what God had put in my mouth, I thought, "Lord, what do you mean?--She's supposed to follow us now? She's supposed to go with us now, Lord? How do we do that?" But she got the point immediately and said:
126. "OH, YOU MEAN I'M SUPPOSED TO FOLLOW YOU RIGHT NOW?--Go with you?" Well, I kind of hemmed and hawed around, as I hardly knew what to say! So she said, "Well, you know, now I'm your baby. I'm your responsibility, and you've got to take care of me!" Imagine! This little lamb, this new born baby, had more sense than I had!
127. SHE UNDERSTOOD THE LORD'S CALL BETTER THAN I DID! But I was unwilling at that moment to say, "Yes, we'll take the responsibility right now. Take us home with you. Take us to your apartment. Let's go right now!--And we'll take care of you."
128. MAY GOD FORGIVE ME FOR FAILING GOD!--Because that was the inspiration I had--to go home with her right then, because she needed us and we also needed a place to stay. But instead of that, when she asked, "Well, what are we going to do now?" I said, "Well, I don't know. We're just going to look to God for the answer."
129. I'M ASHAMED TO CONFESS THAT GOD HAD ALREADY IN MY HEART GIVEN ME THE ANSWER, BUT I WASN'T WILLING TO OBEY HIM! The answer was to ask her to take us home with her, just like Jesus and the apostles did. He didn't hesitate to ask them to take Him home. When that little guy was up a tree, He just said, "Zaccheus, I want to go home to dinner with you. Take me home!" Zaccheus could have given all kinds of excuses, but he took Him home!
130. DON'T HESITATE TO HAVE FAITH TO OBEY GOD and say to people, "Take me home to dinner!--God wants to talk to you some more." "Take me home for the night's lodging. I need a place to stay, and God wants to stay with you for the night to bless your home!" That's what we should have done. It's just as clear as anything now that that's what we should have done.
131. BUT INSTEAD OF THAT, WE WERE EMBARRASSED BECAUSE OF OUR DAMNED PRIDE! You know: "Here she is, Lord, a beautiful young girl, and she'll surely think we have other designs and reasons if we ask to go home with her! She'll think we're imposing and it's kind of nervy!" When really, there she stood a helpless little baby saying, "What do I do now? You've got to take care of me! I'm your responsibility!"
132. WHAT WE SHOULD HAVE SAID WAS, "FIRST, YOU'VE GOT TO TAKE CARE OF US! Take us home, feed us, and then we will take care of you!" Instead of that we said, "Well, we don't know. We'll have to ask the Lord. We'll see." I had a definite feeling God wanted us to stay there in Paris for her sake and ours, but we didn't go about it right.
133. GOD HAS HIS TIMES! LET ME TELL YOU, FOLKS: YOU'D BETTER OBEY GOD IN THAT SPLIT SECOND OF THAT GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY! If you miss God's timetable, you're going to not only miss the train but you'll also miss the boat, and you'll get left behind and things will never be the same again!
134. AND THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS WITH DEAR LITTLE ANAIK! Her name was Anaik (Ah'-nah-eek), meaning a little tiny Anna.--She was so little, so tiny! She was the cutest little thing you ever saw, like a tiny little fairy, so sweet and so receptive, so responsive, so tender! She, I guess, was in her late twenties, and God had already been working on her. She admitted that when she was 16 years of age she'd had the call of God to serve Him, but she had gone back on the Lord, and even her father had said that she was his little black sheep, for she had gone astray.
135. SHE HAD REALLY KNOWN GOD and talked to God and God had talked to her, and she'd really received the Lord, but she had gone astray from the Lord. And there the Lord put us right across from her on the train.--There was God's golden timing! She was ready! She was ripe fruit falling into our laps, but we were not willing to receive her at that moment.
136. OUR DAMNABLE HELLISH PRIDE GOT IN THE WAY.--We thought, "Oh my God, what would she think if we said, "Take us home with you. We don't have any place to stay." We didn't confess that we didn't have a hotel room booked or already reserved. We didn't confess we had no place to stay. We were too damned proud to confess it!
137. MAY GOD FORGIVE US FOR FAILING THE LORD! I believe if we had gone home with Anaik that night, stayed with her, worked with her heart, and protected her from her family, we probably would have suffered persecution, but I believe our "Little Anna" would have gone on with the Lord.--But we missed the boat. We failed God. We didn't obey.
