In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the need for a profound new beginning in one's relationship with God. He highlights the example of Israel, who sought to establish a state through their own abilities and resources, but ended up causing conflict and tension with their neighbors. The speaker challenges the audience to focus on being obedient to God even in His absence, as this is a more likely experience in the last days. He also discusses the significance of a woman's act of giving her life as a memorial, exemplifying the essence of the gospel.

Precious God on high, we are on the moment, the kairos of God, the timed moment has come for a word which you have never allowed me to speak before now, which if this people can hear it and respond to it, they need not ever again make a response to an altar call. It's a once and for all final invitation that precludes any necessity to again come and again come and again come for one invitation or another. This is final and ultimate invitation for once you make it, there's no going back to your seat. It's the end of you as independent, autonomous entity, well-meaning and wanting to do for God and serve God. If only he will help you and give you enablement, that, that, that, that, that, that, that will be finished. The Lord has patiently waited for its end and I believe that he wants to speak a word this afternoon that will bring that end, but with it also a profound new beginning. So Lord, who is sufficient for those things, for these things, for that speaking, but yourself? And if I'm not presuming upon you and this people understand rightly, I'm required not only to explicate, but demonstrate the thing to which they themselves are being called. We thank you and give you praise in Jesus' name, amen. So I want to begin by sharing with you one of Oswald Chambers' remarkable statements. Where's the water boy? Oh, he's right here. I'll take that one. Oh, this is Heidi's. Huh? This is Heidi's. Heidi's? Yeah. It'll bless me. Are you reading My Utmost for His Highest daily? And the Psalms daily? I can't think of a better and richer content for anyone's personal devotional time. In the selection of May 28th from My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers has as his verse something from John chapter 16, and in that day you shall ask me nothing. Maybe you want to turn to John 16. We can't even conceive that there would be a day in which we need not ask the Lord anything What does he mean by that? Verse 23, and in that day you shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs, or parables, but the time comes when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father. And that day you shall ask in my name, and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came out from God, I came from the Father, and I am come into the world again. I leave the world and go to the Father. Verse 32 and 33, behold, the hour comes, yea, it is now come that you shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone, and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace, and in the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. So Oswald Chambers asks, when is that day when the Ascended Lord makes you one with the Father? In that day you will be one with the Father, as Jesus is, and in that day, Jesus says, you shall ask me nothing. Do you know why? Because the distinction between you and the me whom you are asking is abolished. There's no you to ask, because you have been taken up and subsumed into him. There's no need to ask. Asking is only valid when you stand as an independent entity outside from God, asking him for those things that will enable you to perform for God, and that has been our characteristic mode up till now, which isn't bad. It's nice to receive from God grace and benefit and enablement and wisdom and the various things that make our service possible, but it's not the ultimate thing. There's a day. In that day you will ask me nothing. And that day is the day in which we move from being the children of God to becoming the sons of God. We move from well-meaning and well-intending charismatic evangelicals to those who have come into union with God himself, where you cannot say where the believer ends and where the Lord begins. Have you the faith to believe for a union of that kind with God, which is nothing less nor other than what Jesus himself enjoyed with the Father? I in him, he in me. This is not a play on words. It's too critical a subject merely to be a platform for fanciful language. It's graphic, it's accurate, it's literal, that there is the possibility of a relationship with God the Father through Jesus of the very same kind that Jesus himself enjoyed and exhibited. And that's why he could say, the words that I speak to you are not my words, but the words which my Father has given me. He never did anything independent of the Father. He never had a thought, he never had an intention. Don't you doubt that if he wanted to act out of his own personality and humanity, he could have cut a very impressive swath? Don't you think he could have made an impressive display? But he was painstakingly consistent in his union with the Father that he would not even allow anything to rise out of his humanity, but only that which he received of the Father. And yet the remarkable thing is that Jesus is in no way diminished by that relationship. He's not a mere automaton. He's not a little puppet being played upon by a greater power. The paradox is that in losing his life and not asserting his manhood which was supreme, he, through virtue of the union with the Father, comes forth as the Son, in all of the rich uniqueness that the word Son implies. In that day, until the ascension, resurrection life of Jesus is manifested in you, you want to ask this and that, then after a while you find all questions gone. You do not seem to have any left to ask. You have come to a place of entire reliance and trust on the resurrection life of Jesus. In fact, you can say in that day with Paul, for me to live as Christ. How many of us who are here this afternoon have ever said that or said it in more than just a kind of hopeful, wishful way? How many of us could say it with the same kind of absolute confidence as Paul himself? Or do you think that Paul is something in himself apart from the life, the resurrection of Jesus? Paul is nothing more nor other than the continuation of that life. And anything that Paul says or performs is anything and everything that the Lord himself would have done had he been yet in his own body. Now he's in Paul. That's what makes an apostle an apostle. So for us to celebrate Paul as Paul, to think that what he's exhibiting is some unique Jewish character of courage or insight is to miss the point entirely. In him, I believe Paul said, I move and live and have my being. Now in the new cat's edition of the Bible, I would probably say, the Lord would say, in Paul, I move and live and have my being. How do you like that? That the continuation of the life of God in the son Jesus, yet in his unfinished purposes, waits on body that will allow him to be the source of their life, their inspiration, their speaking, their ministry, their love, their wisdom, their understanding. But don't think that you're going to go boom from where you are now to that without passing through an old man's land of actual testing, where you have no love, you have no wisdom, you have no power, you have no authority. You have voided, you have pulled out the plug of your own confidence in yourself, where you're going to serve God if only he will give you the help and the ability. And if there's no resurrection, you of all people are most to be pitied. And the Lord will test you, because we are dead and hid with Christ in God until his life is revealed. And when it's revealed, it's revealed of the glory. But that doesn't mean that when it's revealed, it will come in a form that you will desire, enjoy or appreciate. It may come in a form that makes you to appear as a dum-dum, where there is no cleverness, there is no brightness, you're without answer. In fact, you're surprisingly weak, you're dead and hid with Christ in God until his life is revealed. But his life is not revealed according to the terms of our desire, satisfaction or need, but his. And it will take the form and the expression that he will be pleased to give it. And more often than not, you'll be humiliated, both waiting for the expression of the life and for the very expression itself. It's not going to make you necessarily bright. It may even make you lousy company. You may even have been more charming and more agreeable and more impressive when you operated under your own life than when you operate under his. But the condition for his life is the forfeiting of your own. So you're a dead man, you're dead and hid with God in Christ until. Not many people have a stomach for that. It takes a sublime confidence that Jesus was raised from the dead and that because he lives, we shall live also. How many of us are the children