Go and Dig Ditches

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Telephone numbers 0703 03636 59 0703 76811 98 Email address lsmediaatlivingseed.org Or visit our website at www.livingseed.org Let us sit back and listen as the servant of God brings forth the Word of Life. Thank you, Brajato. Let us pray together.

Our Father, we cannot express the gratitude in our hearts. It is beyond words. You are so good to us.

We can testify that your mercies, they endure forever. They've endured with all the time that we have pursued after you, as they have endured over all the ages past. This day again, we lean on these mercies that are our assurance, the assurance that we will again receive grace as we obtain mercy.

We pray, O God, that again you will make a way for us. Cause, O Rock of Ages, that we hide our life in you. We confess again that nothing in my hand I bring simply to your cross I cling even now.

I request that in the nakedness in which I'm coming, you be the clothing that will be presented unto your people. It is in our most low state of weakness, of infirmity, that you make your grace much more abundant, sufficient, and your strength much more effective. Even so, Lord, all through today, we ask that you will reveal yourself unto us in your mercy.

Be exalted and magnified forevermore. Thank you for answering us, for it is in Jesus' name that we have prayed. Amen.

I'd like to note again with us that the Lord is speaking to each of us personally, individually. Of course, the message God is bringing to us is also an announcement of his visitation to his people and to our generation. The message that hereafter, you and I will see heaven open and we will see the messengers of heaven bearing our requests expressly.

In all security, mounting up to the Almighty, and we'll be bringing down expressly the responses of our gracious Father, the Almighty God. And doing this as Jesus is our own ladder, rather than the ordinary one that Jacob saw, bearing all that we have to cry to the Father to heaven by Christ, and bringing also down to us by him, according to the limitless favor that our Savior has with the Father, to answer us speedily and to do great and mighty things which we will be seeing in the course of time. Please don't forget that when God came to us yesterday, it was very, very particular, that yes, we are concerned about all the needs of the many, many Syrophoenician women around about us.

We are worried about the degradation, the corruption, the wickedness, the wars. We are worried about even the famine of the Word of God, the inversion of the powers of darkness that are even encroaching on the body of Christ. We are worried about the needs all around us.

We are deeply concerned that unrighteousness seems to have taken righteousness hostage, seems to have kidnapped godliness, and is now seeming to be the one reigning over all our lands, our countries, our various tribes and tongues. They seem to be an audacious display of darkness in our generation. It's almost becoming so intimidating that if you don't join darkness, you can't make it.

If you don't agree with unrighteousness, with corruption, with daylight unrighteousness and wickedness, that you have no place in our generation. Yet all of this will be resolved with crumbs. God said all of the seeming, staggering need of our generation, God only needs crumbs to meet them all.

But how will the crumbs come about when the children are not yet filled? When we have not yet eaten, all the bread is waiting in heaven to be released. And it is on account of this that hereafter we will see heaven open. It's opening to release the abundance of the divine supplies to fill the children.

The children must first be filled because it's out of the abundance of the feeding of the children that the father is intending to serve the needs of our various peoples, people's groups, the needs of a particular generation in all areas and walks of life. In the issues of our various professions and careers, God intends to meet these needs but is waiting on us to arise and to sit at table and begin to consume our own portion. So the greatest need that we are here to call on God for is that he might release the abundance of his provisions that are meant for us as the body of Christ, so that the rest of the populations of our generation might stop starving.

This morning, further to this, I hear God calling on us therefore to set about in anticipation of the open heavens that are already imminent. I hear God asking us to go and dig ditches. There is an abundance that heaven must send down and adequate reservoirs, adequate receptors, adequate containers, adequate space must be provided to receive what heaven must send down in a very, very short time to come.

I'd like to read the story, just a bit of it, that carries this message in 2 Kings chapter 3. I will not dare to try to read the whole of it. I will only read the portion that I would have us to particularly note as we share further, because the story itself is not what is important for us at this point. But it has to do with a great need, a moment of serious need that arose in the midst of the people of God at the time of the reign of Jehoram, the son of Ahab, and in the time of the reign of Jehoshaphat, who was the king over Judah.

