Sent From the Lord’s Table

(Ps.127 & 128)

We are sent from a place of communion, of true spiritual fellowship, with the Lord.  The Lord will bring heavenly awareness and revelation of Himself according to the magnitude of our present calling.  Too many are in a hurry to “change the world”.  Mother Teresa is quoted as saying something like this.  “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”  Jesus did that for 30 years before He left Nazareth to fulfill the will of His Father in heaven.  My point in repeating that is that if we do not learn to love family, and in the process learn to love Him more, our love is not real.  We do not know what love really is.  True religion is to care for the orphan and the widow.  Begin with your own family so that no one is made an orphan or widow.  Or a widower for that matter.  We learn first in knowing His great love for us.  It takes focused time in His presence.

Read the referenced psalms.  It begins speaking of a city, and our focus is brought to the city that the Lord is building.  Men build cities, they make names for themselves.  (Gen. 11:4)  It will all come to nothing.  Confusion enters into all that men do without the Lord’s initiative.  This age and all of man’s construction will pass away.  Let us learn to edify one another by the Spirit, in love and honor toward the Lord, that His city may be built.  He is building an eternal dwelling, a heavenly city.  Only that city will remain.  And the Spirit cautions us in Psalm 127 not to do the watching over the city in our strength.  Don’t burn the wick, the candle that you are, from both ends.  No burnout!

This psalm is a song written by Solomon.  It is called a song of ascents.  We are on our way up, to a higher place, a place of the Lord’s perspective.  May we not be fearful of the heights trusting that He will be our guide.  He is the good shepherd, faithful and trustworthy, the One we must focus upon.  So, as with John’s revelation, the picture of the city, shifts to a family.  For John, he saw the bride, the wife of the Lamb.  Solomon writes of a family of children.  He is writing of natural children but more than this.  I hear of the Father’s spiritual children.

First consider natural children.  They never “belong” to us as parents.  We are responsible to nurture, to raise them, and then release them.  They are the Lord’s inheritance.  They are like arrows in the hand of warrior.  Happy is the one whose quiver is full of them.  The Lord and all the host of heaven rejoice when new ones are born of the Spirit.  And godly parents rejoice with the little ones around their table.  If they are wise spiritually they will raise them to honor God and respect all authority.  Yet they will teach them, by example, to recognize usurped, corrupt authority and to resist all darkness.

The Spirit speaks to me concerning the preparation of the arrows for flight.  The shaft is made straight and polished.  The feathers must be placed carefully so that the flight will be true to its target.  Then a sharp and balanced arrowhead must be set.  After all that, the arrow is placed in a quiver to be withdrawn at the right time.  Do you hear the Spirit speaking of a full preparation?  We are not to be in a rush.  He, the Lord of the harvest, the Lord of the battle, knows when to set you in His bow.  Wise, godly parents know when to release their children into the Lord’s direct parenting.  Children are under our care and nurturing for a time.  Then we should encourage them to move out knowing the voice of the One who is the Good Shepherd to each of us.

A final thought from Ps. 128:3.  Our heavenly Father has many children like olive plants around His table.  So may it be in our families and fellowships.  True fruitfulness in every area of our lives will result as we sit at the table together.  In my Spirit, I have seen a progressive picture of seats at the Lord’s table.  First, as I was taking the seat He had prepared for me, I saw empty seats and heard our Father’s desire that they be filled.  See Eph. 2:6, and Ps. 23:5.  He looks for all men to come and know Him where He sits is in the heavenly realm.  At a later time I saw a table with many seated around.  The table grew to allow for many to come and then I was aware of many interconnected tables which I understood were the many prayer fellowships around the globe.  The Lord is rapidly expanding a global, interconnected house of prayer!