of the resurrection? Sons and daughters of the resurrection is something more than the approval of the doctrine. And I can just say as a with complete safety and assurance, the overwhelming majority of Christians, even of a charismatic kind in the earth today, do not live out of the resurrection life. They approve the doctrine, but they live out of themselves, which is not a bad thing. I mean, it could even be impressive from time to time. And God will even give in his grace a little enablement. The only thing wrong with it is this. It falls short of his glory. And it requires not just a once and for all death, but repeated deaths like right now. I know I give the appearance of being self-assured and as if I'm some kind of a professional and I can get up at will and open my mouth and it's all going to come out. If I'm not a dead man now, trusting God now, you may hear something clever, even biblical, even impressive, momentarily blessing, but it will not be life giving. This subject this afternoon is so critically important for all the church in the last days that no man, however gifted or experienced, is competent to deliver this word. It has got to be the very manifestation of his life because it's about his life. Otherwise it would be a contradiction in terms. That God should call you to the reality of his life, that you might live in the power of his resurrection by a man who is speaking out of his own humanity is a patent contradiction. He's got to, the content has got to be in keeping with the mode. Well, Art, how come you don't sound like Jesus? I can pick up your Brooklyn accent. Don't tell me that that's the life of God. Jesus doesn't have a Brooklyn accent. That's how much you know. He'll have an accent of any kind that he himself has imputed to that vessel. You think that my birth in Brooklyn is an accident and a happenstance? Or your birth or your nationality or your origin or your formation or your personality is in any way just something that God has to make the best of? Or is it the explicit sovereign choosing of God whose voice is a voice of many waters and brings forth the fullness of his counsel and his wisdom through the diversity of the vessels through whom his life operates and speaks? We mustn't be deceived that it's going to come out of some kind of sound chamber, thus sayeth the Lord. It will be very natural. It will be unaffected. But the origin is not out of man, but out of God. And that man who is speaking has not chosen the subject for himself and has not in himself the ability to deliver it. He cannot in himself go to New York and impress the Jews, but the life of Christ can. And the wisdom of Christ can meet their wisdom and reveal it as foolishness. If that were not so, any attempt to go would be foolhardy and vain. The only thing that justifies such a going is that the one who sends is also the one who goes with you and will be your life, your wisdom, your utterance, your sweetness of spirit, your charm, your severity, your authority, your everything required for life. He is your life, is the amplitude of everything that pertains to godliness and to life. Have you ever heard yourself speaking words that are not your own? Thoughts that are not your own? Have you ever found yourself insulting? And you're too nice a guy ever to be that way, and yet you know it's not you? If you guys had the acumen discernment that would be becoming to you as sons and daughters, you would have understood what we have already passed through in these days as a holy ghost masterpiece only a day or so ago when I spoke following the brother who preceded me. I think I can say with all confidence it was not I who spoke, but the Lord. Only the Lord could have wended his way through so sensitive and intricate and detailed and complex and significant an issue as he himself did. Hear the tape. That's a little foretaste of the last days. For we are going to be faced with things that cannot now be anticipated, of so complex a kind that no past experience will have prepared us. That unless the Lord himself is our life and our wisdom in the moment, there's no way that we can face the situation that has now confronted us. And the thing is that it's not our reputation which is at stake in that moment, but life and death and eternity itself that is before us. There are souls at stake where it's not enough to be clever or correct. It must be the word of the Lord. It must be the answer of God. It's a crisis. And you know what, you dear saints? You don't have to wait for something like that to happen. It's already before us continually and daily, if you could but see. That is apostolic seeing. The apostle always sees everything as life or death. For you, this is another meeting, another conference. For the apostolic prophetic person, it's a once and for all that will not be given again. The issue is ultimate, not just for yourselves, but the tape that will go forth from here to audiences unknown. And what is even struck in the heavenlies, the voice of his speaking and the word never before uttered of a first time, now being registered in this point of earth, has reverberations and consequences for the principalities and the powers of the air and the whole cosmic dynamic of the redemptive struggle between light and darkness that you can't even begin to imagine. That's why Paul says, who is sufficient for these things? But we have been only too sufficient because we have not seen the magnitude of what our every moment entails, and we have become play actors. And it's become theatrical, and a kind of a performance orientation, and all centered in our enjoyment of it. We have not an apostolic cosmic view of the significance of the church and what we are about in God. If we did, we would be filled with trembling and say, with Paul himself, who is sufficient for these things? Only one, the risen, ascended son of God. And you know what the good news is? That he's not asking us to tough it out in ourselves, out of our well-meaning intention, or virtuosity, or comprehension of the scripture, or personal courage. He's called us to that which is beyond ourselves, that we would be cast upon him as the necessary source of all of our being, our speaking, our doing. Do you like that kind of life? He'll not allow another to touch his glory. And as Paul says, at the conclusion of that glorious chapter, Romans 11, on the mystery of Israel and the church, for of him, and through him, and to him, are all things to whom be glory forever. You dear saints, would to God I would topple off this platform and dissolve in saliva on the floor before you, just for that one statement. But you have dismissed it, shallowly and casually, as being only a little piece of biblical rhetoric. Paul, just flashing a little play on words. This is the issue of glory forever. Our involvement, our participation with him in the last day's design of God, particularly as it pertains to the people of Israel, who are at the threshold of the greatest crisis of their national and global existence, for which most will not survive, is the greatest issue before the church of the last days. And if we are not to that people, what we ought in that crisis, there'll be no Jewish survival at all. And if there's no Jewish survival, it's not, well, pity about that, too bad. They were interesting and nice to have around. If there's no Jewish survival, there's no return to Zion. There's no redeemed of the Lord to return to Zion. Therefore, the Lord remains contained in the heavens, but that's exactly what he was waiting for. That he might come as king of the Jews and operate and function from the holy throne of David in the city of Zion for the redeemed nation, and through the redeemed nation to all nations, that they would study war no more. And you are non-confessmentus. What is he saying? That's why you are at a lesser level. And when I say you, I don't mean you, I mean those who are not in this room, who are hearing the tape. You're at the level of sentimental affiliation with present state of Israel. You're at the level of well-meaning intention. You're at the level of desiring that they would somehow succeed. After all, don't they deserve a homeland after all of these years of being in exile and suffering in other nations? That's the level of those who are still at the religious and human plane. But if you're in the resurrection reality, you'll see altogether differently what the issue of Israel represents for the church. And one that we cannot meet out of our own and best well-meaning intentions, but only out of his inexhaustible and illimitable and undefeatable, I can't think of enough adjectives, life. His life is eternal, indestructible. And it's given to us that as he lived from the father, so ought we also to live through him now. That's how you can be 73 and be in the good shape that I'm in. That's how you can enter the rest of God and labor from nation to nation and trying circumstance to trying circumstance and stay up on planes for nine hours and five hours of waiting at this airport and that and get up on