138. WHEN GOD SAYS, "NOW! RIGHT NOW!" LET ME TELL YOU, YOU HAD BETTER DO IT NOW, or you are going to miss the boat and suffer for it! I believe God's got His hand on her life and she's going to come sooner or later, but it's going to be a lot harder. It's going to be a lot harder on her, and it's already been a lot harder on us, because we have already been in countries where we were desperate for an interpreter. We needed somebody to talk, we needed somebody even to get information about trains and a lot of things, but we couldn't speak a word of the language and they couldn't speak a word of ours, and we were up a tree!--All because we had failed God and we didn't have Anaik.
139. BECAUSE WE FAILED GOD, ANAIK FAILED GOD! After going home and talking to her family and her brother and everybody else, they said she was crazy! So the day she was supposed to leave with us on the train, instead we got a little note in which she said, "I'm sorry, it's impossible. Don't try to follow me any more." We quickly phoned her apartment but her brother told us she had already taken the plane! He was real sweet and talked to us for some time and said he was puzzled but it all. He said that at first she'd decided to go with us, then all of a sudden she changed her mind and decided to take the plane back to her job. (She makes big money translating and interpreting, and she was due for this big council in Geneva.)
140. I TRIED TO BLAME IT ON ANAIK, BUT DOWN DEEP IN MY HEART I KNEW WHAT GOD WANTED US TO DO when we stood up to get off the train together and she asked, "What are you going to do now? What am I supposed to do now?" I knew what we were supposed to do, but I was too proud to say it. I was ashamed, I was embarrassed!
141. I WAS AFRAID OF WHAT SHE WOULD THINK! You know, men are always trying to pick up these pretty French girls in Paris and trying to go home to their apartments with them. The Devil was telling me all these lies: "Oh, don't say that! Don't say that! Get a hotel room first, and then do it the nice way, do it the System way. Approach her on the phone and have a visit, have dinner together and ... blah, blah, blah! Take it easy, don't push it! Don't rush it!"
142. WHAT IF THEY HAD SAID TO JESUS, "WELL NOW, JESUS, WE'RE NOT QUITE READY FOR LAZARUS' RESURRECTION! We haven't got his room ready yet, and we've got to get his clothes back from the people we gave them to, Lord. Wait 'till tomorrow and we'll roll away the stone. You come back tomorrow, Lord, and raise him from the dead." Jesus would probably have been far gone from there by that time, and it would have been too late!
143. GOD HELP US TO OBEY INSTANTLY WHEN GOD LAYS SOMETHING ON OUR HEART.--DO IT NOW! RIGHT NOW! We had another almost identical experience happen, almost the same thing. I hate to tell you all the mistakes that I make, but may you profit by them so that you may not make the same mistakes! There was this other very beautiful Austrian girl, Maria Lousia.--Now I'll bet you're saying, "Dad seems to specialise in women!--Ha!"--Well, maybe so! Maybe that's my burden. Maybe that's my talent! I don't know.
144. MAYBE GOD'S JUST USING THE TALENT HE GAVE ME YEARS AGO: I WAS QUITE A DON JUAN with the women! I had one in every port as a young professional singer, and simply swept them off their feet and loved them all! I'm just naturally extremely affectionate. I can't help but love, admire and appreciate the beauties of God's creation! Maybe, you say, that's a part of my problem. Well, maybe it is. But anyhow He uses me with it, and He uses me on them.
145. SOME OF YOU GALS MUST CONFESS THAT IT WAS MY LOVE or the love of God in me, and His affection and fatherly love through me, and His concern over you by me that helped to woo and win you into the Revolution! I helped you to know that you were loved and cared for and somebody was concerned about you. So whatever you want to call it, I don't care. You can call me any damn name you want to call me. I still couldn't be as bad as you could possibly imagine me!--I'm probably worse! So that's not the point. I'm nothing. God's the One that does everything. All I know is that it just so happens that maybe that's my God given burden: Maybe women are my special field!
146. ANYHOW, THERE WAS THIS GORGEOUS GAL, AN AUSTRIAN DIPLOMAT'S DAUGHTER FROM VIENNA, and she also was a linguist and spoke fluent German, French and several other languages. We met her on a train coming from Vienna and wending its way through the Tyrolean Alps of Switzerland toward Paris--again on our way to Paris, believe it or not! She, just like Anaik, was ripe fruit. She was so hungry, responsive and receptive that she too fell into our laps! Her father was a diplomat for the Austrian government and she was on some secret mission to Basel for him.
147. WE TALKED FOR HOURS AND SHE HUNG ON EVERY WORD! But when we got up to get off the train, as it was our stop where we were supposed to get off and catch another train, she looked at us with tears in her eyes: "What am I going to do?" And I said, "Well, you just pray now and read your Bible."
148. BUT GOD HAD SPOKEN IN MY HEART AND SAID, "STAY ON THIS TRAIN AND GO ON WITH HER TO BASEL!--Take care of this little lamb! Take care of this little sheep, this new born babe!"
