Our Father's Provision

                                                                             
In my lifetime I have never talked to as many frightened people as I have in the past three months. America is downright scared!

Builders, Wall Street professionals, retailers, executives, lawyers, small business owners are all saying the same thing: It's worse than most people know. And it's going to ge worse! We are racing toward very hard times.

No one likes to hear these kinds of reports; in fact, they can be very depressing. But the Puritans had a saying: "Our affections bribe our discernments." We all love America and our way of life, but unless we face the truth that hard times in this nation are upon us, we will never have the trust and confidence we are going to need.

Rest assured, none of this is taking Jesus by surprise. He saw it all coming. He who has numbered every hair on a person’s head and counted every fallen sparrow knew beforehand what His followers would face in the last days.

He knew where every dollar in the federal budget would go—and that your rent and taxes would escalate. He knew about every job layoff His children would face, about all your bills, even the number of children you have.

There is not one thing our blessed Savior did not know when He told us very specifically in Matthew 6:25-33: "Don't give these things a second thought. Your heavenly Father knows all about your personal needs and He will take care of you!"

You wonder how a Christian in need can give no thought to his physical condition and I say that we cannot shrink from Jesus' promise to us. His very words are eternal: "I say unto you. . . ." In fact, you can take those very words to the throne room of God and say to Jesus, “These are the red letter words: ‘I say unto you, give no thought to your needs!’”

No matter how many banks close or how long the unemployment lines grow, our Lord will be feeding the fowl of the air, dressing the lilies of the fields, and supplying the daily needs of an ocean full of fish! “Your heavenly Father feedeth them” (Matthew 6:26). Not one creature will suffer without our Lord knowing it.

Hard times will never stop our Father’s provision: “Are ye not much better than they? . . . Shall He not much more clothe you?” (Matthew 6:26, 30).

~David Wilkerson~

YOU ARE BEING TESTED

Rest assured that if you are trying to walk righteously before the Lord, you are being tested. In fact, the deeper your walk with Christ, the more intense your testing will be. Scripture makes this clear:
 
The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits~Now when they shall fall, they shall be [helped] with a little help. And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed
(Daniel 11:32-35).

A great time of testing is coming upon "those of understanding." Just who are these who will be tested? They are the righteous, those who do exploits for the Lord, who walk with God and have the wisdom of Christ.

Right now, you may be asking, "Why am I being tested? Why is this happening to me?"
 
Remember your school days? When a test in school was given, it revealed how much you had actually learned of what you had been taught. Yet Paul spoke of a different school, one where we are "learning Christ" and are "being taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus" (see Ephesians 4:20-21).

If you belong to Jesus, you are in His school. 

You may have thought you had graduated, but that will not happen until you are in glory.
 
When I was in school, I hated "pop quizzes," unannounced tests. Yet the Lord has told us to be ready to be tested at any time, and these tests will continue until Jesus returns.

All who love the Lord are going to go through fiery trials and be purged of all that is not like Christ, in preparation for the wedding of the Lamb.
 
David often spoke of being tested and tried: "I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness" (1 Chronicles 29:17). "Thou has proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me,
and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress" (Psalm 17:3).

~David Wilkersoon~

It Rains On The Just And The Unjust

                                                                            
I would be lying if I told you that Christians will observe sorrow, trouble, unemployment and depression on all sides while they themselves remain safe within a cozy cocoon of health and wealth. The Bible says God causes the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Job was holy—yet he suffered! But just as God brought Job out of his affliction, so He will bring us out even though we, too, will go through the fire.

Hundreds of ministers are meeting to pray in different cities, and the same confession is heard: "Never have so many been so deeply tested. Satan has come like a flood, with trouble, hardship, deep sorrow and pain befalling the godly."

Satan was Job's troubler and he is your troubler. Could it be that he has stood again before God and issued a great accusation against the last-days church? He might have challenged God, "It is the last hour, but You have no true church. You have no spotless bride. There are no wise virgins; in fact, most of them are asleep. Look at them—materialistic, self-centered, grasping for riches and the good life. Listen to their teachers telling them they need not suffer, that all things are theirs for the asking.

