What a difference Jesus makes!

Lev 16:2

The Lord said to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die. For I will appear in the cloud over the atonement cover.

Hebrews 4:14-16

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. … Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

God’s work done God’s way will never lack God’s blessings

Exodus 40:34 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

God’s work done God’s way will never lack God’s blessings.

When Moses did everything as was directed by God, the glory of

the Lord descended on the work. They needed not to pray or fast. 

Andrew Wommack said: "Once you know you are doing God's will, you will never have to ask for God's blessing. God's will is already blessed!"

This is not ruling out the place of prayer and fasting. There’s a time for them, but not for God to bless “His” work. If God gave an assignment, it would be wickedness on his part not to support the work. If I asked a child to do something for me in the house, it would be wickedness on my part not to give the child what he needed to accomplish the work. Otherwise that will be like Pharaoh’s taskmasters in Egypt who refused to supply the Israelites with the materials needed to get their work done. And God is not a taskmaster. 

This is the point I’m making: there will always be temptations to do things the way others are doing it, especially if God has not given you any elaborate or grandeur project to do for him. There will always be temptations to fill in the gaps; to “faith” for large buildings. We have this notion that God will always ask you to do what is beyond you. True but not necessarily. If you have to be begging and pleading with your “partners” and members or even threatening them, then we have to question that vision. 

A time came in the building of that tabernacle in the wilderness that the workers had to plead with the people not to bring any more materials. 

So all the skilled workers who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left what they were doing and said to Moses, “The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the Lord commanded to be done.” Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp: “No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.” And so the people were restrained from bringing more, because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work. Exodus 36:2-7

In the day of His power, His people shall be willing. 

God will give you assignment based on your capacity; based on what He knows you can handle, and based on the resources He has put around your life. 

Matthew 25:15
And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey.

According to Heavenly Pattern

Exodus 26:30 “Set up the tabernacle according to the plan shown you on the mountain.

Every divine assignment is accompanied by a divine blueprint. 

Every work of God is unique, and so has to follow a pre-determined plan and pattern. 

Many works of God have become carbon copies of others. 

There’s a way God wants His work to be done. We need to seek and depend on Him for the way He wants us to do the work. God's work must be done God's way!

Every work God wants done on earth has a prototype already designed and built in heaven. 

When God wants a work done on earth, he first reveals what he has planned for you in heaven. Until you receive that, you are labouring in vain. 

After he has shown you, then you can say you have an assignment. If you have not received that, you don’t have a ministry or a job yet.

So what do I do? Very simple! Keep waiting. Don’t be like the prophets in the days of Jeremiah.  

Jeremiah 23:21
“I have not sent these prophets, yet they run around claiming to speak for me. I have given them no message, yet they go on prophesying.

The Good Fight

I grew up hearing from my parents and everyone that loved me: Don’t fight! And so I grew up not knowing how to fight. 

But what they didn’t tell me was that there’s a good fight—the fight for my life; the fight for my future; the fight for my destiny; the fight for my health; the fight for my marriage; the fight for the good things of life! 

I discovered in life that you have to fight for every good thing. Spring is coming. Very soon it will be all green. Guess what you will find there? Grass. Weeds. Nothing more. But if you want vegetables, corns, and other good stuff, you’ve got to fight for them. You’ve got to plant, and fertilize. But then, you must be ready to fight—the weeds, the insects, the worms and every destructive thing that wants to fight the good stuff you have planted. 

Same with life. There are so many bad elements around. They want to stop you, hinder you and if possible, destroy you. That is why you need to fight. 

Fight the bad habits. There are things that are pleasurable but dangerous to your health. You’ve got to fight them. And the earlier you fight them the better. Otherwise they will fight you—your health and wellness, finance, fitness. They may even fight your relationship. 

Fight the bad attitude. You know them. Everyone is talking about them—your anger, gluttony, carelessness, laziness and so on. Unbeknown to you, those things are killing you—your relationships, performance, and your finance. 

Fight the bad company. They don’t mean well for you because they are going nowhere. They have no regard for your future. They’ve wrecked theirs, and want you to wreck yours too. They take you where you’ve vowed never to go again. They show you what you don’t want to watch again. The earlier you detach from them the better. 

Friend, to live you’ve got to fight! And to live well, you’ve got to seriously fight! It’s high time to take off the kid gloves, and fight with bare knuckle the stuff that are fighting your destiny. 

Seeing the Invisible

You are going to make a decision everyday how you want to live: whether it’s going to be by what you see or just trust that the not yet seen is much better. 

Sight is powerful but limited. 

Not too long ago, I was in a two day training on suicide prevention, and it’s amazing the statistics on suicide not just globally but even here in Canada. And this is what baffles me, the common refrain from survivors: I looked around and couldn’t see anything to live for again!

Helen Keller, blind and deaf all her life, was asked what could be worse than blindness and she answered: To have sight but no vision. She was the first blind and deaf person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 

Eyes that look are many, but eyes that see are few. Vision talks about seeing beyond your present reality; seeing beyond the physical. It talks about seeing the invisible. 

Steve Job, the Apple giant, in his commencement address at Stamford University in 2005, made this profound statement: 

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path; and that will make all the difference.

To focus only on what you can see could be discouraging: the bills, the wrinkles, the tragedies, the pain, the misunderstandings, and so on. To focus only on happenings at the present could be demoralizing. 

Two days you shouldn’t worry about every week. One is yesterday, with all its wonders and blunders; with all its pleasure and pressure. Goodnews! It’s gone. Let it go! The other is tomorrow, with all its uncertainties. You just have to trust, like Steve Job, that the dots will somehow connect … tomorrow. Nothing more. 

The only important day is today! That’s not too much to handle. Someone said: “Any person can fight the battles of just one day. It is only when we add the burdens of yesterday and tomorrow that we break down.”

I take solace in the words of a great writer of old simply called Paul: 

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.