149. "BUT LORD! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? WE'RE NOT GOING TO BASEL!--That's not the place we planned to go, and our pass is only going to last so long. We've got to cover so much territory. We've got to follow our itinerary. We've got to follow our plans, Lord. We haven't got time to follow Your plans!
150. "WE HAVEN'T GOT TIME TO GO YOUR WAY, GOD! We've got to go our way because of these certain practical conditions and circumstances, Lord. We've got to do our own thing in our own way and have it our way, Lord, because we don't understand Your way. We don't understand the way You're going.--We can't comprehend. We can't see any future in what You're going to do, Lord!
151. "SO HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU EXPECT US TO DO A CRAZY THING LIKE THAT?--Just stay on this train and go some place we didn't expect to go, that we hadn't planned to go, when our pass is running out and our time's getting short, and we're not going to cover the territory we planned to cover!" Well, I want to tell you, the week that followed we didn't accomplish much because God had had other plans for us!
152. WHEN WE FOLLOWED OUR OWN PLANS INSTEAD OF GOD'S PLANS, EVERYTHING WENT ASTRAY! We just made a mess! Nothing went the way it should have and we really didn't accomplish anything for the Lord.--Not much at least. He'll still use you, and He'll still use you for a little witnessing, and He'll still use you somehow, but it won't be His highest and His best! It won't be the main thing He had planned for you.
153. IT WAS PITIFUL! THAT POOR LITTLE GIRL! SHE GOT OFF THE TRAIN LIKE A LITTLE LOST SHEEP, and my heart was broken! I wept about it afterwards, "Lord God, how could I fail so miserably?" Because I now know that God wanted us to go on to Basel with her and finish the job. God would have no doubt provided her for our interpreter!
154. HOW COULD WE FAIL THE LORD SO OFTEN? How could we fail? How could we not obey? I'm just confessing to you folks how I have failed God on occasions when I didn't strike while the iron was hot, when I didn't obey at that instant, that split second, that golden moment of opportunity!--And think of the loss that we suffered as a result, and the loss that others have suffered as a result!
155. HERE WERE TWO INTERPRETERS THAT GOD WAS GIVING, just dropping into our laps for the work over here in Europe! But in the one case we thought our own plans were more important, while in the other case, our damned stupid pride was more important: We were afraid of what she would think!
156. OH, MAY GOD FORGIVE US! Well, I know that both of those girls were wonderfully saved. I believe that God is working in both their lives. I know the Lord's going to see them through, and I believe God may even bring them both back, even to us, not only to Himself, but maybe to work with us in our work.
157. I HOPE WHEN THEY GET DESPERATE ENOUGH THEY WILL COME BACK TO US, when they want to seek God's Will and they want to follow the Lord and serve the Lord, when they are willing to forsake all and follow Him. I believe we'll see them yet. (God just spoke to me and said: "You shall see them again!"--But I don't know when!) But look at the time lost! Look at the agony suffered that didn't have to be suffered! Look at the work that could have been accomplished in the meantime!
158. WHEN YOU MISS GOD'S TIMETABLE YOU HAVE TO WAIT for the next train, and it's a long, hard wait sometimes! When you miss God's schedule, you've got to wait for the next boat, and let me tell you, things can get tough and rough! So may God forgive us for failing Him! The point I am trying to make here is:
159. DO TODAY WHAT GOD TELLS YOU TO DO TODAY! DO IT NOW!--DON'T WAIT FOR TOMORROW! Do it now! Do it now! Do it now! What is it Jerry Rubin says? Sometimes even the world's got better sense than we have! He says, "Do it! Do it! Do it"--the title of his book. In other words, "Do it! Now's the time! Don't wait for tomorrow! Do it now!" May God forgive us for not having enough sense to obey and follow God, when we know who we're following and obeying.
160. LET'S OBEY GOD AND FOLLOW GOD! DO IT NOW! Obey God now! Let me finish by telling you what the Lord showed me this morning: Did the Children of Israel voluntarily decide to leave Egypt? Did they voluntarily decide: "Well now, let's see. Let's start a new Colony up in Israel. Then let's start a new Colony over in Asia Minor. Let's do this, and let's put a few of our folks off there in Sinai to hear from God."--Did they do that voluntarily and willingly? No, I'm sorry to say, God had to put the pressure on, the screws on.--He had to almost force them out!
161. WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE EARLY CHURCH GOT TOO BIG FOR JERUSALEM?--3,000 one day 5,000 another day, and God only knows how many thousands later! Tens of thousands of Christians living both in the temple compound and all over the city, scattered out in people's homes and everywhere, and just getting so big that the Jerusalem Church was splitting at the seams, too big for its britches and too big for the city, and what happened? Did they voluntarily decide to send missionaries to Antioch?--And to India with Thomas?--And down to Ethiopia with Philip?--And up to Asia with Paul?