I'd like us to note that this story speaks about a tight corner in which not only the army of Israel, but also the army of Judah, and that of Edom, that was confederate with Israel and Judah, in order to go against Moab, that had rebelled against Israel at the time. I'd like you to note that they came to a point where there was a very, very dire need. A need that bordered on survival, and they needed for God to intervene, just like we are looking to heaven for a desperate supply to attend to our dire need in this moment of our lives.

And I want to note that as they went to confer with Elisha, Elisha would have driven them away, except that he could respect the presence of Jehoshaphat, who was mindful of the ways of the Lord in his day. And when he would speak, would you note in verse 14 now, that he called for a musician, a minstrel, as we would read in the Old King James. In verse 15, the Bible says, but now bring me a minstrel, a musician, and it came to pass when the musician played, that the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha.

And Elisha said, Thou sayest the Lord, make this valley full of ditches, for thou sayest the Lord, ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain, yet that valley in which you have dug the ditches shall be filled with water. And this water will be sufficient that you may drink, both you and your cattle and your beasts, and even this is a light thing in the sight of the Lord, he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand. Now, would you like to come to verse 20 to note that it came to pass.

It came to pass that in the morning, when the meat offering was offered, that behold, there came water by the way of Edom, and the country was filled with water. Needless to go on to note that thereafter, God also arranged that they could pursue and overtake Moab, and they recovered all, and they occupied where Moab had occupied before. There was a full restoration.

There was a very clear deliverance, but also a complete restoration. The visitation of God for our lives in his opening the heavens in response to all of the cries of his children, some have even gone ahead of us into heaven, who have interceded, who have labored, who have waited for this movement, this visitation of God. But it pleased God to respond to them and to us in our own day.

Now, but God says we have a part to play. There is a necessary role that involves you and I. Now, this role is about our preparing for his coming, so that it's not wasted. Now, God had come on this before, some years back, and sent us by this word to go and prepare vessels for the reviver.

He came to mobilize us to go labor in discipleship, so that the vessels that will run with the fire that God will release from above, with the help that will come from heaven, with the anointing of heaven, the grace of God that will come upon our lives, will be made available for God to use. Today, I hear God saying, at the moment that we are at the threshold of that visitation, this labor of digging ditches by raising disciples, we must do it even much more intensively, with a sense of urgency, with a sense of purpose, having in mind the fact that the time now is really very short. We must go dig ditches by providing more and more vessels for the torrential rain of God's visitation that we are expecting, as the heavens will open unto us beyond our imagination.

We need to provide the vessels that will collect the visitation of God in their lives. Now, but I want to note with us that God will have us first to go to provide the space in our lives. Even in the area of our commitment to discipleship, He wants the capacity of our lives to increase.

He wants to see more of our resemblance of Jesus, as it is the life of Christ that He can use. God is asking that we should be particular to ensure that our commitment to grow in discipleship, our commitment to engage much more the opportunities of learning at His feet, and of following the lives that He may have already introduced to each one of us much more closely, in order to miss nothing of the provisions He's making for us to learn Jesus. He wants first ourselves to dig deeper, to dig deeper into our lives and make provision for our growth in an accelerated manner.

It will be His joy when He arrives that He's finding each of us carrying the measure that is the measure of Christ. With what measure we offer to Him, that's the measure He can feel, and that's the measure that He can also pour out to other lives. Are you all together already like Jesus? Are there areas that do not carry the life that God can feel and can use? Would you like to commit yourself this morning, particularly as we are pressing on, or whatever time of day it is with you, would you like to determine that you will dig ditches? First the ditch of your commitment to learn Jesus.

Go and dig more space. You have not yet given God the space that He's looking for, as long as you are not all together like Jesus. Don't rest on your oars.

Don't begin to congratulate yourself when the time is almost at hand and it is Jesus God we'll be looking for to use when He descends in abundance upon our lives as the heavens open unto us. Also, I hear God asking that you should dig ditches in your life of your hunger for God, your hunger to be used of God, your hunger to spend and be spent for the purpose of God. Also, you may have surrendered to God.

Did you really surrender all? Go and check and confirm that you are all together a living sacrifice unto the Father. You've offered your life and you are already dead to death. You are already completely dead to whatever could be a personal convenience, a personal interest, a personal profit.

