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 Sermon > Official Service |
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Title |
2013 Prayer Titles(4) - Power |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
John 11: 43-44 |
Date |
2012-12-31 |
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Passage
[John 11: 43-44]
"When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth.' The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, and let him go.'"
Let us give all thanks and glory to God the Father who has helped us and guided us until now.
God the Father has given us many blessings in spirit and body in this year 2012.
He let the faith of the church members grow up very quickly, and He gave us grace in various aspects as their souls prospered.
You are attending this worship service with thanksgiving for this grace of God here in this main sanctuary and all around the world through GCN TV and Internet broadcasting, and you are truly blessed.
Proverbs 16:3 says, "Commit your works to the LORD and your plans will be established."
As said, I believe you are attending this service with a desire to commit every matter of the New Year 2013 into God's hands.
I pray in the name of the Lord that the Father God will fulfill all your New Year's wishes as you are attending this service with faith and thanksgiving.
In this message, I will talk about 'Power', the fourth prayer title of the New Year 2013.
The prayer title 'Power' is given to this church almost every year along with the prayer title for the Grand Sanctuary.
We have to pray that the powerful works will be manifested without ceasing, and furthermore that a deeper level of power will be manifested every year.
Meanwhile, you've heard many messages about the different levels of power and you've been praying concerning them.
Also, through those powerful works, you were healed; you received solutions to problems and answers to prayers; and you've received blessings.
But the reason why God shows such great power in this church is not just for healings and blessings at individual levels.
Of course, God the Father is love, and He considers personal blessings and answers important.
He always wants to give better things to His children.
But the greater purpose of showing His power is to fulfill the providence of God, which is to open the way of salvation to all the souls.
I will explain what kind of power I have to ask for to fulfill such providence of God.
I hope you will keep this message in mind and offer up prayers that are pleasing to God throughout this year.
I pray in the name of the Lord that in doing so you will play an important role in the ministry of this church as we are fulfilling the providence of God.
Main
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God has been showing the works of power without ceasing ever since the opening of this church.
Right from the opening of our church God showed us the great and amazing things that Jesus manifested.
But, since God is spirit and He is without limits, there is also no limit to His power.
For that reason, He let us seek power in a new and more profound dimension every year.
The prayer titles about 'power' in recent years were, in 2009 'Comprehensive Works of Power,' in 2010, 'Unceasing Power' and in 2011, 'Explosive Power'.
Explosive power is the kind of power that, when it is manifested, anyone who has just a little bit of goodness will come to acknowledge that it is the work of God and not deny it.
Along with this, God has given us the original lights of God and let the aurora-like lights to be taken in photos so any believer could see them even without their spiritual eyes being opened.
Through the original light given by God, you received the ability to more easily realize your fleshly attributes and cast off sins.
As a result, many of you came into spirit in 2011, and some of you came into the whole spirit.
When the year 2012 began with this original light, God gave us the prayer title, "Great and Amazing Power'.
God told me to ask for the power to change the hearts of men.
Even though people see so many works of God, their faith-life some day will be corrupted unless their hearts are changed.
For this reason God let me pray that the hearts of people will also change when they experience the powerful works of God.
The meaning contained in this year's prayer title 'Power' is the power to compel even the freewill of men to turn and change.
It is the power to influence the freewill of people so that they can catch the chance of salvation, when they experience the powerful works in this church.
Each one's salvation is up to each one's choice.
Even though God shows them so many evidences with which they can believe, it is up to their freewill to choose to believe God or not.
The more the world is filled with sins and evil, the more people will refuse to believe in God even though they see great signs and wonders.
I have to make them experience the works of God and pray that their freewill will be moved so that they can hold on to this chance of salvation.
Brothers and sisters, the works of God manifested in this church were not given freely; and you know this fact very well.
I paid the proper price according to justice by storing up so much fasting and prayer since even before the opening of the church.
But from around 2003, a completely new dimension of spiritual training began.
God let me begin what is called spiritual studies, and let me know the things of the spiritual realm that I had not been able to imagine before.
It was not just in theory, but he let me go through actual training at each level.
I went through each step from leaving of the spirit, separation of spirit, moving of the spirit, and adapting to dimensions. Each time I thought it was the end, but every time another kind of training began.
As I went through such trainings one by one, God showed us the result of completing each step of training.
The works that you have been seeing, such as various rainbows, appearing and disappearing of the clouds, moving of the stars, appearance of dragonflies, controlling the temperature, were not just meant to show you that God can do such things.
