HOW All Men Will Know

1/3/2007

We had only been in Indianapolis for a few months at that point in time. We had no idea what we were doing. We had no idea at all. We knew a few things. “This is how all men will know you’re my disciples,” Jesus said, “by the love you have one for another.” We knew that much going into it, which is why we decided to live near each other rather than scattered all over the city. Because how could people see how we love each other if we never see each other.

If the only time we see each other is in a meeting, the world doesn’t see how we love each other in that meeting because they’re not in our meeting. We invite a few of them to come, but that’s different than being “seen” in the world.

If you look around here, if all the people or many of them in this general area were absolutely sold out for Jesus then they’ll be in and out of your door and you’ll be in and out of their door. And the children will be so well behaved it’s unbelievable.

“Come here, child.” (Pitter patter of feet)

“Yes, mommy!”

Not with whining or talking back, but truly the hearts of the fathers are to the children and the children are to the fathers. That’s the prophecy in Malachi, right? It comes true before the eyes of the world. They see something that they can’t see.

You can testify all day long and street preach and stand up on top of that fence over there and declare the praises of Jesus. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some people saved by that, but Jesus said, “This is HOW all men will know you’re my disciples…” This isn’t a little thing—this is a very big thing! This is HOW.

And so we knew that, before we moved to Indianapolis. That was one thing we were going to get right is love each other. And then be in a situation where people could SEE how we loved each other because Jesus said, “This is HOW all men will know” this is from heaven and not from earth. This isn’t just rhetoric, or just philosophy like all the other world religions, but the miracle of people that were willing to die for each other every day.

“And there were no needy persons among them.” We’ve never had anybody miss a meal in twenty years. And that’s not because people have such good jobs either. You don’t let your own children miss a meal by oversight. They might miss a meal because you don’t have anything to give them and because your family doesn’t have anything. But if our whole Family, meaning the whole Church, has nothing—then I guess we’ll all be hungry! But if anybody has anything there will be “no needy people among us.” We’ve bought houses for widows and none of us have any money. There’s nobody rich.

Nobody has any wealth particularly. It’s just the loaves and fishes thing where the more faith you have and the more obedience you have, the more God allows things to happen that are unexplainable in terms of providing for each other. How do you feed five thousand when you have just a little handful of food from a little boy? Well, God can do that if you have the faith to let Jesus break it and multiply it.

So twenty years later we say that these things are true, not only because they’re in the Bible, but because we’ve dared to experience them and to not let the Word of God be nullified by the traditions of men. Every day we go back to that thing we did the first day and that is, what does God say about this? How should we view this? Is this really how the Scriptures teach that life should be or is this just some habit we’re getting into because of pressure and convenience and what everybody else is doing and so on.

Again, I think this has some attractiveness as God is stirring in the hearts of men. We wouldn’t have folks from 120 countries contacting us about this stuff unless God was stirring in their hearts—because it’s costly. The pearl of great price costs everything.

•  HOW All Men Will Know