You are living only for Jesus, for He died for all, so that those who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto those for whom He died and rose again. You should check again. The point is, it is critical time now.

We are in injury time of our preparation, and so you must confirm that your ditches are ready. Confirm that they are not small. When the widow woman in chapter 4 of the 2 Kings that we have read, when she was asked to gather vessels, gather not a few, and I think she must have tried, and she gathered the vessels.

But as she shot in with the sons and began to pour the oil when God came down, when the miracle began to flow, I imagine she must have regretted when she asked the sons to bring yet another vessel, and the sons said, sorry ma, there is no more. The vessels are finished. And of course, that's how far the oil could go, the oil stayed.

I would request that we be mindful of the fact that the release from heaven will be unlimited. Let's prepare our lives in our seeking to serving to be in such measure that whatever assignment it puts upon our shoulders, there will be capacity to bear it. There will be room to contain it.

We will not be like that widow of the prophet that had reason to regret that our vessels were finished. I imagine if she understood what was going to happen, she will have used the little resources left in her hand to take a flight abroad, mobilizing for more vessels, until she would need to have had to hire perhaps some stores to keep empty vessels for the process of filling them. She would have actually become the richest person in all of history if her vision, her perspective, her understanding was enlarged.

God wants us to enlarge our hearts, to enlarge our vision, to enlarge our expectation, as he told us yesterday, to dig the ditches for the visitation of God, for the grace, for the provisions, for the help that God is bringing to find adequate space to do not just a little and stay, and yet unrighteousness will still be roaming around, but to be able to overpower and overcome all that we need to overcome in order to take over and to rule for the Lord. Now, dig ditches in your life, dig ditches of prayer, dig ditches of prayer. Now, this is requiring for us to deliberately exercise our hearts in praying, not superficially as we may have been praying before, but to gain depth in prayer, to pray deeply.

To be able to pray and touch the heavens, to pray your life into communion with God in the secret place, into communion with God, even in the council room of heaven, to pray until you are standing before God. Pray your heart into an intimate communion with the Father. Pray until you begin to really pray.

We need exercise in prayer. You know, digging is a laborious exercise. When you are digging, you sweat.

When you are digging, you exert yourself. Let's exert ourselves in all the areas of our digging. Don't be scratching.

They say dig. Let's dig ditches. Let's dig ditches in prayer.

Pray asking for the nations, asking for distant lands. Are you a professional? Don't be afraid of praying to request for God to give you the entire profession in the whole world. You will soon be flying to go and instruct lecturers if you are in the tertiary academic profession.

To be instructing lecturers in the Bahamas, to be instructing lecturers in Fiji Islands, to be instructing lecturers in Malaysia. But pray, receive the ends of the earth, and he will give them to you for a possession. We need to intercede for God to visit the whole earth.

Prayer is one particular area in which we need to dig the ditches. God definitely is committed. He said, assure readily, I say unto you.

I say unto you with all assurance that year after you will see heaven open and there will be an unlimited opportunity for us to send into heaven and to receive out of heaven upon the Son of Man. Now, but how prepared are you? If he has committed himself to doing it, we must be committed to receiving it, and we must be prepared for what we will receive. For this, we need to dig ditches also in asking.

We prayed for revival, but now much more. We need to enlarge the scope of our prayers in revival. We need to deepen our expectation.

Pray for revival not only to affect the preparation of hearts for heaven, not only to affect the deliverance of people from sin, not only to affect their deliverance from the oppression of demons, not only to affect the breaking of every yoke of all addictions, not only to affect their personal walk with God and the restoration of all backsliders never to backslide again. Pray that the visitation of God will change the politics of the world, that we will go from democracy to what God himself will determine where the rule of the earth will no longer be deliberate rebellion against God. Pray that the whole earth will come under the rule of God.

Pray that the economics of the world will no longer be driven by self, be driven by personal ego, be driven by selfish aggrandizement. There will be an economy of the world that is after the principles of sacrifice, of love, and of Christ, that is sponsoring peace. Here is the economy in which we presently are that is encouraging wars.

It's an economy of strife. Pray for an economy that will be all-embracing and that will be much more interested in sharing than gathering. Would you like to pray that revival will change our politics? Revival will change even the educational spectrum of the world, that revival will bring an end to every form of way of life, that the revival will change our legal systems, will change the kind of judiciary we have in every country.

