Antioch, Apostolic Sending and Setting - Part 13

Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. If we're casual, if we're indifferent, and are not willing for the sacrifice, it will not come. So, right within Singapore, there must be a way in which these realities can be obtained. If there are earnest saints who seek them and are willing for the sacrifice to obtain them. Asia is at stake. Israel is at stake in the obtaining of this reality. Nothing else will suffice. And you'll be standing before God without excuse in the day of his appearing, and in the day of his judgment, about giving answer for what you have done in your body, both good and bad. This is apostolic. Paul always saw the judge at the door. He always lived in anticipation of a reckoning, a day of reckoning and of judgment, in which he would be held responsible for the way in which he expended his life and his energy. So will we also. There may be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth for believers who may find themselves cast out into outer darkness, not into hell, but out and away from the brightness of his glory, for they have not been fitted to live in it. They have not lived in this life in the light as he is in the light. And somehow it's even a mercy to be at a distance from it eternally. You need to live now in anticipation of your eternal destiny and reward, where God will give to each man according to his work. Let there be works that will pass to the fire and not be burned up. Let there be something established that has eternal verity of the kind that we have considered this morning. There will come a sacrifice in that suffering. You'll be misunderstood. You'll be called dangerous, radical. You're going too far. Your own denomination will shame you. You'll lose your place of preeminence, prestige and acceptance. I don't know. Certainly there has got to be this kind of backlash. The world will resist it. And the religious world, for the powers of the air, are operative even within, and especially within, the religious structures of which we are part. You begin to move in an apostolic direction and see how long it takes before you feel a new and uncanny degree of opposition coming from the spirit realm that has not been your experience heretofore. Be willing for that. And the Lord even uses that in your own refinement and in the shaping of his character in you. For whatever degree you will have obtained it in this life is the degree to which you will bear it eternally. Thank you. Okay. There's another mic on the other side. Anyone who wants to follow up from the points that have been expressed so far? Yes, could you be at the mic please? I'm saying this because if you look around here, there are women here. A lot of us are women. And most of us, I don't know, I'm speaking for myself and some of my friends here. In our family, the women is the one that's coming, passion for God. Our husbands are not. So, in a way, you will see this struggle until we can, we can find a way, I don't know how, prayer or what, that the men will take up that headship, okay? To be a covering for the family. Then the whole family will work as a unit and we will go together. But how to get the men to be passionate for the Lord? This is one thing I would pray. Next question. Next question. I can only say 1 Peter 3 gives us a definitive answer that the husband who is not won by the word can be won by the demonstration of a chaste and quiet wife. A wife with a chaste and quiet spirit which in God's sight is of great price. It may ironically be the fact that we have hounded our husbands and hocked them as we say in Yiddish that has been the deterrent to their coming to the kind of spirituality that we desire. But that when we will demonstrate the very character of God with a chaste and meek spirit in God's sight which is of great price, not being afraid, which is to say that we will trust God for His work in the reluctant husband without our prompting, prodding, leaving scriptures behind in the bathroom and our cat's books by the bed, that we will see that result. God is after something more profound than we could know and if we are called together to be the bride of Christ, you women have a remarkable challenge and destiny to model and to exhibit to the entire church what will be the essential and eternal character of the church as the bride of Christ. Adorned for the bridegroom having a quiet and meek spirit which means faith, trust, which in God's sight is of great price. So it's not your struggle alone. The entire fellowship should be joining you in prayer for the reluctant, recalcitrant husband and indeed the men must come into their place. Maybe one of the reasons that they have not is that we have not exhibited or put forth for them an understanding of the faith that calls for their manly participation. I even corrected or made a comment in the Philippines about worship that was for me distasteful and made my spirit recoil because it was altogether romantic. It spoke of the Lord as if you're in some kind of longing. It sounded very emotional, very romantic. It's the kind of thing that a man would shrink from. It's love as a woman would convey it but not in a way into which a man could respond. Look at your worship songs and to what degree you have influenced it romantically rather than spiritually and what we need to put before the men. And our own children is a church of such verity and such authenticity and such high seriousness that it even compels them to be part. I often say our children are the test and the measure of the truth of what we are about. Have we persuaded them that what we are about is not only authentically of God but deserves their own participation or are they just coming because they're obliged to and are hanging onto our skirts and will soon enough find greater attraction in the world's culture than anything that they see in the church. So may the whole quality of the church be elevated in the high seriousness that will attract men and our own sons when we move from our present service orientation.