the platform upon arrival and something issues from you that is holy because he's tireless. He never intended that we should live in strain to somehow serve him. It's nice, but it's not glorious. And he has made provision in his death and his resurrection and ascension that we might live through him. There's only one catch to it. We have to forfeit that source of life by which we have been living up to now. Our own humanity has to be brought to the place of extinction. It had to be that for him. What was the day for Jesus when he was declared a son? Romans 1, 4 tells us what that day is. And it's the day that the Lord waits for us. Because in that day in verse 4 of Romans 1, he was declared to be the son of God. What? Wasn't he always the son of God? Yes. He was the son of God from eternity. He was the son of God before he was ever incarnate. But he came into a designation, a role, an identification that the world itself and the powers of darkness were required to recognize that had everything to do with his ascension to Zion and to the throne and to the authority of God over nations. And that day was the day in which it says that with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. When did the father declare the decree in Psalm 2 that this day thou art my son, I have begotten thee? Was it the day of Jesus' conception? Was it the day of the nativity of Jesus in Bethlehem? Or was it the day of his resurrection from the dead? The issue of sonship is the issue of resurrection. If it was that issue for him, it's that issue for us. And until we meet that death, which is the end of our human and religious aspiration and desire to serve God out of ourselves and too often to be found serving God and to be recognized serving God while our ego is still alive and still is configured with our service for God it's not yet priestly. It's ambitious. It's promotional. It requires tactics and organization and system and various things by which we are going to do for God if this happens and you pray for me and God gives me that. That's religion, folks. That's Babylon. It may offer a modicum of blessing in the mercy of God but it will not fulfill his last days things that pertain to his glory forever. For that which is of him must be fulfilled through him that it might be to him as glory forever. Believest thou these things? Or does your believing wait upon a resurrection faith? That you can't even believe what I'm saying or be gripped by it so long as you are still at that other plateau, that other level of human well-meaning intention that is religious, that is charismatic, that is... You hear it but you don't hear it. Even to hear this and receive this as an ultimate statement of God from the supreme apostle requires itself a resurrection hearing, a resurrection faith. For only a resurrection faith is so jealous for his glory that it will not seek, even if it could, to perform it out of its own unaided human ability. It is willing to be weak. It is willing to be scorned. It is willing to be a byword, a hiss, a proverb, a shambles unless there is a resurrection from the dead. It trusts everything in that life that was raised from the dead as being now your source also. I will declare the decree in Psalm 2. The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth. For I have set my king upon the holy hill of Zion. This is more than I can untangle and exposit. That somehow the issue of sonship, the issue of resurrection is the issue of Zion, the issue of government, the issue of rule, the issue of the kingdom. We can talk about kingdom till we're blue in the face, but we'll not attain to it, for it waits upon sons of the resurrection. Jesus himself being the first patterned son and God the Father bringing many sons to glory according to that same pattern and that same mode through resurrection. I woke up this morning with something in my spirit and I didn't know where to find it in the scriptures, but a brother found it for me in Psalm 87. I'll just read it quickly. You can make a note and look at it at your leisure. His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of the old city of God. I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me. Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia, this man was born there. And of Zion it shall be said, this and that man was born in her, and the highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count when he writes up the people that this man was born there. As well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there. All my springs are in thee. I'm waiting for that worship in which all its springs will be in thee. There's worship in worship, dear saints, and it's more than musicality, it's more than well-meaning intention, it's more than rehearsal, it's more than giving it your best shot. There's a worship that yet waits, that issues when its springs are in thee. I was sharing with someone that the remarkable sisters of Mary in Darmstadt, Germany, in their mother's chapel, in their services, you'll never find a worship team in front of you. You'll only find them behind you. You'll never see them, you'll only hear their voices. Something happens when you're here on platform. It's involuntary, inexorable, unavoidable. You become a performer. You're being looked at, you've got to look beatific, you've got to look rapturous, you've got to look like you're just about to be carried away in your ecstatic devotion to the Lord. But if you're behind us rather than in front of us, and had no necessity to exhibit that external thing, what would you be showing? How deep, in fact, is your ecstatic relationship with the Lord? How much are you a worshiper before you even pick up your instrument? Do you know what I mean? The whole of our Christianity is being played out at a lesser level. And we're satisfied with it because it's for our purpose, and our enjoyment, and our satisfaction. There was a nice meeting, we enjoyed the speaker, the worship was great. But what had it to do with the glory of God and the fulfillment of His purposes that consummate in His coming His kingdom and His glory? That is beyond anything that we could perform. And the source of that has got to be that it has its springs in thee. The good news is not just that we have been saved from sin. Great as that is, the good news is that not only we are saved out of death and out of sin, but God has given us another life. And Luther called it the Freulicher Wechsel, for you German-speaking saints, which means the happy exchange. Luther gave up his rags. Hey, they were pretty impressive, theologically and religiously, in order to obtain the life of the resurrected Son of God. That's a pretty good deal. But how many of you have made the transaction and are living through Him, for Him, unto Him, as glory forever? That is the definitive call of the faith. The pity is that the Church itself is living beneath it, and much prefers the other, because the other gives you the opportunity to shine. You can show your spirituality, your ecstatic responses, your multiple altar calls, your tears, and summer comes and passes, and they are not yet saved. There's a day will come, and that day could be today. That's the heck of it. Today could be the day where the Lord will declare the decree, this day, Thou art my Son. And from this day on, you'll need ask me nothing, because the me that asks, the you that asks, no longer is. You're in me, and I in you, and your thought is my thought, and the disposition of my spirit is your disposition, and my subject is your subject, and your presentation is my presentation. You don't have to ask, Lord, if you'll only help me, then I will do this for you. There's no you to do. There's a union. The fancy word in Greek is theosis. And a wonderful text, and there are other places that show it, is, for example, Ezekiel 37, the Valley of Dry Bones, which is yet future and before us, where God, who is in process even now of bringing Israel to a death. Don't think that its afflictions are going to cease. Don't think that these human bombs are going to end. They're going to go off now in New York, and Chicago, and Los Angeles, and other places, and other nations where Jewish populations are. There are candidates, there are Islamic candidates to be those bombs everywhere in the world. We're only at the beginning of Jewish suffering. The end is not remedy. The end is a death of a nation, its own aspirations, its own hope in itself. See how the drama is being played out at two levels. Israel, who is the exemplification, the personification of man in his own ability and resource seeking to establish a state in a barren, malarial wasteland, and nearly succeeding by Jewish ability and prowess, only that in the process of the grasping and of the attainment of the land, they happen to chafe the neighbors who have had centuries of existence before them in it, and set in motion conflict and tensions that finally brought their neighbors to suicidal dispositions in which the parents rejoice if their children go off as bombs. Israel has never