(continued from Part 1)

God created everything out of nothing by His Word.  The universe cannot
contain the Lord.  He is so infinite that those stars that you see at night
are but nothing in His hand.  The only way anyone can serve the Lord and
endure is if they have a revelation of the Lord in His greatness.  When the
Lord said, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...and lo, I am
with you always, even to the end of the age." He prefaced it by saying, "All
authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth" (Matt 28:18-19).  We
need to have a progressive understanding of the greatness of the Lord.
Greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world (I John 4:4).

If the Lord is truly all powerful, there is no need to compromise or use the
world's methods, ways and fashions.  We think that the only way to make an
impact upon the world around us is to adopt the world's psychology and
manipulative methods -- the world's way of influencing people and
advertising things.  But there is nothing that God cannot do, no problem
that He cannot solve, no obstacle that He cannot overcome, no purpose that
He cannot fulfill.

I get tired of our charismatic paraphernalia.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit is
a stranger to the whole thing.  It is the world's way of raising money, the
world's way of proclaiming things -- it's manipulative.  But when we have a
vision of His greatness and His sovereignty, when we hear the Lord calling
and we obey, God can turn the world upside down.

Are you upset about international situations such as NATO bombing Serbia,
Serbians murdering Albanians, and that evil, demonized man sitting in
Baghdad, hatching out strategies to destroy and liquidate us all?  They are
grasshoppers in the sight of the Lord.  It would be nothing for the Lord to
deal with these people, with one Word they could be dead.  So why doesn't
the Lord deal with them more quickly?

The Lord has His own time and His own way of doing things.  A Berlin Wall
can come down in a weekend.  An iron curtain can disappear literally within
a year.  With the Lord, nothing is impossible.  But when the Lord works, it
is forever.  He changes the course of history.  He brings about a
fulfillment of His eternal purpose.

When Isaiah responded to God's call with the words, "Here am I! Send me," he
was overcome with inadequacy.  He was no longer a young man who was fully
confident in his own resources, talent, royal education, royal blood, or his
position of influence in the nation.  This young man had experienced a sign
of God's favor, and he was ruined.  When the Lord appeared to him, Isaiah
said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined" (Isaiah 6:5).  In a moment, he saw the
total inadequacy of his flesh to fulfill the commission.  "I am ruined.  I
am nothing.  I am fallen."  He was a member of the covenant people, saved,
circumcised, bar-mitzvahed, but totally inadequate.

We cannot respond to God with, "Here am I! Send me," unless we have come to
the place of total inadequacy.  We cannot serve the Lord with our own
talents and our own gifts.  Those talents, gifts and energies have to go
through a death experience at the cross and then be resurrected by the Lord
for His use.  Uncrucified flesh can never do the will of God.  The cleanest,
most talented, most zealous servant of the Lord is unclean when he sees God.
He suddenly realizes that his righteousness is as filthy rags -- what a
basis for service!

When an angel took a live coal from the altar and touched the lips of
Isaiah, it was a picture of being crucified with Christ.  Galatians 2:20
says, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but
Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

What an extraordinary calling Isaiah had:  Go and tell this people.  Make
them see and not perceive.  Make them hear and not understand (Isaiah 6:9).
This is still a problem with our people (the Jews) today.  As recorded in
the New Testament, "seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear"
(Matt 13:13).  Here was a nation filled with people who had been
circumcised, bar-mitzvahed -- priests, Levites, offerings, festivals -- and
here is the God of Israel saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for
Us?"  (Isaiah 6:8)  This is the heart-cry of the Lord.

I am uncomfortable in huge gatherings where the whole thing becomes
entertainment, and they go off in some kind of mass psychology.  I cannot
understand the church that dances while there is a world that is dying.  I
cannot understand the church that is filled with self-seeking and
self-satisfaction -- always me, me, me.  What has happened to the Church
that we cannot hear from within the heart-cry of God?

I was shocked recently when doctors and nurses in South Africa told me that
one in every three of the black population have AIDS and no one can do
anything.  The hospitals are told "put them in a taxi and send them back to
die."  Who will go to them?  Everyone talks about the Albanian refugees, but
who will go to them?  It is a wonderful thing to dance before the Lord.  It
is a wonderful thing to clap our hands and to applaud the Lord.  It is
wonderful to be lost in praise, but there is a dying world at our doorstep.
It here not something strangely vulgar and out of order about people who are
born of the Spirit of God and saved by His grace, and who seemingly spend
time in His presence, but never hear His heart-cry?


--- continued on Part 3 ---