Food Becomes Part of You

12/28/2006

Thanks for letting us invade your turf, your territory, and annoy you with certain truths. (laughter) The beauty of it is that it’s kind of like food. If it’s really Food from Heaven, it’s not something that you figure out how to do. It’s something that you stick in your mouth and digest and it softens and disappears. It just becomes part of you and provides energy and direction and strength, but it doesn’t have its own form anymore. The Word of God is like that. If it’s really real—even the things you think you don’t agree with—they will eat at you and gnaw on you and you’ll have no choice. But when something happens you’ll say, “You know what, I didn’t really like that at first, but I’m beginning to see how maybe I didn’t understand it just right and it does apply or…”

You know, things happen. You don’t have to figure it out. In man’s world of religion you have to make all these decisions. That’s why there are hundreds of denominations. Because people have made all these decisions about “here’s what I agree with and here’s what I don’t agree with.” But Biblical Christianity is very different than the man-made way of dissecting and pigeon-holing and comprehending Truth. Truth from Heaven is that you EAT the scrolls. You don’t memorize them; you eat them. That’s what the Scriptures say. God said, “Eat the scrolls.” By doing that it actually disappears, and then one day, two years from now, if what has been said today is really from God, you’ll just know something.

You won’t have any idea where you heard it from. You’ll forget we were ever here. That’s okay. Maybe we’ll continue a relationship and that’s even better, but what if we’re just angels unawares? : ) What if we just disappear and don’t even need a plane ticket to get out of here? Well, whatever. What if we should die on the plane trip back? Who cares? We’re expendable. The reality is, when it’s God’s Truth it just sits inside of us. Whether you understand it or you don’t understand it. Whether you like it or you don’t like it. You don’t even have to have an answer. No one’s asking anyone for an answer.

There’s no “how-to.” There’s no “next thing” to do in order to be doing the “right thing.” Man does “how-to’s.” God says, “Don’t memorize my scrolls. Don’t study them—EAT them,” and once they lose their shape and disappear inside of you, they become part of you. Then you become more and more able to see and hear God, and it doesn’t matter where you heard it from. If you heard it from a sparrow on the telephone line, or if you heard it from a sheep as you walked down the road, or if you heard it from God’s voice when you were climbing a coconut tree, or if you heard it over lunch one day from some strange people from someplace else. It doesn’t even matter where it came from.

What really matters is if it is GOD or not. And you’ll know that as you go along. You don’t even have to know now. You simply ponder and pray and as Mary was told by Simeon, “Treasure it in your heart.” See what happens. You don’t have to figure it out. That’s the Good News about Christianity, as opposed to most other world religions. The Word of God is Living. It’s alive; it’s active. Like rivers of living water, it gushes from the inner man just when it is needed to water the parched desert, to water the fields, and to water the livestock and the birds of the air. God does this stuff in His own way and it doesn’t have to be “figured out” or categorized.

We’ve been in Indianapolis for twenty years, and we still haven’t figured out how to have a name for the Church there yet. We don’t have a name. But the Church in the Bible never had a name! So we figured that’s okay. We’ll just love each other and see what happens in another twenty years. If everyone lives that way, God will get what He wants out of us and that’s the main thing. We’ll just keep taking care of each other and loving each other in the meantime.

Again, thanks for letting us intrude and take up your day here. We’re very grateful for your hearts. It’s been fun looking into your eyes and seeing those world-class smiles, and seeing God’s heart and God’s hope in you. You’ve got a lot of people praying for you right now. I’m sure you don’t realize that, but there are folks in different parts of our country and other places that are praying twenty-four hours a day for you guys and for all that God would want to do here.

Again, that has nothing whatsoever to do with us. It’s what God wants to do here through you guys, and He’s preparing you in a hundred different ways. It’s all part of His picture. As long as we’re soft and open to it, He’ll get what He wants out of each of us in our generation on this silly little planet before we go Home. Thank you for your hospitality and kindness to us. It’s been fun meeting you.

So, will you allow us to pray for you?

Sure.

We bow our heads, Father God, and just thank you for these people, our brothers. Thank you for bringing them into our lives, into this country. Lord, we pray for their protection. We pray, God, that You would continually support the visions that You have entrusted to their care. Father God, You are our supplier. You are our provider. Thank you, God, that You will allow and bring them to places where they are called to minister. And Lord every time they are called to do so, thank you God for provisions. They are touching lives, Lord, to fill in what is needed. Thank you, God, for their hearts, like Aaron who was willing to be of use for Your Kingdom by Your Grace.

Father God, thank you. Bless their families. Bless their ministries. Lord, thank you for their lives. Bless them, just continually bless them. As they have put their faith in Your being God. The God of possibilities. The God who is, who was, and who is to come. The God who never changes. The God who will continually reveal His purposes. Thank You, God that this is the time that You will give, and You will give them, Lord, things that they never even expected. Thank you, God, for Your loving. Thank you, thank you, God. Bless them, oh God. Bless them. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.

Father, it’s true that You determine the times and places that people should live. So each man and woman who has been in this room today was born in this country and in this time for Your purposes. So we just want to ask that You would help them to fulfill those purposes in their generation in this nation. Not one of us can make the sun shine or the rain fall, that depends on Your sovereignty. The same thing is true, Lord, of Your grace, so we’re asking You to pour out sovereignly Your provision and Your grace on this nation. Not just because there’s poverty, but because there’s poverty of Spirit. Not because there’s hunger for food, but because there’s hunger for Your Words.

Somehow work among the people who are even in this room today. Let them be channels of Your grace and Your blessing for this country. So protect these seeds. You’re the Lord of Harvest. The things that we’ve talked about today, anything that is true, anything that is Your word, we ask You to protect it and to bring forth fruit from it, we know not how. But we ask You to do it. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

•  Food Becomes Part of You