According to each step of the training, God let us see the existence of the spiritual space, and the ways to utilize the spiritual spaces.
When I separated and moved the sprit, you also experienced the evidence of it.
Through the separation of spirit, you had dreams which were so clear and real to you, and through those dreams you received many blessings.
Those steps of training drained energy out of my body and my mind very much.
Furthermore, I was not in a situation to be able to just focus on those trainings in comfort.
I had to make sure that the church members would not utilize fleshly thoughts or their faith would not be weakened by showing greater power of God each time.
I also had to let the faith of the leaders grow up.
According to God's command, I conducted mega size crusades a couple of times a year travelling all over the world.
Such ministries alone would consume all my energy, but in 2010, I began receiving so many repentance letters.
I had to cling to God with so much weeping and mourning to save those souls who had to fall into death.
In the meantime we had to go on with the plan of church construction.
I also had to take the responsibility as the senior pastor for the financial difficulties of the church.
Also, while going through those trainings, I had to be put into a completely different situation than the beginning time of this church.
Faith is the substance of the things hoped for, and spiritual faith will surely be borne as visible fruit. This is the spiritual law.
According to this law, I had been able to accomplish many things. But during the training sessions, the fruits were borne in completely different ways than I had expected.
God even told me to consider everything that I had cultivated, namely my faith in whole spirit and all my knowledge of spirit, as nothing.
It was so that I would be able to understand the original heart of God and make use of the spiritual space at will.
But it doesn't mean the works of power manifested were reduced.
The signs and wonders were certainly becoming greater, but as for me personally, I had to spend so much time in mourning being put in a very unfamiliar situations.
Let me give you an example of a recent event.
I communicate with God every week and as if He was giving me homework, God commands me to do something and I try my best to solve that problem.
Then, after a week, I get the answer to that problem, and He gives me another kind of homework. I passed each step of spiritual training this way.
But sometimes, I could not get any answers to the homework given to me, even after a whole week passed.
According to the training and my past experience, I knew I had to get the answer in a certain way, but I could not see any results from my efforts.
When I was at loss for several weeks, God gave me an allegory about the situation I was going through.
A man trained himself so much that he was able to shoot a bird in flight with an arrow every time.
Now, God trained him in a way that he was able to shoot the birds with his eyes closed by feeling the movements of the bird.
So, he went through training over and over again and eventually he could shoot the birds with his eyes closed.
Then now, he is to stay in a room, and he has to shoot the birds that are flying outside the room.
What will happen now?
Even if he can sense the movements of the birds exactly, the arrow cannot go through the wall of the room.
No matter how many arrows he shoots, they will be blocked by the wall, so he would never know whether he has aimed correctly or not.
But because God commanded him to catch the bird with an arrow, he just keeps on shooting the arrows day and night. What kinds of feelings would he have now?
You could not possibly understand all my agony just with this allegory, but sometimes I was in a similar situation.
I receive the urge of God to do something, but even if I followed that urge exactly, there was nothing being accomplished.
I certainly felt that it would work in a certain way, but the result was not even close to what I had expected it to be.
Nevertheless, God just keeps giving me the same homework for weeks or months, and just tells me to do it.
I desperately prayed and fasted to discern the will of God properly, but I didn't understand why there was no result, and whether I was doing it right.
On top of that, there were more and more things that I had to take care of for the whole church.
I didn't know what to do. I was in total desperation.
But after those times of agony passed, God explained little by little that all those processes were needed to fulfill the measure of certain kinds of justice.
Then He would give me another kind of homework.
So, I just take it and try to complete it.
I believe and obey until the end because God will eventually show the great works of His power at His will.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, what is the reason that such training sessions are necessary?
It's because I have to manifest God's power exactly according to God's original heart for this church to fulfill its God-given duties.
I should not pray and ask God each time a situation arises, but I have to understand the Original Heart itself, and act upon the will of God by myself.
That's what Jesus did.
Jesus is one with God, and right from the beginning of His ministry on this earth, He knew all the steps and the results that would be unfolded.
He knew that He would have to take the cross, and He knew when and how He would take the cross.
That is why all the proceedings in His ministries were focused on the goal of fulfilling the providence of God completely by taking the cross to open the way of salvation.
Brothers and sisters, unlike Jesus, other prophets or the disciples did not know the providence of God when they received the calling.
For example, when Moses brought the people out of Egypt, he did not know each step or the result of the Exodus. He just obeyed each command of God given at each moment.