In fact, that revival will change man in and out. We change man in all his undertakings. We change man in agriculture.

We change man in medicine. We change man in the arts and crafts. We change man in our drive of technology.

I would like us to actually set our heart to dig ditches. What you don't ask from heaven, you cannot receive. And it is the measure to which you ask, believing that will determine the measure that you can also collect.

So it's important for us to be committed to preparing the ground for the abundance of rain that the open heavens will release upon the earth, for the limitless flow of divine favors that we will be collecting upon the Son of Man. Would you like to commit yourself to digging ditches? Digging big, wide, deep ditches. Ditches that if you dug before, you go back to increase in every area of your expectation of the visitation of God.

There's a need to mobilize our hearts to pray and to mobilize ourselves, even together in prayer, to ask God to send us the rain that will cover everywhere. We are dwelling in very dry valleys in our experiences upon the earth. And first, our hunger, spiritually first of all, are overrunning the world.

Not to talk of the wickedness, the killings, the wars, the hatred. The peoples of this world are worried about hate. But the hate is part of the life that they have adopted.

The life of sin, the life of rebellion against God, the life of disobedience to his set pattern and his set standards. The only solution against all manner of hate can only come by revival, when it is the Prince of Peace who breaks down all the walls of partition, when he becomes the ruler of every heart. Would you like to ask God, as we'll be pleading with him, that he will show us mercy? He will show us mercy to be prepared.

Don't forget, as I want to begin to bring you to the issues we are talking about, in conclusion, that we need to prepare first our own lives, much more than we may have prepared ourselves before. We need to dig ditches that will contain what heaven is at the point of releasing. Ditches by intensifying our availability to gain from discipleship, intensifying our commitment to pursue our becoming more and more like Jesus.

We need to dig the ditches of our hunger for God, the ditches of our yearning to be with him, to commune more and more with him, and to be much more and more pleasing to him, to enjoy intimacy with God. Ditches of hunger for intimacy with the Almighty. We need to dig ditches in prayer, ditches that are growing our capacity to pray, and pray deeply, and pray effectively.

The praying that is not superficial, the praying that is not casual, the praying that is touching the heart of God, the praying that is affecting the very care of the heart of the Most High, is asking the things that the Father himself is seeking to accomplish. We need to dig ditches in our own lives, ditches of requesting all of the world, the nations, the nations of this world, all the professional walks of life, all the areas of human endeavour. We need to expand the ditches and dig deep, dig to collect all, dig to lose nothing of what heaven will be releasing, if we exercise ourselves more and more in prayer.

Why are we doing this? We are doing this because it is the measure of our eating that will determine the quantity of crumbs that the rest of the world can endure. Why are we doing this? Because whatever we don't ourselves feed upon, whatever we don't feast upon, will not be a feast available for the rest of our generation. And if God doesn't visit us to the measure as to bring transformation to our generation, even what he has done in our lives will soon be overrun by our generation.

We have had revivers in the past, but they are now only read as history. They are now only available in the archives. Why? Because in places like Turkey, in places where the word of God actually took over the lands, the word of God did not take over the running of the life of the people.

The visitation of God did not transform the government of the land, did not transform the economy of the land, did not transform the relationships of the various people and people's groups on account of the grace of God that came down. Let's ask beyond just preparing us for heaven. Let's ask beyond just making our lives to be available to serve God.

Let's ask that there will also be a further impact that will influence the rest of our world. This moment, I perceive God saying, if you have accepted that he's saying you, you personally, that you will see heaven open and that you will see the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, if you agree that it concerns you, that he's talking about you, you are that Nathaniel today, then there has to be a preparation for it. What are you doing about it? If this is what you are expecting, then where is the preparation? Where do you plan to keep it? How do you plan to apply it? Is your life having the capacity to contain it, to hold it, and to operate with what heaven is going to release? We need to dig ditches.

We mentioned yesterday the need for expectation. Now, this moment, we are talking about the need to be practical about this expectation by actually preparing in earnest for it, arranging what is necessary to contain it. And part of it is that our prayer for revival must intensify beyond what we may have been praying in asking for revival in the past.

