Paul DeCelles gave this talk at a Servant Branch community meeting at the end of our 25th anniversary year (Oct. 15, 1997). He declared that the Lord has united us and empowered us for service in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. To fulfill his plan we have to be reconciled, intercede, have faith and repent of all the small sins that have become part of the fabric of our lives.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
PAUL: At the beginning of the Spirit and Purpose we say,
Praise God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit! Praise God our Father, Creator of the universe. Praise Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, who atoned for our sins and reigns at the right hand of the Father. Praise the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who inspires the body of Christ, unites it and empowers it for service.
I believe that the Lord has been spending 25, 26 years now, uniting us. And that he’s got us, I think, well prepared, like racers who have been training and training and are now ready to enter the race.
It says here that it’s the Holy Spirit “who inspires the body of Christ, unites it and empowers it for service.” I believe that he has united us, and I believe that we had—that he has empowered us for service that we are only now beginning to understand. The Lord is opening up vistas for us. Some of them seem to stretch us, like Trinity School. But the things that lay before us, it—seem to me, are even greater. The Lord wants us to be totally at—his servants, to accomplish his purposes throughout the whole world.
And I think that we need to keep two things in mind at this historic moment in the life of the community. We cannot sacrifice our unity for the sake of service. If we do, if we split up, we will simply serve ourselves to death and die. The Lord wants to continue to empower us, to unite us, so that we can continue to serve. But at this moment he has us well united. We are well equipped. We know so much about pastoral care, and there are so many people in the world who need it! We know so much about how to share what God has done in our midst, and there are so many people who need to hear it!
We have been turned to each other, and we need to continue to support each other in unity. We need to be very faithful to our men’s groups and our women’s groups and to headship and in our family and have—to good family order and headship and submission and right order in family, and we have to care for our children in the right way and bring ’em up in the Lord, and do all the things that we’re doing as part of the People of Praise. All those unique and—characteristics which we have as community and celebrating and maintaining our covenant love. We need to do all those things even while we are turned to serve other people and bring the world to Christ.
I think that that’s what the Lord has been doing with us. And I think we should thank God for what he’s done with us, and we should look forward with a lot of anticipation for what he’s going to do with us for the sake of the world, which he loves so dearly, in the near future.
So, where are we headed? In Acts 2, verse 17, it says,
“And it shall be in the last days,” God says, “that I will pour forth my Spirit upon all mankind; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy (thank God, we’ve seen some of that!), and your young men (I saw it even this evening, Hallelujah! [Paul laughs.] It’s—one of my daughters prophesied.) . . . and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; . . . And it shall be that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
MEN’S VOICES: Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
PAUL: That is what the Lord is bringing about. That is his goal: that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And that everyone have a chance to hear the name of Jesus so that they can call on it!
Again in Revelations, chapter 11, verse 15: the second part of what I—where I think the Lord has us headed. It says,
“The kingdom of the world has become (this is not in the future; this is now; it has become) the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders, who sit on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, “We give you thanks, O Lord God the Almighty, who art and who wast, because Thou hast taken Thy great power and hast begun to reign.”
I believe the Lord has begun to reign. He wants to reign from coast to coast in this land. He wants to reign all the way around the world. Indeed, I believe he wants to reign throughout the universe. [Applause.]
How do we get there from where we are? Well, God takes us. God does it. And I want to talk a little bit about that.
Recently I had a prophecy from the Lord:
It was just as in the days of Noah when I poured out my rain so abundantly on the earth. Once again, I am pouring out on all the earth and on all mankind a reign and a flood of grace and blessing unparalleled in history. All I ask of you is that you build your boats and be ready to float.
When I gave that prophecy, several of the brothers in the group commented that I—they noticed that I had recently bought a rickety old boat [laughter], and they thought maybe that was the inspiration behind this prophecy. They were just kidding.