had to face a problem like this and an enemy like that. And they're facing it because God himself is the author of their distress. This is what happens. This is the inevitable consequence of men or nations that seek to establish, independent of God, their own destiny. The end is tragic. The end is death. And Israel is being brought to that death. But it's not the last word. God's going to send a prophet. He's going to command the prophet to speak to those bones that they might live. And you know what the heck of it is? You guys are that prophet. Lord, give me resurrection faith to believe this, that one day a word will come from you when the Lord will command it as one voice and one utterance and one faith and one agreement to those bones, and you'll not balk because they are as dry as dust and evidently hopeless. You'll have the faith of the Son of God to believe even the resurrection for desiccated bones. And not only will you have a faith to believe for it, you'll have the love to accompany the faith, which is not your schmaltzy little sentimental feeling for Jews now. That's the very thing to which you need to die. That's what's obstructing the unconditional love of God, is your sentiment, your human equivalent of the divine reality that alone makes faith to work by love. Got the idea? God's got all his eggs in one basket. If you guys don't come through on resurrection ground, Israel remains in her death. Not enough to be well-meaning and kindly intentioned and affectionate and you love Jews. I don't. What is there about them that's so lovable? Except the love of God that is unconditional. Because it's what he is, not what they are. He's a lover. Or all of us would be without hope. But here's the remarkable thing. God will bring the church against its own unwillingness, against its own intractability. It likes to stay at the plateau where it is, charismatically. But the hand of the Lord comes upon the prophet. And the Spirit of God brings him out from Charismatica and down and into the valley of dry bones themselves. We don't want to see the grisly death of Israel. We want to stay up there and think of other alternatives and avoid having to deal with truth. But nevertheless, God brings the prophet down and even taunts him. Son of man. Notice the emphasis on man. You sweaty, palpitating and ultimately incapable entity, however well-meaning and however even much you are, have a prophetic calling? Can these bones live? Have you a prophetic faith to believe for their resurrection? Or have I brought the nation to a place beyond your own capacity to believe for them? And I have done that not only for them, I've done it also for you. Because I'm after not only their restoration, I'm after your glorification. I'm not satisfied with your present faith. And I've got to bring you to a place beyond your charismatic and evangelical ability to believe. That unless God is God who raises the dead, there's no hope. And what's more, He's got to raise them through you. When you prophesy, when you're commanded, that's going to take a lot of dying to self. To, I don't know that I'm capable. I don't know if I feel spiritual in that moment when I'm called to prophesy. I don't know that I can be in agreement with all the other saints to be of one mind and one heart and one soul to prophesy when He commands it. I don't know. That's the problem. But God has an answer. It's the cross. And when He brings the prophet to that place whose prophetic word raises the nation, God says to Israel in verse 14, after He says, I have taken you out of your graves and shall put my spirit in you and you shall live. And I shall place you in your own land. Not you. You took a shot at it. But look at the consequence. But I shall place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it, saith the Lord. Now wait a minute, Lord. You've just spent the whole chapter telling us the Son of Man has spoken and performed this. How shall you say now to Israel that you shall know in that day that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it? Isn't there a contradiction? No, there's only an ultimate paradox that what the prophet has spoken God says, I have spoken. You know why? You can't tell where the prophet ends and God begins. Can't He tell where you end and where He begins? Or have you ended? He doesn't begin until you have ended. And so long as you're willing to go on out of your own humanity, out of your own religiosity, out of your own well-meaning intentions, He still waits. The day has not come that He can declare Thou art my Son. We have a Father's Day. There's a Father's Day that's real waiting. It's when sons can be declared by the Father, who have no life unto themselves, nor for themselves, and do not operate out of themselves, but live out of His life and in union with Him. Believe that such a thing is possible? And that's what glorified Jesus and that that provision is made available to us also? Are you living that life now? As Will Chambers asks, if not, why shouldn't you? After all, every provision has been made by His death, burial, and ascension by which you can join Him through baptism unto eternal life and live out of the eternal life presently. When once you submit, he says, to the life of Jesus, the understanding will be perfectly clear. You will get to the place where there's no distance between the Father and His Child because the Lord has made you one and in that day you shall ask me no question. Nothing more gratifies the Father than this coming of age of His sons. God forbid that the holy word sonship should become idle prattle, a catch word for the presumptuous and immature who in their boasting and self elevation are farthest from what they presume to celebrate. That's distinctively odd cats out of the life of God. Sonship has been made a little catch word. It's a little gimmicky innovative thing that has a certain ring to it that the shallow who are still living in their own life like to exercise and divorce. It's not a cute thing as something to paddle over. It's an exalted and ultimate condition of being sons of God, bringing many sons to glory who are in the same union with the Father as Jesus was through Jesus who is in us and who is our life, our being, our energy, our thought, our speech, our all. This day I will declare the decree. I have begotten thee. I have received you on the one grounds alone by which that decree can be declared. Resurrection out of death. So I'm writing little notes. This is a little gift edition given me with plenty of room to scribble. The child is eager to serve and to be seen serving. You ever watch children wanting so much to catch the attention and favor of their parents or adults? It's cute. But that's children. They need that kind of affirming of adults. Pat on the little back and how darling they are as they want so much to find favor with their parents or with other adults to win the approval of God and men and obtain self-esteem and even very identity as a child of God. A child is defined by its relationship with adults and with parents and the esteem and the recognition that comes from them when they perform in a certain way to obtain that kind of recognition. But the father waits for the dissolving of that distinction, the union with himself by the willing forsaking and the giving up unto death of the child life. Many children but few sons. Many wanting to do for God and to be seen doing. But where are those who want to be dissolved into God and into the Father and obtain that wonderful word sonship, sons this day I have declared the decree. Your childishness is over. You have no purpose unto yourself, for yourself, independent of me or to find an identity or a recognition. It was impressive beyond all speaking. But no way to extract that content without dashing to pieces the box itself. It's an irretrievable loss that cannot be taken back again. And we are that alabaster box. We want to serve God but we want to serve him out of that box. We want that box to be our identification, our recognition, our esteem. But it's the life in the box that has got to go forth and there's no cap to screw off. There's no little squisher that you can press. It requires the absolute demolition of the handsome thing that frames the life itself. And when that box was broken and that content gushed out, the whole room was filled with the fragrance. God is waiting that fragrance in the church. But he did not himself commandeer the box. He waited for a woman to come. Why a woman? Because a woman is the statement of ultimate consecration. Who'll move through something in which she knows she'll not be understood and she'll call upon herself the reprimand of those disciples who'll say couldn't that have been sold and the money given to the poor? She'll face all of that reproach because her devotion is of such a kind that she knows cannot be measured out by teaspoons but requires the full and the whole statement of the life poured out and the alabaster box with it. I think when that box broke and that room filled with the fragrance of the