I heard the Lord speak this little statement to me: ‘We want out – He wants in.’
We want out of our stuff, He wants in our stuff. We want out of our problems and He wants in our problems. We want out of our tribulation, He wants in our tribulation… and I have graciously yielded. I am renewing my mind to that truth by a continual invitation, by me every moment of my day, saying, ‘Come on in, come on in.’
Whenever God initiates a new direction, or begins to start something of sovereignty, it is as much on us just to yield by the renewing of our mind (so we don’t stay conformed to the old) as it is to build a hunger, a fire, a thirst, a willingness, a yieldedness and pursuit. That’s all we have to do. The rest is pretty much all God.
So let me talk about this idea of captivity or the idea of God coming in. Let’s start in Psalm 16.
Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.
O my soul, you have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, My goodness is nothing apart from You.”
As for the saints who are on the earth, “They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”
Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, Nor take up their names on my lips.
O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot.
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Yes, I have a good inheritance.
I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel; My heart also instructs me in the night seasons.
I have set the Lord always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope.
For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
That is so good! This is prophetic, this is Messianic, and this is David discovering God – all at the same time.
I want you to see a good point in verse 9. Because he understood that his inheritance was from the Lord, maintained by the Lord, kept by the Lord, and was a good inheritance, and that his goodness was all from God, he said, “My heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope”.
There’s such power when you learn to cause your flesh to rest in hope. ”You will not leave my soul in sheol – hell. That’s a nice thought. I’m not talking about the literal hell that separates those who are saved from the unsaved, or the damned from those who are blessed. I’m talking about living hell on earth, that so many will find themselves, by God’s direction, to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. He’ll not leave you. It’s through—not in—not to stay forever. It’s through. He will not leave me. Therefore, He will shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy. This is the overcomer’s posture of his heart.
What I’m going to share with you now is the Psalm of remorse, a Psalm of sorrow, a Psalm of refusal. Twenty years ago, the Lord ministered this Psalm to me – not in its historical value – but in its temporal choice that we have to make when we find ourselves in captivity.
Let’s read it together:
By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down, yea, we wept When we remembered Zion.
We hung our harps Upon the willows in the midst of it.
For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, And those who plundered us requested mirth, Saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the Lord’s song In a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, Let my right hand forget its skill!
If I do not remember you, Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth—If I do not exalt Jerusalem Above my chief joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the sons of Edom The day of Jerusalem, Who said, “Raze it, raze it, To its very foundation!”
O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, Happy the one who repays you as you have served us!
Happy the one who takes and dashesYour little ones against the rock!
Now again, separating myself from a national tragedy and the destruction of Jerusalem and the captive of exile. Separating myself from that, taking it to apply to my journey, my place of encouragement.
Twenty years ago, the Lord began to say, ‘When captivity begins to take hold of a soul, and their identity has been locked in a place where they once were and now they’ve been taken captive to another place, sorrow, grief, depression, anger, bitterness will shut the song of Zion down. And, if you choose to “hang your harp on the willow” because you feel that what has occurred to you is unjust, and it is so long that now your captors want to hear the song of Zion that you will literally be swept into this pretty negative thinking.
I have to say, it is pretty negative to be telling the people who take your babies and throw them on rocks, that they are blessed. Now, I’ve had 20 years of experience and I’ve learned that when you’re in captivity, the grief, the sorrow, the loss, the confusion, the injustice, the wrongness, the “How could this be?” (and this idea that you’re supposed to just get on and sing a happy song again) is something your soul will have to process. It’s not something you can just say, ‘Wow, why shouldn’t I just sing the song of Zion?’
After all really, why wouldn’t you praise the King of Kings wherever you are? Why should you shut down your praise just because you’re in a prison? Why should you not extol Him in the midst of captivity? Why not tell Babylon of the greatness of Jehovah? They need to know the Jehovah that is the covenant keeping God. Why wouldn’t we allow the sound of thanksgiving and praise and joy to erupt in the midst of captivity?
The reason simply is because our world becomes a fix to a situation, or a past, or the image, or naturalness. You have to remember, Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, “You are ignorant in what you worship.”
We know who we worship. Salvation is of the Jews, but the hour is coming and now is when you will neither worship on this mountain in Samaria or at Jerusalem, for God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
So Jesus effectively made the tabernacle and temple of God a mobile, living, company of believers that are to worship, and can worship, and should choose to worship at any place, anytime, anywhere. All that is required is spirit and truth – to step inside of the Spirit of God, and the truth of Him, and line ourselves in our spirit and honesty – the truth of who we are… just to enter in.