I believe that the Lord wants us to continue to prepare ourselves. Some of the boats, I believe, are reconciliation. We need to be reconciled first with God—individually, profoundly, deeply. Let the presence of God convict us personally. Let it go to—as it says in Hebrews 4: the Spirit of God, the word of God pierces to the very marrow, and separating marrow and bone, it goes to the division of spirit and soul. The Spirit of God penetrates us. Some people sometimes experience it as a sharp thrust, even. But it’s something in which God is in us. He is deeply in us. The word of God abides in us. We are his temple. That’s the new temple. That’s why the old Temple doesn’t exist anymore. His people are his temple. God is in us.
So that very word of God dwells richly in us, and we need to be reconciled with God. Anything that has separated us, even one little, you know, millimeter—or whatever small size you want to pick, okay?—that would in any way, shape, or form separate us from the perfect will of God and from his desires for our lives and for the world is something that we want to root out. Just grab it, and just tear it out of your soul, and get rid of it, and get right with God. Be profoundly sorry for the things that are keeping us individually from God. Anything that stands in the way of God is just a ball and chain around our foot. It’s anchoring us down, and we can’t move forward. We can’t enjoy the life. We can’t dance—like, Bill was telling us earlier to dance. [Paul laughs.] Look, he can dance!
Not only reconciliation with God, but with one another. And repentance, and righteousness, and humility: counting others better than ourselves. And generosity: being eager to share what we have with one another. And meekness: putting away all hostility and anger and any kind of force that we may have used in the past to get people to agree with us.
And who knows how many other boats there are. Certainly our men’s groups and our women’s groups are some of the boats we’ve gotta keep afloat. Get them in good shape. Let reconciliation begin there, perhaps. Let repentance manifest itself in your men’s group and in your women’s group and in your families. Let this happen now. Be open to what God is doing in us now.
In the Spirit and Purpose, in our—section 5, on holiness, we say:
Ongoing intercessory prayer for the community plays a crucial role in the ability of the community to be faithful to its life and work. Therefore, all members eagerly intercede for the needs of the community. (That means the needs of the community in life and in work.) This should be part of each member’s personal prayer and may involve participation in an organized, continual ministry of intercession.
I am sure that the Lord wants us increasingly to gather together for repentance and intercession, that the world may be saved, that sinners may come to know the loving grace of Jesus and his saving power. But in order for this to happen, we have to have a new heart. We have to have a new mentality. The mentality we have to have is that of God. We have to have the mentality of the Word of God who dwells in us, who has become flesh in us. Our desire has to be his desire, for he desires in us! It is himself who is desiring in us. And we need to get rid of all Adamic desire, which is—has no place in the work of Christ.
Now, what is it that God desires? Well, he so desired and loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all Adamity could confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and have their sins forgiven, and experience the power of life in the risen Christ. Our desire should be no less than God’s desire: to give our lives, so that all men and women may believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.
What holds us back? I believe it’s lack of faith. Someone told me yesterday that when she thinks about what is going on, it’s like there’s this great wall, like a dam, holding great waters behind it, and yet there are some places where there’s a plug out, you know, and the water is stream- -—gushing forth, and we’re seeing some of that. We’re seeing, actually, quite a bit of gushing. But the Lord wants more. He wants the whole dam down. He wants to flood like in Noah’s day. He wants to wash everything. He wants to fill the whole world with his presence.
So, what is it that is holding us back? I think it’s doubt. It’s lack of faith. And I think that lack of faith is caused by fear. We are afraid that what is being said is true. It—I was—while I was listening to the prophecies, for instance, I was really struck by the power of the prophecies. They were very, very strong words, I thought. And it occurred to me, “Do I believe that?” I know that’s the devil. He goes to work on me like that. He did that to Jesus in the desert, you know. When Jesus was coming out of the desert, the devil tempted him to doubt that he was the Son of God. And the devil doubts—causes us to doubt.
And one of the main things, it seems to me, that causes doubt in me—and I think it’s true for very many people, and it may be true for all of us to some degree—is fear. We’re afraid of what the future holds for us. If we really were to believe what we say, it would change our lives so much so—why, we would look like Jesus! We would have a crazy, insane life. You know, that’s what his relatives said. In the Scriptures, it says that his brethren, his relatives, thought that Jesus was insane! And they sent a delegation out to go get him and bring him back. They said, “You—we’ve got to protect him from himself. This—he’s slipped a. . . . Something’s gone wrong here!”
