THE TIME OF OPPORTUNITY

THE TIME OF OPPORTUNITY

                I was happy being a dish washer in the house of the Lord. After all, we had a stream of people young and old coming by the kitchen for prayers and hugs and questions about Bible prophecy. We were in love with the people and we knew we were there by divine appointment. Life was good.

                So when the Lord spoke to me out in the garden and told me that my final assignment was to be a father and grandfather to my children and grandchildren, it was a wonderful thought but a terrifying one as well. It involved a 2600 mile move filled with unknowns. I had decided not to share this revelation with Bonnie, because she was so happy and was so involved in making quilts for holocaust survivors and more or less managing the kitchen and she had the dearest of friends, as did I at the Rehoboth Messianic congregation. Why would God want to move us?

                But as I have told you before, Bonnie woke the next morning and came straight to where I was reading and pondering and praying and said, “I think we are supposed to move to Tennessee. She had had a dream that confirmed what the Lord had told me and in fact He confirmed it in many ways over the ensuing weeks. So we started in on the monumental job of moving to Tennessee.

                To make the story short, here in Tennessee a number of my agonizing prayers to God are being answered. Things that I have prayed for over the years are now coming to pass. The music that the Lord has given me to set on a shelf is now being recorded. Every Saturday morning early, my son and grandson meet at bike trail along the Clinch River to do a brisk 4 ½ mile walk and to talk about the deeper things of God.

                Here in Tennessee the Lord has directed us in ways that we totally did not expect. We presumed that we would find another Messianic congregation here in Tennessee and indeed we visited two of them, but both of us sensed that it was not what the Lord was calling us to. So in our daily drives around the country in getting acquainted with our new land of opportunity, I kept being drawn to this church on the hill. It was called the “Clinton Church of God.”

                Finally, just out of curiosity we drove up the hill to the church. It was a Saturday and we just drove up to seen what their hours of service might be. But when we got there were many people in the church singing in worshipping God. AS it turns out they had just finished their monthly bridge ministry where they hand out 288 bags of food and much more to the needy community. So when I went up to the door, it swung open and I’m pretty sure it was James who invited me in and told me to wait for a second.

                James quickly made his way up to the very front of the church where Pastor Akers was worshipping with the singers and soon Pastor Akers came all the way back to the foyer to meet me.

                 As we shook hands for the fourth or fifth time I knew one thing. The love of Christ was in this man’s eyes. I told him our story since we had newly arrived in town and he invited me with the warmest of welcomes to come and visit them on Sunday. As Bonnie and I left the church (Bonnie had stayed in the car) I told her my experience with the Pastor and we prayed about it over the next few days. It was a completely unexpected turn of events and yet it had all of the ear markings of a divine appointment.

                Bonnie and I had discussed and prayed to the Lord about how we wanted to be plugged into a place of His divine appointment and I had told the Lord that we are getting too old to follow dead end rabbit trails. We wanted to get pugged in by God to do the things He wanted us to do. (As a side note here, there is nothing quite like living every day by divine appointment. Once you begin to walk in it and to hear God’s voice and to be guided by the Holy Spirit you would never choose to live any other way.

                So within two weeks, I was playing bass on the worship team because they had lost their bass player and Bonnie was on the kitchen team (which she loves) because the head lady had bad knees and had been praying for her replacement. We became involved immediately in the food outreach to the poor. Pastor Akers invited me to teach a Wednesday night class on the Feast Days, the Moedim of the Lord and we have now completed seven of those classes.

                Now I am being asked to conduct a Sunday school class where I will be able to teach the things God lays on my heart. Meanwhile a became acquainted with Abishai, our Zambian keyboard player who has a recording studio and produces many of his own songs to share on You Tube as well as to send them back to witness to his people in Zambia. He is a real prayer warrior and so our recording sessions are full of the presence of God and we just laid down the tracks and vocals on the fourth of 10 songs that make up my worship CD called “Into the Holy of Holies.”

                For much of my life I had found it hard to give myself fully to the Lord. Even when we are born again and set free, we can entertain thoughts of limitation and doubt. I was more than glad to wash dishes for the Lord and to help with the quilts and such, but the deeper desires of my heart were left unfulfilled and I had resigned myself to being a willing servant in the house of the Lord.

                Sometimes we find it hard to dare that God might be interested in the desires of our hearts. We pray and we cry out to Him and yet in truth, we lack the faith to step out and to do what one is called to do. But this wild and unexpected move has landed us right in the middle of God’s divine appointment for us. We are now doing everything that our hearts knew was our calling.