Through his obedience, God gave them Ten Plagues, parted the Red Sea, and fulfilled His plans with His power.
On the other hand, right from the beginning Jesus knew about the providence of God that would be fulfilled.
He did not ask God where to go, whom to meet, and what to do each time. He just received urges in His heart as to where to go and what to do.
So, Jesus' ministry is a ministry done by Jesus independently, but at the same time it was a ministry done in perfect obedience to God the Father.
It's because all His ministries were in perfect coherence with the grand boundary of the providence of God.
It is the same with the event of reviving the dead Lazarus, in today's reading passage.
When Lazarus suddenly became seriously ill, his sisters sent people to ask for Jesus.
They said, "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick."
John 11:4 says, "But when Jesus heard this He said, 'This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.'"
He waited two more days and only after hearing that Lazarus was dead, He left on His way to Lazarus.
When He arrived at Lazarus' house, it had already been four days since Lazarus died.
Jesus approached the tomb of Lazarus, and commanded Lazarus to come out with a loud voice in front of many people.
What do you think happened?
He certainly died four days ago, and he even had the decaying foul smell, but Lazarus came out alive from the tomb.
The news was so quickly spread by the crowd who was present there.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus knows everything, and He could have gone to Lazarus and healed him before he died.
Especially, since Lazarus was loved by Jesus, Jesus must have wanted to ease his pain as soon as possible.
But Jesus did not just think about the healing of Lazarus alone. He considered many other things comprehensively.
Because He would have to take the cross soon at that time, He was taking care of the works that had to be done.
What were the things that He did?
First of all, through this miracle, the general public began to openly acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah.
So, the high priests and Pharisees, who had been watching Jesus for some time as a precaution, began to make a plan to actually kill Jesus.
They thought they had to do something about Him.
Also, Jesus considered that the deeds of Lazarus and those of his family were worthy enough to experience such a miracle according to justice.
Furthermore, He intended to plant the hope and faith of resurrection in the hearts of His disciples before His crucifixion.
Namely, Jesus made each matter work out in a comprehensive way that the providence of the cross would be fulfilled at the most appropriate time by performing that miracle once.
Just as you put each piece of jigsaw puzzle in place to make a whole, complete picture, He manifested the power of God at each necessary moment in His ministry.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the ministry that our church will do must be done in this same manner.
At this point in time when God will wrap up this long march of human cultivation, power is something absolutely necessary to fulfill God's providence of cultivation.
Just to show a few disconnected signs or wonders or to save just some number of people is not this power.
It is not at the level of preaching the gospel at a local level. It is the power to evangelize the whole world.
It is the power not just to revive the dead but also to change the freewill of men.
God said even the kings of the nations who move the world situations would come forth to experience such works of God's power.
Even in big problems such as flooding, earthquakes, or wars, if the leaders ask in accordance with the justice, they will receive the answer.
However, since these things can have a major impact on the political and economic situations of the world, they will have to be in accordance with the will and providence of God.
Also, about changing the freewill of men, I cannot just change any random person's freewill to let him receive salvation.
Performing with God's power does not necessarily give glory to God, and so, I must receive the correct urge to manifest God's power.
I have to change a person who is right according to justice, at the right time, and with the right method according to justice.
I have to consider all the conditions in a comprehensive manner, considering all the political and economic situations of the world.
In doing so, I have to fulfill the providence of God in wrapping up the human cultivation exactly according to the plan of God.
To be able to do this, I have to be united with the original heart of God.
Conclusion
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Since God established this church and gave me the ministry for the end time, I have been running this race without a rest.
I never held back even in the face of sufferings like death, and for the last 30 years I have been marching only with faith.
Even for this New Year, I never want to take some rest or to take a more comfortable way for we have already accomplished much.
Until the name of Jesus Christ is proclaimed throughout the world by the holiness gospel and until the power of God and the glory of God are revealed through the Grand Sanctuary I can never take a rest.
Until the prophecy in Habakkuk 2:14, "For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea," is fulfilled, I have only been marching forward as the Father has led me.
I believe all of you who have been in this church have the same attitude as mine.
During this year 2013, I ask you to pray more fervently to fulfill the providence of God completely.
Also, I urge each of you to come into spirit and whole spirit quickly, and become precious instruments who can manifest the power of God together.
In doing so, I pray in the name of the Lord that all of you will enjoy great reward and honor when the days of cultivation are over and when you see God the Father. |
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