The reason being, we are now at the threshold of that experience. And if it catches us unawares, if it catches us unprepared, it would be unfortunate that what men prayed for several centuries before now, and what we have been praying for, even we ourselves for decades, some of us began to pray for revival as very young kids, very young youth. Decades have passed.

It would be unfortunate that when the revival now comes, we are not ready. We are ill-prepared. God is saying this is the time to go and dig ditches.

And not to dig a few, and not to dig them miserly, but to dig them abundantly, lavishly, because the visitation must be contained, must be correctly applied, and nothing of it must be wasted. Heaven hates waste. Our Father will not that anything be lost.

Let's pray that God will prepare us indeed as we go on further. Now it's clear that if this is the focus, it means no one who is expecting that he will be part of the Nathaniel Company, the diggers of ditches, will be alive, that himself is still doubting God. Himself is yet to be committed to him, has not come to Jesus.

Only those who have arrived can receive this instruction with us all. And so the first thing to be resolving upon in this assembly is that you are personally prepared to join the company of those awaiting the open heavens, looking to heaven for these heavens to be opened. The heavens will be opened only for those who are Nathaniel's, who have believed and have confessed Christ as the Lord and as the King that has been set in Zion over all the years, as the Prince that the Father has elected to reign over all creation.

I would like us to pray at this point as we commend ourselves to God in the six minutes we have remaining on this lot, asking that he will show us mercy, he will mobilize us himself by his own spirit, so that we will not be left out at this moment of the feasting of God's mercies that he has chosen to release upon the entire earth. Would you like to bow your head as we pray and as we commend ourselves to the Lord, asking that, O God, please show me personally mercy. Show me mercy.

If I have not properly come, Jesus said, come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. You can't be digging ditches when your life is still under the yoke of sin, the yoke of all manner of oppressions of darkness. When you are still living in rebellion against God, when your life is still heavy laden with all manner of the burdens of the chaos of this life and the deceitfulness of riches, those who are like Nathaniel, they have left all to follow Jesus.

They have come to all together be made like unto him, and their own pursuit is to become instruments that will live to serve the purpose of God only. Would you like to commend yourself to God and say, Lord, help my life, therefore, to fit in. Help my life to become the kind of life that you can depend upon in this day of your power, in this day of your visitation.

Help me to be not only willing, but also available in this day of your power. Would you like to pray to God over this? Bow your head, speak to God personally, unless you don't think you are part of those he's talking to. Unless you don't understand that in this day, wherever he has located you, you are that Nathaniel that must be filled with his own fullness.

So that out of the crumbs of what drops in your filling your life with him, that others will much more than be satisfied. But it has to start with your own life. It has to begin with you receiving of the fullness.

This makes it mandatory that you personally must make space for what God is bringing. You must dig ditches. Brother, did you think you have already grown enough? You are already doing well? May I put it to you that you have only started and your time is remaining very short.

The whole time has become very tight. It means you must double up now. It means you must arise and focus much more than you may have done before.

Sister, has God pointed out a life that should be your leader, your disciple, the hand by which you will learn Jesus? Were you very careless about throwing clothes? Careless about even standing the rebukes, the reproofs? You have often withdrawn, but time is running out. When will you actually be prepared, a correct disciple that can raise others? And this level will double when the heavens open and the release of God's mercy comes down in abundance. People will overrun us.

The crowds will be pressing upon us. But your life will not have been ready. How unfortunate it will be.

Would you like to pray that, Lord, please help my life to be fully prepared, to be correctly made available, and to have the capacity for what you plan to do? Lord, we want to thank you for each and every one of us. We just want to pray, O God, that wherever our position is, for those of us for whom even the coming is in doubt, you will sort that out in the course of the moments we'll be passing together shortly. For those of us that, yes, we can say we have rested from sin, we've rested from the love of the word, we've rested from the dominion of darkness, but God is saying now is time to take that yoke of discipleship more earnestly.

For some of us, he's needing for us to prepare, prepare for the level of revival, dig ditches. You will help each and every one of us at each of our levels, and cause that none of what you'll be releasing will be lost in any of our lives, to the praise of your glory, in the name of Jesus. Amen.