ointment which Jesus carried with him into burial resurrection and ascension, we might have heard the voice of the father saying this day this woman has been begotten of me, a daughter of God. She has given the last thing that has kept her in any separation from me, that distinction of the box itself and has poured out not under the content but the form. And that's what Jesus did at the cross. That's why he said that what this woman has done shall be spoken as a memorial for her wherever the gospel shall be proclaimed in all the world. For what she has done exemplifies what the gospel is. It's waiting for the giving over of a life, not in its hangups and its demerits and difficulties but at its best the life in the beautiful box well sculpted, carefully attended that we want to keep because it has every appearance of being serviceable but God waits for that last thing and that's what fills the room. That's what gives him to make that great statement that he made of no other act that no man performed in his earthly tenure. This good thing that this woman has done, this good work is a totality that God waits for that we have been shy in giving. That's why we want to keep our life and serve him yet also out of it. It's nice, it's like a child and we can receive a compliment and it does a bit of good but it falls short of the glory. I'm looking at a little article by T. Austin Sparks entitled Resurrection the Hallmark of Sonship in which he says Adam failed and had opportunity to enter into a sonship relationship with the father which he failed through disobedience and God sent the second Adam even Jesus to succeed where the former one had failed and to succeed not only for himself but all of the sons that will follow him in the pattern which he himself establishes unto glory. He went to the cross as representative of the whole race to meet the final consequences of that lost sonship and he had to suffer at the cross not only the taunts and mocks of men and the physical anguish of that ultimate suffering but the abandonment of the father himself. My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me was something that had to be born as the very essence of the death that Jesus had to bear and to taste. Somehow in what seems to be a separation from God in the deepest solace and comfort that a son would desire when he is suffering for the father is the very thing that's denied him. He had to experience the sense of the absence of the father at that most crucial moment when you would have think that he would have obtained it. And the willingness to bear that is the very thing that is the death into which he passed and was raised by the father from that death as the acceptance of the father for that willing suffering. I think there will be something like that for us that we have come to a place however much we would desire the sense of God's presence at crucial moments, it will not be there. But the knowledge that I'll never leave you nor forsake you has got to sustain us in crisis times. When men came to Minnesota to give us a conference on how to invoke the presence of God by worship, if you'll sing this or you'll do this you can actually bring his presence. I couldn't sit through that. I had to get up and say, listen, you would do us much better service not to teach us how to manipulate God through worship, but how to be obedient to God in the sense of his absence. That is the more likely thing that we will have to experience as sons in the last days. And yet bear it. And that somehow something is forged in that dealing with God. It's something like that through which Israel is soon to pass, where God will forsake the nation and hide his face from them. At their greatest time of crisis where is he? Where was he at the Nazi time? Where will he be at the time of Jacob's trouble? It is part of their chastisement, part of their penalty, part of the father's necessary dealing in the preparation of a son is to deny even the sense of himself at a time when the son most desperately needs it. And later on when the work has been accomplished through it, when the chastisement has been received, as I say in my holocaust book, the son broken and shattered by the depth of things which it must suffer in the path to sonship with the father, comes and lays its head upon the shoulder of the father and weeps its heart out because what the father has done in his chastisement and the actual withholding of his own presence is uttermost love. It was needed that the child could come into sonship. It was needed to wean the child from the dependency of having to feel something in order to be faithful or obedient. And God did not withhold the absence of himself though it was ultimate suffering. He allowed the child to bear it and in the bearing of it the quality and character of a son is formed. It's the very thing that we have withheld from our own children. We have been unwilling to chastise them and allow them to suffer the pain of chastisement as being the very expression of uttermost love. Because when the child recognizes that the beating that he has received has been deserved and the father has not withheld the fullness of it, the rigor of it, something rises in the consciousness that this is love of an ultimate kind that could never be expressed by go buy yourself a new car or rollerblades or any that the greatest love is expressed in chastisement of a father who will not withhold the pain, who feels it more even than the son and weeps even as he has to afflict it but does not withhold. And when the son when the child recognizes what the father is in his love and is bonded with him in that moment when they weep together over what they have passed through together something happens in the recognition of the father that establishes the son. There's no sonship independent of the recognition of the father as father. So long as we are soft and indulgent and sparing and sentimental and looking the other way and withholding necessary chastisement we cheat our children from growing up into the maturity of sons that they can only obtain when they recognize in the father's love that chastises what a father is that they might be a son like unto the father. That's the mystery, that's the faith, that's what Jesus suffered and that's what we withhold because the flesh wants to shrink from it. Sonship has now come onto a new ground of resurrection. Everything begins with the father the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ which is seen in the light of the cross. This they have begotten thee speaks of a beginning not only of the eternal son, not of Christ as the son of God but the beginning of the son of man of the last Adam and of sonship for man in him. Sonship is ours in Christ. The first son is the patterned son and we are all being called according to that pattern that many sons might be brought to glory. What should we say about a son? A son doesn't need to be patted on the back. A son doesn't need to receive immediate gratification. A son doesn't have to even hear well done. Now good and faithful servant. He can hear it at the end of his life of service and yet know that it will come and be sufficient motivation now for service to the uttermost. He doesn't need to be patted. He doesn't need to be comforted and as I heard in prophecy in the call that came to me to New York don't expect gratification. Don't expect results. Don't expect appreciation. Don't you expect it when Jews come breaking through into Montana and Idaho and all the distant places in which God will sift them in the wilderness sectors of the world. They'll not be grateful. They'll be disdainful. They'll be mean spirited. They'll speak ugly things and if that's the way they're going to be well then tough on them. I'm not going to extend mercy. That's because you need gratification. Because you need to be acknowledged. You need to be rewarded. But those who can extend mercy not having to receive the reward of gratitude are sons. And when they'll see your sonship they will recognize the father. But you'll not come to that in a moment if you'll not come to it now. You don't need reward. You don't need recognition. A son doesn't need it. The father is himself the reward. The service is its own reward. Then you can send this into hard places where we'll have to look into the stony faces of men who are shrieking and screaming at us such names and such horrible epithets as I have heard already in my relationship with my own people. Hitler only sought to destroy our bodies. You seek to destroy our souls. You're worse than Hitler. Can you take that without flinching? Can you stand in the face of accusations like that? You're like a pin cushion and you know that you can't get a word in edgewise to these Jewish people who look upon you as a flunky, as a paid missionary. Why else would you become a Christian in their understanding? And seek to, quote, convert them. And you want to say, well listen, I'm not associated with the Crusaders and I'm not associated with the Spanish Inquisition. I represent another