                Pastor Akers and His wife both told us that God had sent us to fulfill the exact things that they had been praying for and so there is nothing quite like the experience of being right where God wants you to be and doing what He has called you to do.

                However, my work in the kitchen at Rehoboth was not wasted time. We are in training my friends, and when God knows He has our ear, then He can begin to move us into divinely appointed times. But He needs servants who are willing to serve… and when we have learned to serve with joy and gladness, then He will move us into the place of answered prayer.

                AS I look through the Scriptures it become glaringly obvious that the movers and shakers in the Bible all had to go through the paces in order to be prepared to fulfill their calling. For Joseph it was prison first. For Moses it was 40 years herding sheep. For David it was many years of running from an irate and unbalanced king. For Esther, it meant risking life and limb. For Paul it was being blinded by the searing light of God. For Elijah it took a life time of obscurity and training for his own show down on Mt. Carmel. For Daniel it was exile to Babylon. For Peter it was his bitter denial of Jesus and the love and forgiveness Jesus showed him after His resurrection. For most of the disciples it meant being scattered first in order to be regathered to receive the Holy Spirit.

                For every one of us there comes that time of divine opportunity. The Lord calls us in unexpected ways, but we are rigid and set in our ways to the point where we reject God’s call because it leads us outside of the lines of our understanding.  “We have the truth and by George we will not budge. We have no vision of the Body of Christ… for as Paul says: “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. “ Romans 8:14

                Jesus says that we must be born again and that new birth means that a new spirit has been placed in us… quickened and made alive by God’s presence… to go where the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire lead us. WE think that our intellectual convictions are enough. Just like the children of Israel final had it all written in stone. They knew God’s will now and there was no further need.

                But in truth, they had to leave Sinai in order to reach the Promised Land. Crossing that river meant that they would have to rely upon the divine power and direction of God if they were to win the battles that lay ahead.  It was not enough to just keep the Law. God wasn’t satisfied with slaves that said “Yes Sir.” He wanted Sons and Daughters that shared His heart and His Holy Spirit. He never intended to do away with the Law, but neither did He intend for them to remain in the flesh and to serve two tables of stone. He wanted a living relationship with them. He wanted not only to be WITH them but IN them.

                And so He sent Jesus to demonstrate how His will could be fulfilled as Jesus walked in the Spirit rather than in the flesh. So Jesus became the Tree of Life to all who would eat of its fruit. His body is true food and His blood is true drink… and when we partake of it daily, then we receive His spiritual DNA and we enter into rest from our own works as God did from His. This is the rest wherewith He has called the weary to rest.

                Hebrews tells us that in spite of their Sabbath keeping for generations, they had never entered the “REST” to which the day had pointed. Paul then concludes by saying: “Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. We have the word that is sharper than any two edged sword. We have a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek and He is not from the tribe of Levi, nor is His High Priesthood after the order of the Levitical priests, for He was the true Lamb of God to which all of the Law and Prophets pointed. We can only find our rest in Him.

                This is not to speak against the seventh day Sabbath, but to introduce us to the greater realm of rest that is in Christ Jesus. For when we die to the flesh and to the world and self, we also die to the Law. It was our tutor to lead us to Christ and now that we have come to Him we no longer need a tutor.

                It is at the borders of the Promised Land, on the banks of the Jordon River where we cross over, thus dying to life in the desert and being born again into the realm of the Holy Spirit and a Law written on our hearts rather than on stone.

                Bonnie and I observe the Sabbath in our own home, by doing exactly what God said to do on the Sabbath… to rest and to not do any work. But as Jesus showed us, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, handing out food to the poor and enjoying fellowship with our sons and daughters.

                We need a bigger vision of the Body of Christ, because in the midst of so much compromise where churches left and right are abandoning the fundamentals of the Gospel, God is raising up a people across all lines that serve Him with all of their hearts who would rather die than to knowingly sin against Him. These are the kind of people that Jesus is calling to be His Bride and as such, the Pharisees did not make the cut. After all, they were using their doctrine to put Jesus to death. But among those that dropped everything and began to follow Him, He poured out His Spirit upon them as promised, and they became the living sons and daughters of God… filled with His Spirit and thus fulfilling His Word.

                Whatever our persuasions may be, we must by all means come to the foot of the cross and, like Paul, leave it all behind, in order to follow after Jesus.

                “For whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that I count all things to be loss ibn view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Phil. 3: 7-11

                Don’t miss you time of opportunity to live by divine appointment for we are all called to walk in this way.

P.S. This is not about Sabbath verses Sunday, but about living by the Spirit rather than by the flesh. And regardless of the day, we all must be born again and living by His Spirit and putting away the deeds of the flesh.