Take down Your wall of protection, God! Let me put them to the test. You won't even have a holy remnant left. I'll take away their employment. I'll smite them with sorrows. I'll pour out a spirit of fear and despondency, and flood them with temptations. You will see this last, pampered generation fold. There are no Jobs in this church. They are spiritual wimps!"

Beloved, this is why the Scripture says, "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time" (Revelation 12:12).

In the midst of your trial, some of you already have adopted the despairing language of Job. Your heart cries out, "God, what did I do wrong? I don't understand why this calamity has fallen on me when I loved You most, my walk was holy, my heart pure, and my spirit was longing after You. It seems like the closer I draw to You, the deeper I fall into trouble and the more sorrows come.”

We do not realize how important it is to God that we trust Him through all the floods of trouble that come upon us from hell. You see, the devil cannot touch you or test you unless God first lets down the wall and allows it.

~David Wilkerson~
 

A Heart's Cry

                            

Joh 17:5  And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

I think it is quite clear that the Lord Jesus carried in His heart a great longing and a prayer for the glory that He once had. This is where I think John touches this matter very closely.

In the seventeenth chapter of his gospel, he records that great prayer of the Lord Jesus: "Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" (vs. 5).

That opens a window and lets us see that the Lord Jesus had a consciousness of His eternal glory past. He carried it with Him; He knew about it – marvelous thought! – and that the consciousness of that former glory was ever prompting Him to pray toward, long toward, the day when He would return to it and it would return to Him. "Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was."

The Mount of Transfiguration had become an answer to His heart's prayer and cry and longing – at least a touch of it. A fleeting touch, but for Him it was one of those things which perhaps you know a little about in your Christian life.

The Lord just does something – it passes, but you know by it that you have been heard; you know that there is sympathy in the Father's heart for your need and situation.

It may only last for a day, or a night, for an hour, or for a little while, and then pass, because the end of the road is not yet; the eternal glory has not yet come; but the touch by the way is something that carries us on.

We know the Lord has heard; we know the Lord has taken account of that inner cry and longing, and has given us a token of His sympathy. It was like that with the Lord Jesus – the answer to His own cry.

~T. Austin Sparks~

Something That Cannot Be Rooted Up

                            
Isa 37:31  And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward:                                      

The Lord must have something which cannot be carried away, which cannot be removed, cannot be shaken, and certainly something which cannot be rooted up.

That is His remnant. That, He must have for His own glory, and, that being so, He will take every measure with His remnant to have them after that kind, with roots downward. Of course, unto fruit upward.

We speak much about the upward side of things, life in the heavenlies, sitting in the heavenlies, and our warfare and work – the fruitfulness of our life in union with the Lord. 

That is only possible as our roots are downward. In order that that might be so, we have to get into a place of unshakeableness where the roots have got such a grip that nothing can overthrow. 

And I believe that explains a very great deal of what the Lord is doing with His own spiritual people in these days.

It is true that the true children of God are going through a time of intense trial and testing spiritually in these days; everywhere it is so.

Why? Because the Lord must have something against which hell is impotent and by which He demonstrates to the universe that strength of His might which causes to stand and withstand, and having done all to stand.

If one were asked what the last issue for the Church in this age is, I would say that it stands, and that is saying a tremendous thing.

Oh, you say, that is surely limiting things, are you not expecting much more than that? Progress, advance, sweeping movements? The Church will have all its work cut out in the end to stand, but its standing will be its victory.

Just to be able, through testing, trial, when everything is blowing round you like a blizzard; when everything is dark, mysterious, and even God seems far away and unreal, and faith is tested and you are being assailed on the right hand and on the left, and there is every reason outwardly for your moving, giving up, falling down, surrendering, lowering your standard, just to stand and not be moved in your faith is the greatest possible victory.... 

We are passing through deep experiences, the enemy is doing it and the Lord is not preventing him, but we are coming to a fuller knowledge of the power of our God and a deeper rooting beyond all previous shakeableness.

And the Lord is seeking to have a people who cannot be shaken, against whom hell with all its demonstration of arrogance and pride, is impotent.

And the remnant... shall again take root downward.” That is what the Lord needs.

~T. Austin Sparks~