strand, a stream of... There's no time for explanation. They have got to disgorge. They've got to empty out their venom, their vitriolic hatred that has been centuries in the making. You can't get a word in edgewise until they have exhausted that whole reservoir of prejudice, of fear, of hatred, of every kind of thing that Satan has sought to establish in them in the misuse and the perversion of the name of Jesus. And you've got to bear that and receive that before you can get a word in, if indeed you'll get a word in at all. In fact, the very willingness to bear that without getting a word in is the greater testimony to the God whom you serve and represent than any clever thing that you could say. They don't need four spiritual laws, one more than everyone else, so five spiritual laws. They need the manifestation of the Son of God in those who live for Him, by Him, through Him, and unto Him. Because the day has come in which the Father declares the decree, and He knows when to declare it. This day I have forgotten you. It waits for a moment. It waits for an actual resurrection, which waits for an actual giving over of the life. And I'm going to give you that opportunity this afternoon, and that's why I said if you come to that invitation, you need not ever again come to any. You don't need to come to invitations to be restored in the faith, renewed in the faith. A dead man who is in the resurrection life doesn't need those things. That's yet for those who are on the other side of resurrection, that need again and again and again and again to receive this, to receive that, for they live as separate entities from God, who always need this measure, that measure, that they will receive if they come to the altar, come to the ministry of that one who calls them. It's a once and for all. And it need not be repeated. This day I have declared the decree, and I've set you on the holy hill of Zion. Now that you're a son, you can be trusted even with the government of God. Now you can be trusted with the issues of the kingdom. Before, I allowed you to play around with this and with that, but for the ultimate thing, sonship alone was the entry. Only a son could be trusted, for his whole life is disposed to the honor and the glory of the Father. He doesn't give a rat if he's misunderstood, if he's called names or whatever. It's for the Father, the union with the Father, his purposes. That's the whole purpose for all being. God waits for sons, and he'll not accomplish his end time purposes independent of them. And that's why I flinch and chafe when I have to pass through conferences and meetings where instead of seeing God's people brought to the ultimate maturity of sons, I see them encouraged in their flesh and in their souls to continue in another lesser place that will need again and again to be met at the altar, to be encouraged, and gives us every justification for more conferences, more this, more that, more that, and more ministries. I don't see the call to sonship because where is the minister who can call who has himself in that place? How can we call others to the place which we have not ourselves attained? And so long as we are alive to our ambition, our ministries, what we're going to do, if only you pray, if only you serve, if only you give, we're not in the place of sonship. The son is dead to his own interest for himself, his ministry, his calling. If I don't go to New York as a dead man, there's no point in going. What are they looking for? Another Jewish virtuoso? Am I going to match wits with them? They'll blow me out of the picture with their erudition and their skill and their centuries of the preparation of their objection to the gospel. But they'll not blow the Son of God away. They'll not blow away his love. They'll not blow away his wisdom. One look, one gesture, one word. Their hearts will burn within them. And this sonship Spock says is something which has to be borne out in a continuous process. A sonship that is something which relates to the whole life of the believer in a practical way of expression. It's not just a title. So that in as much as it is inseparably bound up with resurrection, as is the case with the Lord Jesus, it demands a constant experience of his resurrection and power. For me to live as Christ is a moment by moment appropriation of that life because you have ceased from yourself. And I can tell you from my experience, you'll have always the choice before you in any given moment whether to meet that moment out of yourself or out of the life. If you meet it out of yourself, you can guarantee this, you'll be saved from embarrassment. You've met the requirement of the moment so your reputation can continue. He'll give you that option. But if you cease to live out of your human inability, sufficient for yourself and trust his life, there will be a response and an answer of another kind. A life-giving kind that has not to do with saving your face from embarrassment, but bringing life to that one who was a scoffer and a doubter and was resisting the very living God himself. It's a moment by moment. This thing of sonship is not some automatic stamp and you're finished. Yes, there is a moment of transaction, but then a continual choosing and living from that life that you have affected by faith and bringing to the deaf that alabaster box. At any moment you can go back to it and we're continually faced with that. We can speak appropriately and please men or we can trust God and risk everything and we're going to be brought moment by moment to those occasions in the call to be the sons and daughters of God. And I can tell you that when I was that human pin cushion at City College in New York, when those rabbis with their nicely tailored Van Dyke beards and erudition rose to their full dignity and let me have it full blast, I was the most pitiable object that you could imagine. And I had no clever thing to answer them. These charges and these men stalking out and slamming the door behind them, their heels registering on the floor that shook the building in power and authority and this weak pitiful thing who thought to bring the message to City College of New York, the first gospel outreach in its history, failed. Though I had been up all the night before fastings, days and weeks and months in advance of that one great outreach. And when it came, pitiful, weak, inept and they were the ones that were strong. They were the ones that were impressive. They were powerful. They were authoritative. And I didn't even choke. I just stood there. Boom, boom. They were letting me have it from every side. Up, one down. Up, down. One side, down the other. And you know what the death was? Not the humiliation of being unable to give answer to Jews at crisis moment because their life was not giving the answer. Their life was bidding me be silent and bear it. But the greatest death was not from my Jewish kinsmen. It was from Christians. You would have seen their faces. Cats, we had thought it was you who would have restored the glory of God at City College. We had heard what happened through you at Yale University and Harvard and those universities overseas and your own alma mater at Berkeley. But you're a total dud and a failure. Don't you know about prayer? Haven't you ever heard of fasting? That's what their faces. Their faces were an indictment and a condemnation at my failure. That's death, saints. And what makes it double death is you're not able to answer them and you're not able to explain to them because God has not explained to you. Willing to bear that? Only a son will. And you go home with your tail between your legs licking your wounds for three weeks licking your wounds and letting the devil have a field day. Whoever said that you were a university speaker, you failed wretchedly. You don't have enough to lick at the back of a stamp your presumption, your pride. That's right. That's right. And then a phone call comes with a thin, frail voice. Mr. Katz? Yes? I'm a Jewish woman and I have some questions to ask about your faith. Could I come over? I said, lady, can't you find anyone better? So she came over. She was more dead than alive. I mean, just skin and bones. She looked like a concentration camp inmate. One foot already in the grave, chain smoking, asking me questions. And the last question was what must I do to be saved? So like my 96-year-old mother a year ago January, she took my hand and followed me word for word in a prayer to receive the Lord. And she passed from death to life, visibly. She's in eternity. And she became an evangelist in her apartment house in Queens, going with tracks from floor to floor, proclaiming the Lord. A Jewish widow. And so I'm putting her coat on her little shoulders, and I said, by the way, I said, how did you know to come to me? Oh, didn't I tell you, Mr. Katz? No. My son was at the city college meeting three weeks ago. And he came home with your book, Ben Israel, which is in the room today. Classic. Journal of an atheist. It's not written by a believer. It's an atheist journal being apprehended