I know what it feels like to hang your harp on a willow. I know what it looks like. I know how you can begin to stop, in grief and sorrow, and you can just think, “You know, until this thing is corrected, we don’t know what to do.” And we, in a sense, look for vengeance….waiting for the evil one to get his [due]. But ultimately you will not. God is not going to say, Hey, will you feel better if I kill your enemy?” And you say, “Yeah.” And He says, “Ok, I’ll kill him for you.” He’s just not going to do that. He did not come to kill and destroy.
When Samaria rejected Jesus, John and James wanted Him to command fire down. They wanted to do the fire commanding themselves and He said, “You don’t even know what spirit you are of; I didn’t come to destroy, I came to save.”
So this leaves us in a big quandary. Because, here we are in a conference and all of a sudden we are looking for the Highway of Holiness, and God says, “What’s the hurry? I’d like to get into your wilderness. There’s a wasteland that you possess that I want. That’s my inheritance. Why are you trying to change your environment? What’s the environment got to do with anything? Why don’t you let Me in your environment – let Me do what I want with your environment. Let Me be triumphant.” And it’s a major paradigm shift in a large way.
There are two places where we choose to live from and that have contrasting feelings. In Psalm 16 we say, “Yeh, yeh, yeh!” We go to Psalm 137 and say, “Aaaaaarrrgghh.” They both touch something. One touches hope, the other touches that’s not It’s the most disappointing thing to know that every scripture God gives you – you will live the entirety of the scripture. You’ll get the context to get the value. You’ll get the field to get the treasure. But once you do, you carry something.
So many of us, by sovereignty of heaven, are getting ready to be deliverers of mankind again. We are redeemers, releasers, voices of life, and comfort bringers because we will have discovered the Comforter. We will have come into the victory. We will have entered into redemption and we will be that ransomed and singing group.
So, we see in Psalm 24:
The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, The world and those who dwell therein.
For He has founded it upon the seas, And established it upon the waters.
Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol,Nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive blessing from the Lord, And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek Him, Who seek Your face. Selah.
Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O you gates! Lift up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory. Selah
That feels good even though we don’t know what it means. It starts off with the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof and all mankind. He possesses it all. He is the possessor of heaven and earth. And an invitation to ascend into the hill of the Lord, and the simple thing that is carried in the theme in James in the New Testament – clean hands and a pure heart. Cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded.
It’s a people that have surrendered and in our case, to the work of Jesus and the fullness of what He’s accomplished and have made appropriation of that in their approach. The deceitfulness? Well, God doesn’t like liars and He knows when we’re lying. So better to tell Him what we’re really thinking than to act like we’re thinking something different.
The whole thing about truth is very important to God. Actually, it is the Word of Truth that has become the Gospel of our salvation. Truth means that it is not hidden. It’s clear, it’s simple, it’s there.
Now, the other thing – those who have not lifted up their soul to [vanity] an idol – that’s a lot harder, because in North America, in Europe, in the Western world, most of our idols are in our mind and heart. They are in our souls and they consist of strong opinions and wilful actions and they are pretty hard to recognize in the Church because they are always about the force of righteousness.
So we can have an idol that begins to become greater than Jesus and the relationship He holds with us and we get on causes. Or worse, we get on campaigns. Or worse, we go on crusades. And we become just possessed with a thought and those thoughts are usually fuelled in emotion; and emotion will usually never feel righteousness because the wrath of man, the strong of man never brings righteousness. So it’s a little harder to find.
The only way God has been able to capture me in my idols is for me to run into them, drink the offering, suffer the consequence, when I find that I have been decimated and devastated by my idol.
John Dawson was the first person I heard show this. He said that people would come in and say, “I was in church and I just got so hurt – the church wounded me.” He said, “No, the church didn’t hurt you, your idols hurt you.” Because whenever you place a man too high, God will make sure he becomes deaf, dumb and blind, because all idols are deaf, dumb and blind. Whenever you place a cause too high, it will become deaf, dumb and blind. It will lose saving ability.
It might attract you because you feel I have a value and I have a reason now to live, but the value and reason outside of Jesus will shipwreck you every time. If it’s childcare, if it’s nursery, if it’s children, if it’s reaching the lost, if it’s saving the sinner, if it’s changing the government, if it’s bringing righteousness back into the land, if it’s removing sin from the land…anything that becomes the focal point which then becomes embedded inside of emotion, inside of will, inside of opinion, becomes an idol.