Well, I don’t—I’m not saying that everybody has to walk in—wear a toga or whatever Jesus wore. Not a toga, probably. That was a Roman garment. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in one of those, I suppose. At any rate—I don’t know, but I think that our ins- -—our first move is, “What if I were really—if I really accepted the call of Christ in my life, everything would change. And it would just be—it’s too scary. It’s like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. I don’t have any idea how this—how I’ll end on this. I mean, all I can think of are disastrous ends.”
Well, let me say a couple things. One is that I believe that the Lord does not act so discontinuously all the time as he does when you’re baptized in the Spirit. He has prepared you, and he will continue to work with what he has built. And you can probably even see already in your life, and the way that God has led you, a great deal of what it is that you’re going to be, no matter what else happens to you. You—if you examine your life, you can see what his call is on you. It’s already present, no doubt. If you look, you’ll see that it’s there and that you’ve already been living it. Maybe not very well, not fully; not with all your heart, or not very intelligently, because you didn’t know. You couldn’t discern it too clearly. Nobody pointed it out to you, or you didn’t find it. You didn’t think about it. But, in fact, it’s already there. So, it’s not going to be such a radical thing. It’s going to be fulfillment of what God has begun in you.
Secondly, even if it is a terrible plight, and God tells you to jump out of an airplane without a parachute—if he really does tell you that, then he’s certainly not going to let you down. He will, in fact, hold you up on eagle’s wings. You will be able to rise with him, and you can do things that are even greater than Jesus did. Because that’s what Jesus promised: “After I’m gone, I will send my Spirit, and you will do greater things than I’ve done.” Well, have we? Has any of us done anything greater than Je- —than even the least thing Jesus did? And yet—not yet, not yet. But we have hope. That is, if we place our faith in God, he will use us, and he will accomplish his purposes throughout the whole universe.
Secondly—and this is harder; it’s harder to say. I’m not mad or anything at anybody. Actually, I’m not! [Paul chuckles.] Praise God! That’s fortunate. That’s a real change. [Laughter.] It’s a work of God. But I do think that we really do like things the way they are. This is often the cause for a lack of reconciliation. It’s also a cause of a lack of repentance. We really do like late night TV, maybe “Saturday Night Live,” and, you know, just being able to understand what they’re gettin’ at with their dirty jokes. You know, I don’t want to drop that! There’s—you’ve got to have a little salt in your life; you’ve got to have a little fun. Maybe you think a little pornography is okay, so you keep something around the house so that if you’re married, you’ll have a better sex life. Or you have some other kind of trash in your life that you have to put away.
You can’t have that in your life and have God fully in your life.
I think that we have become accommodated to small sins. They’re the things that make up the fabric of our lives. And we have to get rid of them! And it’s terrifying. Because for some of us as we look at that, there won’t be anything left if the sin is removed from my life. There goes all my fun. There goes all my humor. There goes all my enmity. There goes all my reason for going to work and hating the people I work with. There goes all my aggrandizement. There goes all my covetousness. There goes all my greed. There goes—I mean, there goes all my reason for going to work. There goes all my reason for owning this house. There goes all my—I mean, where do I stand?
I believe that’s a very big problem for us. God wants us to be a holy people. Therefore, let us enter his living presence. Let the presence of God purge us. Let the power of God, as we bask in his presence, just illuminate us. Let his light shine in us so brightly like laser light [that] it burns out cancer. Let the power of God fall upon us [voices in background praising God]. And let the power of God renew us!
We need to enter the presence of God. And we need to go together. Because when we’re together, just as I explained to the women about the holograph at the retreat, for those of you who were there, it’s—while it’s true that Christ is in each of us, when we gather together, the picture’s a lot brighter. So, when we come together, in the presence of God, let’s really call on his power, his majesty, and his glory to change us, to root out all those evil things and inclinations that we have in our heart. And substitute instead the true desire: the desire that God has for the salvation of all men and women everywhere.
[Recording ends here.]
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