by God. It's, it's, it's, oh. She said he brought his book, your book. And he said, Mommy, said, a man came to the school today. I've never seen anything like it, he said. He stood in the midst of these people who were outraged and vexed and, and, and spitting out of the corners of their mouth and coming upon him like gangbusters. And the man just stood there and took that terrible abuse without saying a word. And I've never seen anything like that, Mom. So she said, so I read your book and I have these questions. Hey, all that suffering and multiple deaths for one little woman whose elbows are coming out of her skin? Yes. And I'll tell you what, dear saints, a son does not even require one little woman getting saved. He doesn't require anything. He doesn't require any proof, any gratification, any verification, any sign of the father saying, well done, my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased. Because the father did not tell me anything. It was a sense of aloneness, the absence of God at the crisis moment when they needed his encouragement desperately. He withheld it. Are you willing to be a son? Are you willing to be a son? Huh? That you can doubtless go back and return and carry sheaves with you, with singing and with rejoicing in the place that you thought you had failed? I'm going back to those places. As a son who doesn't need to be gratified by evident appearance of success, even today. So this truth of sonship needs to be freshly demonstrated again and again, manifested on the same ground by which it was obtained, that is resurrection. And here's what I wrote. That wherever and to whatever extent resurrection is expressed, there and to that degree, will the character of a son be expressed also. No resurrection, no sonship. Wherever resurrection as reality is expressed through willing death, moment by moment, in that place and in that moment, the son is also expressed. Sonship is not some little cat in a bag. It's not some little category. It's not an appellation or title. It's a reality moment by moment. And so far as his resurrection is being made manifest through your death, it's the faith. So sonship is eminently intrinsic to resurrection in itself. The two are inseparable. To say the one is to say the other. No resurrection, no sonship. Sonship is inherent in resurrection itself. That's why God can declare the decree in the day that Jesus was raised from the dead by the Holy Spirit. For it is for it has brought the full recognition of God as Father and ourselves therefore as sons. It is in that identity that we become overcomers, defeating the powers, manifesting the character which is the wisdom of God. The issue of sonship is the issue of the defeat of the powers of the air. Through the manifold wisdom of God demonstrated through the church that has come to the place of maturity. Living by another wisdom, not the wisdom of the world that needs gratification and recognition, but the wisdom and character of God that can bear scorn, neglect, rejection, misunderstanding, and yet be obedient and yet be faithful. When the powers see that, they're finished. You know why? There's nothing that they can play upon. How are they going to traduce us or to exploit us or to take advantage of us and appeal to our flesh and our concern for our name, our reputation, our honor, or any such thing? A dead man cannot be appealed to. They're finished. They can't play upon anything. They have... Jesus made of them an open spoil and he disarmed them and all they have done since the cross of 2,000 years ago is to intimidate and threaten and bring people to fear for their flesh and for their life, for their honor, for their name, for their security. But if you're dead to all those things, how can they have anything to play upon you? They are finally extinguished as the powers of this earth and the false rulers of this world and swept away as the debris and clutter that counts for nothing so that the kingdom might come. The issue of resurrection is the issue of sonship, is the issue of the defeat of the powers, is the issue of the kingdom come. That's why it's worth all suffering and all giving over of our life, not just our hang-ups, but the best of what we have and are. It's the end of sentimentality and self-sparing, cross-denying self-love that keeps from our children the chastisement that they ought to receive from fathers as the ultimate statement of love by which they recognize in that true fatherhood what it means to be a son. Sparks talks about the children that were born to Isaiah as signs and wonders for Israel and he even plays upon that that it's a statement of the children that become signs and wonders in Israel as sons. However gloomy, however intimidating and discouraging things are, especially in our relationship with Israel and with Jews, we know that God's answer is in his sons and in the victory of resurrection life. It's the bonding, the union of father and son from which our self-pity and sentimentality would keep Israel and keep ourselves. We would rather see Israel succeed by her own prowess and her own ability than she should be allowed to come into a place of death that God would necessarily have to raise her. Because the success of Israel as a nation-state is not the issue of Israel. The issue of Israel is the issue of a transcendent, glorified, resurrected nation who will become a nation of priests and a light unto the world. For priesthood is sonship and sonship is resurrection. But why then are we willing to encourage Israel to succeed now, humanly? Because we have not understood the glory and the suffering that must precede it. Israel is called to sonship. The first use of the word son in Exodus chapter 4 is the description of Israel. Israel must be to the nations the exemplification of the Father in revealing Him as sons. And they cannot attain to that sonship any more or less than we except the resurrection out of death. Israel and Jewry is the best in man but it falls short of the glory. And it's that best which has to be forsaken and given over in death at the cross that the Lord might declare unto them, I have forgotten you. Thou art my son. Thou art my daughter. And I have given you the heathen and the nations for your inheritance. I couldn't entrust you with it before. Before your self-interest and your desire for good meetings and a successful conference would have corrupted it. But our sons and daughters who have no desire and the word of success is not even in their vocabulary, only the word glory. Now you can be entrusted with the issues of the kingdom and the issues of government, the issues of rule, the issues of church. It's a father's day that God is wanting for his own heart who has waited long and if I had been chafed in these days at this conference and the meetings and some of the aspects of it, how much has the father been chafed as he looks over Christendom and sees our well-meaning intentions, our fun and games, our sound and fury that signify nothing, that leaves us in the place of immaturity, soulishness, self-interest and ambition. Talking about delivering from Babylon when we ourselves are more reinforced in that Babylon through our own ambition and the need for success as entities separate from God if he will do for us. So I'm going to give you an invitation that need not ever again be repeated. A once and for all the bringing of the alabaster box. Not the worst you have, the best you have. And all that you were saving up to use for God. If only he would give you ability, strength, encouragement and all the kinds of things that would allow you to remain as an entity separate from and independent of him. God is after union. That we might be one as he is one is not some simpatico relationship of separate entities but a bonding and a union of one with the other where you can't tell where the prophet ends and God begins. Like that, it's your call, it's your privilege. He waits for you to take hold on the grounds that he's made available for the death and resurrection of Jesus. That he might declare the decree to the powers of the air. You will no longer look down upon my son, my pastor, my servants, my daughters as being trivial and inconsequential and in whose faces you can yawn. These are now the sons and daughters of the living God to whom I am entrusting my authority and my power and my rulership over nations. Fear and tremble for what they are is me. You can't tell where they end and I begin. And I know you're terrified of me for I am God and the indestructible life against which you have no provision at all. So in Jesus' name, you dear saints, historic moment for you, you for the church whose time has come, where God who has winked in times past and has allowed us the enjoyment of some lesser kind of activity and involvement which we have enjoyed and which has been some measure of benefit and blessing but yet falls short of the glorious thing. I've winked in times past, I've allowed you that, but now I'm calling you totally and absolutely to the cross, an end of yourself that if there's