The Lord is calling and many are responding.  Many more are still on their way.  They will be like olive plants, filled with His Spirit to overflowing.  They carry His life wherever they go.  They will be like arrows in His quiver, straightened and fitted for Him to shoot as He chooses.  Know that His working and preparation continue as the olives are pressed so that the oil will flow.  He who began a good work in us together will complete until His glorious day.  See Phil. 1:6.

The Darkness and Light Are the Same to Him

(Ps. 139:11 & 12)

The entire Psalm referenced is wonderful.  The Lord’s eye is on us from the “darkness” of the womb until our final earthly breath.  Will we acknowledge His love and care and stop trying to fix our lives?  Will we live in fear or allow the perfect love of a heavenly Father to embrace us?  We must be knowing Him closely as our heavenly Father.  The prayer Jesus taught the disciples begins “our Father”.  I think it should be called the “Disciple’s Prayer.”  The title “The Lord’s Prayer” should be applied to John 17.  Just a perspective to consider.

Are you afraid of the dark?  Spiritual darkness is real and can be intimidating and foreboding.  Think of Israel and Goliath.  As we grow in our relationship with our Father, as David did, we find we are encouraged to defeat enemies.  In David’s mind the outcome with Goliath was certain.  This was not because David was strong in His own strength, or being the tough guy.  No, it was because David had the learned the Lord’s strength in himself when he saved his father’s sheep from a bear and a lion.  He knew that the arrogant, defiant spirit manifesting through this enemy of God’s people could not survive.  And the Lord showed His people, His nation, that His deliverance comes from an unexpected source.  He chooses the weak things to confound the wise.  The Lord had chosen David for that hour.

I know of believers who have faced overt manifestations of darkness.  Some of this seems strange and weird to the Western, sophisticated mind.  Demons, principalities, and powers, are real.  See Ephesians 6:10-20.  While many enter into spiritual warfare, do we really know what are weapons are?  We may understand the armor but the actual waging of war is summarized in verses 18-20.  Praying in the Spirit for all the saints (believers) and for utterance to be given to ambassadors of the mystery of the gospel to speak boldly.  I have prayed loudly, and quietly, but if we are not praying according to the will of God as being revealed by the Spirit, it is empty noise.  Don’t be discouraged by those words.  All of us can learn to pray.  It does take time; time in His presence, learning to be aligned with His Spirit.

Some of us have grown up in more evidently dark, spiritual atmospheres.  Witchcraft takes different forms in different earthly cultures but the results are the same.  In the West, the darkness has come via a denial of spiritual reality.  The gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God has been has been diluted, corrupted resisted, and ignored.  And the patience of God has waited (1 Peter 3:20).  What time is it on the Lord’s clock, we might say?  As it was in the days of Noah, Jesus said.  A day will come when all will be exposed, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  And all the dark will be blown away forever.  I do hope for and look for that.

As we do look toward His coming, we resist darkness now.  Do not be afraid to be sent into dark places.  If He sends you, He will go before and behind you.  David was prepared in an obscure place.  Moses had his 40 years in the desert.  Israel had 40 years in the wilderness to lose its unbelief.  They (the young ones) learned to know the Lord as their source, their strength, their provision.  They learned they could trust Him and were led by His voice.  And His glorious Son, Jesus, was prepared for 30 years as part of a family.  He knew His Father from the womb.  If anyone knew what it was to be sent from the light of the presence of God into darkness, Jesus Christ knew that.  He came to a world lost in darkness.  The Greeks had been overcome by the Romans and their Republic was slipping into deep darkness, licentiousness, and depravity.  Yet the Lord sent His Son in divine wisdom and strength to destroy the works of the adversary, the kingdom of darkness.  He destroyed him who had the power of death, even the devil.  Do not fear the valley of the shadow of death, that dark place, for He is there with you.  The darkness and light are the same for Him.  He is light and the darkness cannot stand against it.

