Build While the Sun Shines
10/29/2004
Another aspect of serving God is being in favor then out of favor, in favor then out of favor, in favor then out of favor. If one day everyone shouts "Hosanna" and throws palm leaves in front of you, and you think, “Wow, I sure am serving God…this is great!”—don’t think you aren’t going to be crucified tomorrow. That’s just how those things work. You’ve got to be prepared in season and out of season for whatever price there may be.
Right now in the church, we’ve had a very obvious season of peace. Part of that is because we’re intentionally not pressing the envelope. We’re intentionally just sowing seeds and “raising the spiritual temperature.” We’re just trying to raise the spiritual temperature a couple degrees at a time by continuing to throw truth out there and making more and more people aware of truth. That doesn’t mean this season of relative peace where we’re basically getting away with this is going to last. There will be some serious abuse and accusation and twisted, contrived, accusations and weird and wild stuff. The stuff in Mark 13 where everything is twisted and there are shadows and confusion and misunderstanding and betrayal—that is going to happen. We’re getting away with it right now. We’re dealing in a supernatural war and not paying a supernatural price, at the moment.
It isn’t always going to be that way. God will separate the wheat from the chaff. God will create an amazingly complicated and difficult and painful world of confusion, where men will kill you thinking they’re doing God a favor, and various other things like that. We're told by the Head of the Church, the Master, Jesus Himself, that those things are going to happen. You have to understand that this “big party” we’re having right now may not be the case forever, not even in your lifetime.
This is fun right now. This is easy. We have the best life of anybody on planet earth right now. The quality of life here is off the scale. Most people our age who have children can’t even find one person to just stay with the children on Friday night while they go to a movie or to a restaurant. They can’t find one person to stay with the children that they trust. Nobody. The way most people live in this world is unbelievable. They’re very alone. Their world is just filled, every single day, with contradictions, pain, fear, confusion and fighting, slander and gossip. Their world is filled with garbage every day, every day, every day. Go work for one day at Xerox. Just sit in a cubicle and listen for one day to conversations on the telephone and the conversations between the employees. The gossip, the slander, the sabotage of people’s careers, the way they try to tear each other down and mock other people that try to do things, is just unbelievable. Every company and every neighborhood everywhere is like that.
We live in almost perfect peace. The things that are costly and difficult and challenging to us are almost non-existent in comparison to almost every person—not just on earth today, but in comparison to almost every person that has ever been born to this earth in the history of mankind. We have it better than anybody, anywhere, at any time! To think that will last our whole lifetime, and we’re going to die a happy ripe old age of 80 or 90 or 100, and it’s always going to be this unbelievable oasis of life in the middle of the Sahara desert…that’s not going to happen.
Jesus said the thing that He’s doing is going to come to a cataclysmic, volcanic eruption of darkness, hatred, fear, confusion, and betrayal. You’re going to have to know where you stand. You’re going to have to know who you are loyal to in this age and be loyal to God Himself. If you’re walking in doubt and fear now, in paradise, you’re a dead man or a dead woman when you have pressure on you. There’s no hope. You can’t make it. It’s not possible. If you don’t walk in peace, love, loyalty, and sacrifice now when there is no pressure or heat, then there is no hope for later. So NOW is the time, in this time of peace, prosperity, zero pressure, and virtual paradise…NOW is the time to build a life of love, peace, and loyalty, where you know exactly where you stand, and the God of Israel is your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the people He's bought are your reason for living—to lay down your life for them. That has to be now, because it’s easy now.
Now is the time when you lay the foundation for when the storms come. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, beautiful white clouds are billowing in the sky and floating by. Enjoy it, but that’s not a time to sleep. That’s a time to build, because the storms are coming.
One minute Jeremiah is sitting there eating dinner with his fiancée, life’s good, and that birdcage is just a bad memory. “The king let me go and everything’s good now. Life is good.” Before he can even finish eating his meal, Jeremiah is dragged down the road by a horseman and thrown in prison to rot with his flesh bleeding, his heart pounding, and his mouth full of dirt. Now what? Who’s he going to be now? We know who he was when he had his glass of apple cider in his hand and everybody was singing around the table, but who is he now?
Those are the things you build while the sun is shining. Now is the time to get things right. Make the choices now, so that when these days come—and they will—and when the storms come (Matthew 7), the houses that are built on the Rock of having obeyed that still, small Voice will stand.