no resurrection you are the most person to be pitied. You'll no longer be able to do your Israeli worship and the other kinds of things that delighted others and delighted yourself. You can do nothing without me. My words are your words. My thoughts are your thoughts. The impulse and disposition of my heart and spirit is yours. You live for no other thing. You have no other source. He is the ever-living source. He is the springs of life and when those springs of life take possession of our worship we will hear something of another kind and we'll go right up to very heaven itself and gladden the heart of the Father and not just be the issue of our enjoyment or our release. I invite you to come. Lord, don't make your servant a fool. You said that you would honor my God our prayers. I'm asking you to honor this invitation once and for all and never again to be repeated. They don't have to come for a future shot in the arm or an encouragement as if they are entities outside from you needing some assistance that they can continue to help you and do for you. That day is past. If you are not their life they're dead men and women. They have no capacity for anything but if you are their life their thought the very impulse of their hearts the very disposition of their spirits their courage, their love they don't have to phony it up they don't have to fabricate something for the Jews they can't help themselves for your love for that people is their love and your faith for their resurrection is their faith so Lord bless every one of these children bless every one of these children who have come in sincerity the measure of sincerity that they have and say enough is enough already I'm tired of up one day and down the next. I'm tired of being titillated and exercising and being stirred up in my emotion and then to face the drab realities of my life back home and let the momentary thing dissipate from my fingers I want the continuous operation of the resurrected life of the Son of God that is indestructible and is not just for great moments it's for every moment for every moment in Christ is a great moment bless these children Lord whatever their age, whatever their background, whatever their history the young ones, the old ones, the grey heads give them my God, life the life of the Son of God come into them my God in union because you have recognized their death and therefore their resurrection therefore you can declare the decree this day I have begun you need not ask me any more questions Lord I need this, I need that, what about it's like talking to yourself for you're in God and you're in Him. You live and move and have your being. Precious God bless these children bring them out of charismatica, bring them out of evangelicalism, bring them out of Babylon in any shape and form bring them into union with the most high God, the living God, who is the eternal fountain of life the springs of life for worship, for service, for proclamation for courage, for anything in which you will bring us we bless you Lord for so great a provision you could not have given us more this is the good news and we receive it establish it and seal it my God. Though these children will be tested even before this day is out, whether they're going to move and live and have their being in you and allow your life to answer for that moment that they'll choose to be dead and hid with God and Christ until or they'll move habitually back into themselves and be adequate and say the nice thing, the right thing and get by a pox on getting by. Give them my God a hatred for mere human success and a love and a jealousy for God and for His glory that makes us willing fools that we will not condescend back again into our own inadequate humanity however well meaning, but we'll believe and we'll draw from that endless flow of the life of God the springs that are inexhaustible in whatever form it pleases you to give it and to express it whether it gratifies us or not. We'll be fools Lord we'll have no answer unless you give answer and we'll live whatever your answer is however much it makes us shamefaced. We don't have to be clever Thank you Lord. Bless these children. Bless these children. Seal this my God. A moment whose time has come and you've made every provision at the cross for death, resurrection ascension, sonship These are the sons and the daughters of God. Watch out you filthy powers of darkness you panoply of powers and principalities that have had a field day with the church and have jerked and manipulated it because you can play upon its flesh, its fear its insecurity, its desire for itself and its own gratification You're finished. You have no room with these children. They're sons and they're daughters and they cannot be played upon, they cannot be exploited They live only for the jealousy of the glory of God and they know that his life will be sufficient for their every need. Where then is fear? Where then is insecurity? Where then do we need acknowledgement from men as children who obtain a pat on the back from their elders Thank you my God. We can live even in the absence of your felt presence especially at those moments when we would think that we deserve it most when we're sticking our necks out and if only you were there to say well done go on I'm with you but you're silent and you're purposely silent because you're testing to see whether we are sons that do not need that kind of confirmation because we know the father who will never forsake us nor leave us and we don't need his felt sense of a presence. We're sons and daughters who have been brought out of immaturity and such a need We're not anymore living according to our need. For what need have we if our life and being is in him Thank you Lord. I bless these children Don't let them feel anything now except you pleases you. Don't let them measure anything now by whether they feel something they don't feel something. Let this be a transaction my God that makes the powers of darkness overhead stop their mouths. They recognize the solemnity and significance of this moment of transaction more perhaps than we and I'm asking you to seal it everyone by name. You know these children You know their calling. You know their future They can begin now to even understand it if you told them But whatever it is and however fearful, however demanding, you'll not ever face anything for which your life will not be sufficient For your life is wisdom. Your life is power. Your life is love. Your life is patience. Your life is forbearance Your life is weakness of spirit. Your life is authority. Your life is solemnity. Your life is severity when it's needed You meet all of the amplitude and the issues of life out of your life Oh thank you Lord for so great provision We bless these children Let them rise to their feet with new stature A new sense that can't even be articulated I've come into something Heaven itself recognizes it The powers of darkness I have moved from childhood into sonship I'm recognized The Father has declared the degree this day You need not ask of me anything Thank you Lord. You can be confident that your thought is my thought And if it's not, I'm well able to give you a little check and a little redirection But in the absence of that My thought is your thought. My impulse is your impulse For you have no thought for yourself You have no impulse for yourself. You're not looking out for yourself. Yourself was laid at the feet of the cross at this altar today. There's nothing that you're looking for for yourself. That's finished So then why should you doubt that whatever your thought is, whatever your disposition whatever your impulse, it's the Lord Oh glory The end of striving, the end of of wrestlings, the end of should I shouldn't I, all of those religious fits, they're gone This is the rest that God has prepared for the people of God. Enjoy it Hallelujah. Bless him He's made you, he's fitted you He's formed you, your unique vessels He wants his life to be expressed through you and through your voice through your personality The richness of the multitudinous variety of God's choosing. Hallelujah Bless these children Lord. They have got to be impactful in the localities from which they've come And it'll not be long before localities beyond that locality will equally be affected. For what shall constrain and contain the life of God And it's got to flow out copiously and out into the world dying for the want of it Bless these children, magnify their labors, give them my God rich purpose in you Bless them in that unity that can only be achieved as sons And therefore we shall in the moment that you require it prophesy as with one voice to those bones. We'll be of one mind and one heart and one soul Because we're all living by the same spirit, we're all moved by the same life and by the same wisdom and the same desire The end of individual opinions And I don't know if this is the time, I don't know if I'm in the mood I don't know if I'm spiritual enough. It's over When you'll call for it, it'll be there For the God who calls is the God