Even Saul, when he was confronted by Samuel. Samuel said it this way. He said, “Stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.”
So you can tell where your idols are – wherever you’re most stubborn, which is not a pretty thought, because we don’t think we’re stubborn. We think we’re righteous. What’s the difference between righteous and stubborn? Not much. He’s a yielder. He’s a giver. When Jesus shows up in a place, He’s meek. He’s quiet, He’s lowly. He’s absolutely confident. He has no need to prove anything. He is capable of bringing about change in a moment, but He would rather suffer long in a situation than lose one. He’s kind, He is useful. He would help a Samaritan just as much as He would help a Jew. He would help an Abortionist just as much as He would help a Pro-Lifer. He does not respond in love to a person by their position and their choice and their belief. He would be as kind to a Muslim as He would to a Christian. He is altogether unmanageable and you cannot grab Him into your corner. He is a good and glorious and generous and kind God. And He will topple my idols as quick as He would topple the idols of man that we would all say, “Yes! That’s an idol, let’s get rid of it.”
When you welcome the King of glory, Lift up your heads you gates; lift up your heads you everlasting doors and the King of glory will come in…This is us as a corporate people, this is you as an individual person, and this is you as an authority representative of family, business, or corporation.
You are a door. Every one of us are doors. And we are doors into the earth. You have authority and you have keys that allow you to walk in to your house and those keys allow you to go through the door because they’re your keys, because it’s your house. People want to meet somebody that has authority – a responsibility for – care for…they have to come to you – you watch over them.
Jesus said He was the door unto the sheepfold. It’s an amazing concept. That’s why I retitled this, “The Ancient Doors Opening”… and you are a door.
When your door shuts, all traffic stops both ways. Sometimes that means you starve behind a closed door. Sometimes it means you keep your enemies out from being inside of the place you’re protecting and sometimes it’s just shutting down…I’m hanging my harp on a Willow….I’m not dealing with this anymore. I can’t trust people anymore. I’m hurt. I’m wounded.
I know what Jesus is doing. I don’t know what He’s going to do, but I understand what He’s doing. And when you perceive this, you will be thrilled, because basically He’s given us as much opportunity in our service to Him to mess everything up so He could take possession of the mess. He’s buying real estate dirt cheap. And what’s going to happen, and it’s already beginning to happen, I keep hearing this phrase, it’s a scary phrase, I hear, “Hell is frightened, it’s frightened”. You’re going to hear this, it’s going to be heard – “Who let Jesus in?” Who let Him in? Who let Him in to this situation? We had it wrapped up. We had it under our control. We were ruling in this area. Who let Him in?” And you know what? You let Him in. I have this picture going around the doors of my authority and open them up and – every mess, every point of shame, every contention, every confusion, every credit card debt, every family disorientation – just let Him in. He wants in. It’s His stuff. It’s His debt because He paid for. It’s His sin because He paid for, it’s His loss because He paid for it.
The unfortunate truth of the Gospel is, to attain Christ, you have to lose. And to get 100 fold return, you’ve got to leave and lose. But between the “Oh I choose to do this”, to “Oh, somebody kill their babies”…we lose our perspective. And you have to because there is nobody here including Peter that can go all the way through the cross.
You can’t say, “I’ll do what You did, Jesus.” No you can’t do what Jesus did. That’s a proven fact. So, we will move with Jesus to the cross, but we will lose our place just like Peter lost his place, just like John lost his place. Because we will say, “I can’t make sense of this captivity. I can’t make sense of this confusion.” So Revelations 3:14 through 22 says:
And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne. He that hath an ear, let Him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Again, before you get scared, I’m not going to browbeat anybody by saying that you are nasty Laodecian hypocrites. Luke-warmers. Why would I do that since I am one of them.
First off, you have to not think in the natural in that you think you have as much control as you do in your response to life, in your choices in life and in your actions in life. Most of us are disappointed with ourselves because things have not turned out the way we hoped they would, which is basically a declaration of pride.
Somewhere, we were told we could do a lot better than we did. And with that is the last vestige of grief – pride. The last vestige of every loss is pride because it touches, to the sense of, “I take ownership for this junk, that means that’s me. And I’m not prepared for this to be me. So I’m not going to take ownership for that junk. It’s my wife’s fault.” Or whatever. “It’s where I was born,” “It’s what happened to me when I was a teenager.” “It’s what’s going on when I got divorced.” “It’s the wrong turn of the economy,” “It’s the devil,” it doesn’t really matter who you blame, until it finally is, “This is my bag of ashes, this is my mourning, my depression, my discouragement, my anger.” The door doesn’t open.