162. DID THEY VOLUNTARILY DECIDE ON THE MISSIONARY PROGRAMME? I'M SORRY TO SAY, NO! I regret to say that apparently they were as disobedient as I have been on occasion. They were there enjoying themselves together. It was just so nice, it was so wonderful: "We've got so many people now, and God is with us, and how wonderful it is!"--And so on and so on! They didn't decide to leave voluntarily.
163. GOD HAD TO FORCE THEM TO IT. God had actually, literally put the pressure and the screws on. God's Word says He drew out a sword after them and scattered them throughout all Asia and throughout the whole of Asia Minor by persecution! Then while already in Antioch they established a new base and started evangelising Asia Minor and the rest of the world! It was then that they began to obey the Lord and go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature!
164. THEN THEY BEGAN TO GO AND MAKE DISCIPLES OF ALL NATIONS. They wouldn't do it voluntarily and of their own free will and accord. They kept putting it off and postponing the decision to open another unit, postponing the decision to expand. "Well we can't afford it! How can we afford to send them there, when the fare is so much?"
165. HOW CAN WE AFFORD TO SEND SOMEBODY TO EUROPE to look over the situation? How can we afford to open a new Colony in Cincinnati when we can hardly afford to pay for what we've got? How can we afford to send new teams to Europe, to open up Colonies there when we're just barely getting by over here?"
166. WELL I'LL TELL YOU HOW YOU CAN AFFORD IT! I WANT TO GIVE YOU A LITTLE BIT OF OUR OWN HISTORY: When we were in Huntington Beach I just loved Huntington Beach. It's got the most delightful climate, and I loved it as my mother's little town, and I loved her little cottage with all her little things. I was comfortable there and things were nice there. We had a little club there and everything was just fine.
167. "LORD, WHY COULDN'T WE JUST STAY THERE? Lord, why can't we just stay here? Now, we're getting too many people, Lord." Mom kept saying, "We've got to have another house to put these girls in and make more room for the boys. We've got to have this ranch. We've got to have the house in front." I kept saying, "Well Mom, we can't afford it. We can't afford to expand. We'll just have to keep it down and keep things a little under control here."
168. GOD HAD TO FORCE US TO DO IT!--Remember? God had to make things so hot for us there: He had to double our rents. He had to bring out the persecution from the System and make it so hot that we had to go!
169. LET'S FACE IT: WE KNEW GOD WANTED US TO GO! We knew God wanted us to go on that national tour. We knew that God had showed us that. We knew that that was obedience to God. God showed it to me, that was the vision, we knew that's what God wanted. ... But the thing that finally tipped the scale in the balance and the thing that finally got us out of there was the pressure God put on us!
170. GOD HAD TO PUT THE PRESSURE ON TO GET US TO GO! Let's face it! The entire trip all that last year God had to keep putting the pressure on us to make us move along. "Move along to another town! Move along to another town! You can't camp here any longer! Move along!"
171. GOD HAD TO PUT THE SCREWS ON!--The thing that finally tipped the scale in the balance and made us do God's will! It's a sad thing to say, but it was only when God put the pressure on that we moved on and obeyed Him! And God had to put the pressure on to make me leave the country and go abroad, so you could follow. God usually had to put the pressure on to make our teams go anywhere!
172. HE'S HAD TO PRESSURE US TO SCATTER US AROUND THE GLOBE! God is having to put the pressure on. He's going to put the pressure on, I don't doubt, to make us send some of our kids to Europe! Probably they'll have to get out of the country or something. (And He did!) God is going to put the pressure on if we don't do it voluntarily. If we don't do it just in obedience and willingness to follow God, God is going to put the screws on and the pressure on somehow so that we're going to have to do His will! So you'd better get ready!
173. FOR GOD'S SAKE, FOLLOW GOD NOW! For if you won't follow God obediently and willingly and promptly, He'll have to put the pressure on you to get you to follow Him!--Don't wait till then, as that can sometimes hurt! How much better to follow Him here and now before it's too late! "Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus!--FOLLOW GOD NOW!--Tomorrow may be too late!--Send for more of the Letters listed on faith, service, prayer, healing and the healthful, helpful happy life of a Child of God! Write or visit us now and find out how to be so happy in Jesus and the fruitful fellowship of His Children! God bless and keep you and make you a blessing to many. You can help others by distributing these Letters to your family, friends and acquaintances.
WRITE FOR MORE NOW!--DO IT NOW!--TOMORROW MAY BE TOO LATE!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family}