Paul’s Journey to Rome

(Acts 22 & 23 and 27 & 28)

Paul was chosen, and captured by the Lord, (Eph. 4:1), to be His carrier of the Gospel to the Gentiles.  He was not alone in such a calling.  As an example, we understand that Thomas, one of the twelve, went to India.  We know well of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.  As we read the book of Acts, we see Paul’s progression, and notice how many times he tells his story which is a testimony of Jesus Christ.  I learned early in my walk with the Lord to do just that.  The content and extent of my story will change depending on my audience.  I encourage you to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and alert to your hearer’s spiritual location.  We learn to have our words seasoned with grace.

Paul had been warned by the Lord (Acts 22:18) that those in Jerusalem would not receive his testimony, and that the Lord would send him to the Gentiles, to non-Jewish people.  We read in Acts 21:10-14 that Paul was nevertheless constrained in his heart to go back to Jerusalem.  A prophet, Agabus, displayed what would happen and the people were distressed but Paul was not to be dissuaded.  The words, “The will of the Lord be done,” resound clearly.  Paul, Luke, and others went to Jerusalem and we find Paul in the center of another uproar.  The Lord prepared him to remain steadfast and composed in such situations.  Paul saw the stormy scene as an opportunity for his story.  He seized it.  May we be ready in season and out of season.  The Lord is our rock also.  Not many among us speak to crowds but each of us is a vessel to be filled and poured out as the Spirit directs.

So Paul spoke and when the crowd reacted, the Roman authorities took him aside and questioned him.  It is interesting how Paul used his wits and was spared a scourging when he declared his Roman citizenship.  A place exists for us to use our heads to avoid trouble, even pain.  As the clamor rose and Paul was threatened, the Roman guards pulled Paul to safety.  The message had been delivered.  The Lord gave those in Jerusalem another opportunity to repent and turn to the Lord.  Perhaps they did later but at that moment the Roman guards (they were equivalent to today’s police) saw the danger and pulled him aside.  Paul was placed in jail for safety.  My focus of this writing is Acts 23:11.  As Paul has been saved from a band of false Jews (Rev. 2:9, 3:9) led by Ananias, the high priest, Jesus comes to him.  The Lord tells him to be of good cheer and that he will tell his story and bear witness for the Lord in Rome.

The rest of the story is quite amazing as the Lord protects Paul through his nephew hearing of a plot against him.  Read in Acts 23:23, what level of earthly protection was afforded Paul.  His Roman citizenship was a means used by the Lord to bring him to Rome.  Bear in mind all the opposition and physical trouble Paul has already been through.  But the Lord stood by him, coming to him at night.  Many are the afflictions, the troubles, of those who are bond-servants of the Lord, but the Lord will come to you, stand by you, and speak to you.  Paul does not wait to land in Rome, he takes opportunity before regional, Roman appointed leaders to speak of Jesus Christ.  In the middle of it, he appeals to Caesar, and the earthly rulers declare it, “To Caesar you shall go!”  Yet that was the very purpose of the Lord in Paul’s life.  Paul knew he was in the right place because the Lord was directing his life, and the Lord had spoken directly to him.

I was impressed to write this as I thought about Paul’s shipwreck.  On the way to Rome, at the expense of the Roman treasury (all expenses paid, the Lord will provide), Paul endured another severe hardship.  He had warned the ship’s leaders not to sail as he had wisdom concerning the time of year and weather.  They did not listen to him and he later reminded them of the warning.  It seems that we, as disciples of the Lord, think that every storm will see us stand, rebuke the storm, and we will be at our destination.  To be sure, the Lord does do that.  But not in every situation.  In this case, the Lord was giving a lesson to all concerned.  On the ship, in the middle of a horrendous storm, Paul prayed for himself that God’s purpose in his life would be done.  The Lord, by an angel, had assured Paul that he would speak before Caesar.  And all were with Paul were spared and saw the goodness of God in their lives.  As we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, it will be the same for each of us.  He will fulfill His purpose in our lives.  No purpose of His can be thwarted.