Living Hope Fellowship Church...Sermons From the Pastor
FAITH,
PRIORITIES, POTENTIAL
by Pastor Kevin Badgley
There was a wicked king in the days of Israel. They were walking in the ways of the world. He sent a messenger to find Elijah. The messenger was scared to death to find Elijah. When the king sent you to find somebody, he expected results. If this messenger didn't come back with Elijah, he was liable to be killed by having his head cut off or something. If somebody was after Elijah, the Spirit of the Lord would translate him. The messenger said that the king had sent him after Elijah, but he feared that he would leave because the was liable to be found somewhere else in the country.
In Acts there is another example where the Spirit of the Lord moved someone to another place. Philip was translated. These are examples of things we can believe for when you begin to seek the face of the Lord. We have had preaching and teaching about seeking the face of the Lord for the promises we can expect when we walk in the presence of the Lord.
Elijah was just like we are with the same troubles, passions, and discouragements, but this man commanded it not to rain for three and one half years. It didn't! He then commanded it to rain after three and one half years and it did! He had great power with God.
We know Moses obviously had great power with God. Why? Because He walked in the presence of God. It is not unusual for people to be scared when they begin to walk in the power of God. Maybe this will be a buffer for you to keep you from being scared when he does begin to move. The Lord does strange things with strange people. As we become more like him, we become very strange to the world. To mankind, it is foolishness.
Let God use you. As you seek God, he will do some things in your life. As you stay in his Word, he will do things in your life according to his Word. God keeps it interesting by always doing something different. Our God is a miracle working God. Miracles should be common place to us. I believe it is inevitable as you seek the Lord. Signs and miracles shall follow them that believe. Expect it as you seek God. Believe and obey God.
In Acts Philip was witnessing to the eunuch about Jesus. God sent him there. When he was done, God translated him to Azotus. Can you imagine someone trying to hinder that? It is a type of rapture. As we become more accustomed to his presence and moving in his Spirit, we begin to become translated into the sons of God and that will be manifest. We will do exploits for the Lord. It is not without cost.
I heard a testimony one time of a man who was praying for missionaries. One he prayed for was in Africa. As he was praying one night, the Lord caught him away. He wrestled with a man that was coming against this missionary. He was translated away from the prayer room (in the body or out of the body, God knows), wrestled the offending man and won, and then he vanished from there and went back to his prayer room. Several months later that same missionary came back to the church and reported how the Lord was moving. She went to the podium and began to speak. She suddenly saw the man who had done this thing. She screeched out, "This is the man!" Some how God, by his power, had translated the man in his prayer life.
The beginning of this is when you are praying, someone may pass before you. Someone may be brought to your mind. Sometimes you will see them in the Spirit as you pray. As you seek God and become more anointed with his presence, you become endued with more of his godliness. You won't be so subject to this world. Remember when Jesus was in the temple and the Pharisees and others were going to take him? It says that he passed through the midst of them and passed by! He was there, but he wasn't there. They couldn't find them. He walked right through them. That is a form of being translated or invisible to the eyes of people in this world.
Can you imagine what Jesus saw and heard in the Spirit in Gethsemane? Imagine what he saw and heard in the wilderness during the 40 days of fasting as the devil tempted him. I doubt that he slept much during that time as he interceded for us and for his own preservation as well. He was tempted and tried by Satan himself. We are to build up our most holy faith as we pray in the Holy Ghost. We are to pray and intercede for others. Sometimes you may slack off of praying for someone, and the next time you see them they are doing horrible. I may come to your mind, Hey, maybe nobody else was praying for them but me. When you pray for them again, they seem to do better.
Remember when the two men of God held up the arms of Moses? The Israelites were in battle in the valley against Amalek. As long as Moses held up the staff in his hand to God and prayed, Israel prevailed. After many hours his arms got tired and they came down. Then the enemy prevailed. He sat down on a rock and a couple of men held up his arms. That is what it means in the Old Testament when it says to strengthen the feeble knees, arms and hands. It means to intercede in prayer.
As we enter into the presence of the Lord the flesh will fight you. As you begin to pray and seek the face of the Lord you get sleepy and you get to yawning! Food starts coming before you, or work to be done, or similar things. The flesh will wrestle against you. It lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. This is a form of afflicting the soul when you resist the flesh.
I was writing a few things about afflicting the soul so that we can get in the presence of the Lord and do his work. I read in the Old Testament about the Sabbath. Personally, my soul has been afflicted. I've been wrestling with different things that we have seen in the church, the body of Christ in general. Fasting and prayer and travail for the body includes abstaining from work as well. The Lord may deal with you to go witness, visit, or fellowship with somebody. Somebody may need a lift in the Spirit and the Lord may deal with you to go pray with them. You think about this, this, and this that you have got to do.
Don't put off the Lord's work. It is part of afflicting the soul. If you actually have to lay down the laundry to go pray for somebody, then you just have to do it. That is what he is teaching me. If you have to get off the tractor to go visit somebody, then you'll just have to do it. Quite frankly, we're gonna dry out anyway. If we don't get some rain in the Spirit, the rain in the physical won't make a whole lot of difference. What good is a bountiful crop if the nation that reaped it is dead spiritually? If you are alive spiritually, the Lord will feed you. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and these things shall be added unto you.
I have more trouble with that kind of discipline than I do with fasting and prayer sometimes. I was raised to get out and hustle and to work. It is hard for me to lay these things down for things that years ago I thought were foolishness, but it is a requirement of the Sabbath (the day). The Sabbath is not a day of rest particularly, but can be in the rest of the Lord which is the Holy Ghost. You will find that in Hebrews.