I do not believe the Laodecian church got up and said, “You know what? I think we’d rather just distance ourselves from God and begin to come up with our own wealth system, our own strength and our own wonder.” I believe they, like all of us in this latter days of life, are forced to be continually what we cannot be and are not. We are the generation that has to become like what we are being told. We have to measure up to our Facebook profile; our teeth have to be as white as Colgate says they should be.
It doesn’t matter – the pressure is on. And because of the pressure, we have found our own best way of managing ourselves and we in effect have not allowed Jesus in. When He says, “You are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked, He doesn’t say, “And now, until you get your act together, I don’t want to have anything to do with you.” He says, “Come to Me. I want you to buy and the word ‘buy’ is the word ‘redeem’. I want to redeem you. I want to redeem you with gold that is not the gold that you can obtain in your own ability. I want to clothe you with garments that you can’t gather for yourself and sew over your fig leaves. I want to cause your eyes again to see. I want to be that for you. I want to bring that to you.” And what does He say? “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And if anyone will hear My voice and open the door, I’ll come into him and have the evening meal…the primary place of fellowship and family and relationship. I’ll take that place again.” Which tells me that that is the means of which the gold, the garments and the eye salve are administered is around the table of the family of the communityin communion with God.
And Jesus is saying, “All you need to do is just hear Me. And when you hear Me, open.” We are a door. Remember that? And He said, “I want in. You want out, I want in. I’m not letting you out, I want in. I want in. I want in your stuff. I want in your junk. I want in your stuff.” And we’re saying, “Well, up until 2 weeks ago, I didn’t have junk. I was just in renovation. I was in inner healing. I was in the process. I was becoming better.”
No. You’re shipwrecked. Or not. Maybe you’re not. I’m shipwrecked. You’re all great. You really are. If you knew how great you were! When Jesus starts taking back the ashes of our lives, and we start seeing the beauty He produces, we will only wish we had more ashes to give Him. We’re going to only wish that we had actually destroyed more things that He gave us.
That’s the glory of the power of this grace that’s about to be revisited in the planet. It needs to be. We need this Jesus. So, and this will all come full circle.
We talked about a good inheritance given to us and access we can rest in hope because our soul will not be left in hell and there’s everlasting joy in His presence. We went on to say that there are captivities that become so grievous that we hang our harps on the Willows and we can’t sing the song of Zion and we actually just live in a desire for vengeance. Vindictiveness. We went on to say that there is a King of Glory, so grand, so great that He can enter in through the ancient doors. He is mighty in battle and He’s awesome, He’s the Lord of Hosts.
And then we went off to the Laodecian church and found a church that’s neither hot nor cold, they were just holding their place through a confession that was wrong because it wasn’t founded in Christ – it was in their own means to try to be. And they’re holding their place and now Jesus says, “Come on. Come on. Do you think I saved you for you to do it? Let Me in, let Me in, I want to sit with you, I want to sup with you, let Me in.”
And all that under the banner of the Lord, I believe saying in Isaiah 35, “I want My inheritance, you are My inheritance. Your journey is My inheritance. Your loss is My inheritance.”
And it’s not a strange thought, because Paul said, “I had to lose everything in order to gain Christ. I had to go to the point that everything Ilost became dung, rubbish, human excrement, nothing of value – I’m done with it.” But that’s easy to say, hard to do, because again, the soul life that found its identity in planet earth and the journey through earth is yielding to the spirit life and the life giving spirit of the second Adam who is saying, “What does it matter if you are in prison or not, what does it matter if you are poor or not, what does it matter if you are in reproach or not – you praise Me, you follow Me, follow Me. Here is life. I am life! Enjoy Me, exceeding joy.
Praise be to God our Father, Let’s let the King of Glory in!
Upcoming Events
Sunday, October 26, 9am: Diana Anderson will share on the Glory of God in Our Lives.
Sunday 10:20am: Nations Prayer-Reigning with Christ on earth as priests and kings to our God.
Sunday 11am: I will be sharing “Receiving a Kingdom that Cannot be Shaken.” Jesus has entered in. We have opened the door, now grace comes, and a whole new kingdom opens up!
