To See - As I Have Seen # 2

To See - As I Have Seen # 2

We live in such a structured age. I remember when the great discipleship movement first started. Folks thought they had found the secret - "We'll get these folks that don't know anything and we'll teach them all we know and the church is going to go ahead like a house on fire." It does not work out that way - that's not the way God chooses to do it.

Every time I go out I notice this: people go to church, the person up front says, "This is true and this is true and this is true" and everyone goes, "Oh, isn't that right. Amen. Isn't that heavy." And then somewhere along the line he says something that isn't true and everybody says, "Oh, yes. Amen." You know there's no discernment. 

And so, David starts out saying, "O God, Thou art my God. All that God is, Thou art to me. I will not look in any other direction." And he's in the desert while he is writing this. "Early will I seek Thee." It's first time wise, but also...with regard to the priorities of life. Before anything else comes .... GOD!

If we're going to live a meaningful Christian life, we have got to come into that. Is God my reality, or is this world my reality? That's why people go to the mission field and get wiped out. That's why culture shock and spiritual culture shock and all of those things wipe people out. That's why people in this country come to the church and in times of trial and temptation and difficulty, they wither and die. They've never come into this -

THE ETERNAL PRIORITY IS GOD.

David goes on to say, "My flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. To see Thy power and Thy glory so as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary." David had an experience with God. Someone said, "by the time we get to the end of life, each of us has our own Bible." There are words which the Lord has given me which He didn't give to him. There are passages which  have become meaningful; there are verses which have been lifted up in my life as sign posts. Dad was telling yesterday - maybe I can repeat this - about his accident when he was in the burning hotel and jumped out of the window, smashed to the ground, broke many, many bones. The doctor came and he covered him up and said he was going to die. Dad pulled down the sheet and told him he wasn't going to die. And the pastor of the church came and was there with his face as white as a sheet, four o'clock in the morning at the end of the bed, Dad said, "You know, God gave me two crutches to walk out of this situation." He said, "God told me two things: 'I shall not die but live' and 'as for God His way is perfect." So, he had two things to take him out of that situation. Well, he hasn't forgotten them yet and I'm sure he never will. You know, there are things that God gives us - these are ours forever!

There are words that Jesus spoke to the disciples that we look back at and say, "isn't that beautiful." But if you have ever heard Him say, being in a place where you really, really need it, "I'll never leave you and never forsake you," that's something you go back to day after day... if grows until finally it takes dominion over all of life. He'll never leave me!

It doesn't matter where I am. It doesn't matter if I've got money or don't have money, if I have health or don't have health. It doesn't matter if the world is falling down. He has promised He'll never leave me. I walk with Him! And this is what it's all about. I walk with Him - my God!

David says, "I want to see Your power and I want to see Your glory," here in the desert just as I've seen it in the sanctuary. Probably one of the greatest curses on the church is that we've relegated all Christian experience to a building. Maybe I've said it before, but there are mission fields today that are worse than they were a generation ago. They're worse than they were two thousand years ago when Jesus came, because just as God works from life to life, faith to faith, glory to glory, so the enemy works. And every sin and every sickness and every pain and every sorrow and every twisted thing and every hurt and every degenerate thing is added to the weight of darkness, to the weight of oppression which covers the nation. And so, we talk about Christianity and we talk about those tribes and those countries which we've got to enter into and possess the world before the Lord comes and, if you excuse my saying, a lot of it is nonsense. When we get right down to the practical, - look at South America. Apart from a few countries, what is the gospel penetration in depth? Can anybody imagine what it is to talk to people that just look at you. Never smile. Never change. You know, all our theories come tumbling down in a hurry.

"In a dry and thirsty land." This is a land where everything, sooner or later, is overtaken and consumed by death. If we go into one of those mission fields, where that kind of a spiritual atmosphere is present, is reigning, we automatically come under the power of that unless there is a greater power of God within us. Now, is it easy to do the work of God or isn't it?

This world, from pole to pole, is a desert place. Even the so-called Christian countries, are desert places anymore. Go over to Europe where the reformation first started. Go to Germany, go to England or even come over to this country. We've kept the form, we've kept the tradition. You know what the last thing to die is? The form, the tradition. Maybe it's kind of like a fungus. It grows more as there's more death within. It doesn't die; it grows on death. And so we've got all the form; we've got all the tradition, but there's not very much essence. There's not very much life. There's not very much vision.

~Paul Ravenhill~

(continued with # 3)