You can set yourself apart and be like Jesus. What is the price we pay to be like Jesus? Do we have a bountiful garden or a bountiful prayer life? I don't know if you can have both. Which would be better to have? I asked the Lord about it. I said, How can I have a good garden, and get this, this, and this done, and keep my shop going and in order, and work too, and even find time to sleep? You just don't have a decent prayer life. He told me to look at the order I put it in!!! Prayer life was put last. We have that mentality.
We are carnal and have the mentality of fasting, praying, and laying aside work last. We need renewing in our minds. It is the first step but one of the last things we do. We learn all about what the Word says and the love of Jesus, yet we do not have our minds renewed to being like Jesus. Jesus did the works of the Father first. Jesus prayed first. Jesus was prayed up first. Then he did what he needed to do. He even ate later. He was talking to the woman at the well and the disciples were gone after meat. They were surprised he was talking to the Samaritan woman. The disciples came back and wanted Jesus to eat. He said in John 4:32, "But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of." He was speaking about the work of the Father. I have had times where I didn't miss the meal. I missed it but I didn't miss it up here . . . in the mind.
We have a clock up here that we live by. We should be living by one in our heart. If we would live by the clock in here, the Holy Ghost that God put in our temple, we would do strange things. We would be different. If God calls you peculiar, you are peculiar. Elijah was a Tishbite. That was the name of his people. He was an hairy man. There was a similitude between him and John the Baptist. Jesus said they were in the same spirit. There are similarities between others. Moses was the law giver and Jesus was the law giver of the Spirit. Both were meek. In Numbers 12 it says that Moses was meek above all men. He didn't push himself on anyone but when he had words from God, that was it. He stood before the greatest king on the face of the earth (Pharaoh in that day) and looked him in the eyes and told him to let the people go. They were slaves. That meekness was in authority. Jesus= meekness was in authority. He said he was meek and lowly.
Let's go back to mentality. Meekness is yielded to God first, then the things that are necessities second. This is where we've got to live. We've actually got to change our way of living. We are changed so we can be in the presence of Jesus. I would like for the Lord to intercede for me to do things in his name rather than for him to spend a lot of his time interceding for me just to hang on. Instead of him praying, Father, don't let Kevin do this. Forgive him for saying this and doing this. I would rather hear Jesus saying, Father, he has asked in my name to raise this one, to do this thing, to say this to glorify me. Lord, grant it. That is the position I want to be in with the Lord. I don't want him to always have to intercede for me to hang on but for me to go on. I think we all want that. We've got to change our mentality. I wrote this prayer down:
O Lord, I've disobeyed your voice. I have not hearkened to you. I have turned away in the lust of my flesh and heeded my flesh for my comfort. Dear Lord, forgive me of my wrongs. I've walked contrary to you and have not been upright in all my sayings and doings. Lord, help me because I cannot help myself. I want to be your witness of your worth.
I would rather find out that I would need to do something, even if it is tough, than to be told it is not a necessary thing. If I have to go up the mountain, I want to know it. I want the Lord to tell me if I have to go up the mountain to get to him and to be like him. I don't want somebody else telling me I can go around another way. I don't want to be false comforted by an easier way.
I want to know what it is like (and I have occasionally broken into that) to be praying and have people come before me and intercede for them and to get them out of something as the Lord wills. Can you imagine the trust that the Lord will have in a person when that happens? To trust you and me with the souls of others? I had someone come before me once in prayer. I saw a truck and everything inside was scattered all over the ground and the person's face was down on the ground. It came to me that it was an accident and it also came to me that he was dead. I didn't really know what it was. It was the first time it had ever happened to me quite like that. I prayed, but not like I really should have. The Lord honored it. I found out later that person did have a close call about that period of time and that they were spared a head on collision with a semi.
That is an example of the Lord trusting us in prayer with a person's life and at that time, their soul. Now, that is scary stuff, but don't be afraid when the Lord begins to bring people before you. The other day I wasn't sleeping well and people were coming before me, and not the ones I expected. They were having problems and not the problems I expected them to have. I interceded in prayer and it was taken off of them. As we begin to walk in the closeness of the Lord, we must carry the burden. We must carry the cross. The game is almost over and it is time to get on the winning side. Praise the Lord.
I'm not telling you that you are going to have to wrestle a devil personally, but I've had times when I've felt him come against me personally. He will try you but the Lord says many times in the Word not to fear him. Expect to be used of God once you start seeking him, after you have circumcised your heart. When you have a bad heart, and you accept the Lord and begin to move in him, he circumcises your heart. It is a literal translation and he gives you a new heart. Believe God and he will do some radical things.
Jeremiah 3:1-3, "(1) They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD. (2) Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness. (3) Therefore the showers have been witholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed."
Jeremiah 3:14-17, "(14) Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: (15) And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. (16) And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the LORD, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the LORD: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it: neither shall that be done any more. (17) At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart."
We need a change of heart! We have fleshly ways and we don't even know it. We haven't arrived, but keep on seeking God and God will honor you. He is just about ready to spring forth a miracle. Keep believing to the end.
I would like people to be able to look up and take notice of God because they see what He is doing. Isn't it sad that the church has had so little of the presence of the Lord about them to where the Lord has actually allowed the destroyer to come in to sinners and backsliders in order to get their attention. He could be doing it by signs, wonders, and miracles through the church and they wouldn't have to suffer all of that. Signs, wonders, and miracles are for saving souls. God help us to walk in the mentality that Jesus walked in, putting God first and flesh second.
Exodus 17, Isaiah 35:3-4, Matthew 6:33, Romans 12:2, John 4, Jeremiah 3:1-3 & 14-17.
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