FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
THE SPIRITUAL ‘www’: WATCH, WORK & WAIT
Jesus not merely suggests or recommends, but commands and warns His disciples to “WATCH and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matt. 26:41, KJV.
For all who have already “decided to follow Jesus” sometime ago and this part of the antitypical end-time disciples, the same warning applies but ten times more urgent because “Satan knows his time is short” and has been blanketing the churches and whole earth with his “time of the end” deceptions and temptations. If you don’t know or are not sure what they are, then all the more urgent it is to “watch and pray.”
Since we are now “living, moving, and having our being” (Acts 17:28) under this “judgment hour,” the most solemn period of earth’s six thousand year history (announced by the “first angel’s message” since 1840, Rev. 14: 6), and ultimate salvation is individual, not corporate or predestined, then let us seriously “WORK OUT our own salvation with fear and trembling,” as “co-laborers with God” (Phil. 2: 12, 13; 1 Cor. 3:9), in willing, clear-minded, and full-hearted surrender to Christ’s revealed will.
Thus we obtain His offered divine grace and power to both “will and to do His good pleasure,” knowing that “faith without works is dead” (James 2: 17-26), i.e., in vain and utterly worthless.
Biblical “faith works by love” (Gal. 5:6) and this “truth sanctifies the soul” (John 17:17). More importantly, faith without works is not merely “dead,” like some lifeless object or thing but is one of Satan’s most insidious, end-time soul-destroying error called presumption—the very COUNTERFEIT of genuine faith, a terrible sin, for, “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).
Furthermore, regarding the essential work that must be done by all who will be saved in God’s chosen way (not ‘my way’), Jesus said, “That thou doest, do quickly” (John 13:27).
Quickly here is not rushed or haphazardly but without delay or procrastination. Why? “The night cometh,” He said, “when no man can work” (John 9:4).
For when this spiritual
night has fallen upon the soul, all admonitions, prayers, pleadings, lamentations, tears, regretful repentance, and zealous attempts “to redeem” lost opportunities, wasted talents and especially precious time, will have been in vain; too late.
Then, in contemplative silence, learn to WAIT with “the patience of the saints,” beginning DAILY, in the wee hours of the morning, pausing in your thoughts throughout the day, while at work, to turn heavenward and listen to “the still small voice” speaking to your conscience, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it,” all others lead to failure, heartache, loss, pain, suffering and even perdition.
Then “meekly WAIT,and murmur not” that may not interfere with recognizing with spiritual discernment how God “works in mysterious ways His wondrous works to perform” in you and for others. It is much safer and wiser (not ‘smarter’) to wait on the Lord” while the impulsive-compulsive “fool rushes in where angels fear to tread.”
Above all, WAIT and “be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman [farmer] waits for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receiveth the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; establishing your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh!” James 5:6-8, KJV.
WAIT for “the Lord of the harvest.” He will surely come as He promised. Never leave the “harvest field” and the specific lot and work assigned to you unfinished till He calls you to “rest from your labors and your works follow you” (Rev. 14:13), or, when He finally comes with “all the clouds” of angels.
The King of kings returns with His reward of eternal life for all who WATCHED as faithful sentinels and trusted “WATCHMEN of the night,”stationed on the strategic lookout posts on the “WALL” of God’s immutable law; those who WORKED faithfully, without reservations or complaining as co-laborers with Christ in the work of soul-saving and proclaiming earth’s final merciful warning messages; those who, while patiently “waiting upon the Lord,” “prayed without ceasing,”but also “searched the Scriptures daily whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11) “for “in them (the Scriptures) ye think ye have eternal life, and are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39). As God’s messenger said, “Of what value is it to pray when there is need of work?” (E.G. White, GAG 307)?
The Christian who is preparing for his “future,” called eternity, and for his eternal home, the “place” Jesus went “to prepare” for His faithful (John 14:1-3), which is in the “new heaven and new earth” (Rev. 21: 1-5; Isa. 66:22,23) are ever conscious of the stark reality that: “The world is not a parade ground, but a battlefield.”
The Bible emphasizes “contending,” “fighting,” “overcoming,””pressing towards the mark”
or goal,” “striving,” “struggling,” “warring against,” and “wrestling” and being “sober and vigilant,”—-not celebrating, dancing, “eating and drinking,”feasting, surfeiting, partying, “marrying and being given in marriage” (Matt. 25:38) or fatally contented in spiritual lukewarmness. (Rev. 3:14-16).
On the contrary, the “apple of His eye,” His “bride,” the “chosen,” “the remnant of the seed of the woman” who “keep the commandments and the faith of Jesus,”and “have the testimony of Jesus which is the Spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 12;17: 14: 12: 19:10), are teamed up with largely-invisible “angels that excel in strength.” This is the genuine Lord’s army, including the elite special forces of “aggelos” messengers bearing aloft the “blood-stained banner of Prince Emmanuel upon which is inscribed “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,”—the “old glory” national flag as it were, of Christ’s kingdom, His true church of the last days.
The multiple counterfeits and bitter enemies, minor and main ones led by Antichrist–ranging from the fanatical cults and secret societies to openly militant monotheistic or monotheistic world religions, who use “carnal weapons of warfare” (military, political, modern technology, psychological, or biological warfare) against their perceived “national enemies”’who are existential threats” to their religion.
God’s people put on “the whole armor of God,” the “armor of righteousness”(Eph. 5: 10-18; 2 Cor. 6:7). They are daily “fighting the good fight of faith”(1 Tim. 6:12), gaining personal triumphs in “the battles of the Lord where champions are few.” They “endure hardness, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ” (2 Tim. 2:3), being “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might” (Eph. 6:10) and “quit themselves like strong men”’(1 Sam. 4:9). Bless all, NMF
