Body

Devotions

Knowing the Voice of the Lord

David Wilkerson (1931-2011)

Because of the sins of the priesthood and the people, God wasn’t speaking to Israel. Scripture says, “And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no widespread revelation” (1 Samuel 3:1, NKJV). In the middle of this famine of the Word, though, the Lord appeared to the young Samuel: “The Lord called Samuel [who] did not yet know the Lord, nor was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him” (1 Samuel 3:4, 7).

Samuel was only twelve years old, but he didn’t yet recognize the voice of the Lord. So God came to his bedside and spoke his name out loud. Samuel first thought Eli was speaking; he didn’t know he was being trained to discern voices, to hear directly from God!

God wasn’t speaking to Eli the priest who had grown deaf to his voice. In fact, it seems that only one prophet was hearing from God: the unnamed man who warned Eli that God was about to cut him off (see 1 Samuel 2:27-36).

Hearing from God takes more than quiet time alone, more than simply saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears!” No, there is no formula for hearing God. Put simply, he speaks to those who have prepared their hearts to hear.

Samuel had no deep theological knowledge of God when the Lord first spoke to him, but he had a tender, pure, devoted heart that was open to the Lord. So what do you think was the first thing God taught him? He said, “I’m going to judge Eli because he knew his sons were wicked, but did nothing to restrain them. They should have been stripped of their robes and told, ‘You can’t go near the holy place.’ Therefore, Samuel, I‘m going to show you my hatred for sin in my house. I want to you to know what it takes to hear my voice and walk with me” (see 1 Samuel 3:11-14).

It's no wonder the Bible says Samuel spoke such sure words. He had heard the voice of the Lord! He spent much time shut in with God, praying and seeking him, and God spoke clearly to him each time.

There are people around the world who have been trained to know God’s voice. These praying saints pour out their hearts to him, and he pours himself out to them.

Birth of the Last-Days Remnant

David Wilkerson (1931-2011)

The prophet Samuel is a type of today’s holy generation, a prepared body of believers who rise out of the ruins of the old, decadent church.

Hannah, Samuel’s mother, birthed her son through bitter tears and much prayer. “And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish” (1 Samuel 1:10, NKJV).

Here’s the scene: Hannah was at the temple every day, on her knees before the altar, crushed and broken because she was childless. As she wept, her enemy—her husband’s other wife—made fun of her. “And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the Lord had closed her womb” (1 Samuel 1:6). There are three important things to note in this passage.
•      The generation that Samuel represents is born in grief and intercession.
•      Those who pray will be provoked by adversaries.
•      God will always be misunderstood.

Notice what Hanna did. “And it happened, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth. Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, ‘How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!’” (1 Samuel 1:12-14). Eli and his sons represent the dying, corrupt church that has forsaken the Lord’s way. Eli was so dead in his spirit that he thought Hannah was drunk.

Hannah was filled with grief and desire for a son, and all she could do was move her lips and groan in the Spirit. She prayed, “If you will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant and remember me, and . . . will give your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life” (1 Samuel 1:11).

Here are two distinguishing marks of this holy generation: They pray with passion, and they give themselves to prayer every single day. Like Hannah, they make it their priority to seek God’s face.

God wants you to be able to touch and hear from him as Hannah did. He wants to give you a ministry to others who will come to you with their burdens and trials. As you pray, his Word will come forth!

God’s Powerful Army

David Wilkerson (1931-2011)

Something powerful and awesome is going on in the world today. It is a force beyond human comprehension that will affect the entire world in these last days. God is preparing a small but powerful army of Christians. He is going to close out the ages with a pure, devoted, fearless group.

All my life I have heard stories about our godly forefathers who hated sin. These men and women knew God’s voice and spent hours, even days, in fasting and prayer. They prayed relentlessly and had the power and ability to successfully stand up against immorality in their day.

These forefathers have long since passed on, but God is in the process of raising up another army. This time it will not be made up only of elderly, gray-haired fathers and mothers of the faith. It will have both new and seasoned believers, young and old - ordinary Christians who lay hold of God in a new realm of ministry.

The denominational church system appears to be in the throes of death. It has almost no influence in the secular world, no mighty power in Christ. Some accuse me of being “hard” on pastors, but I am in touch with many godly pastors who grieve as I do over the backsliding in the ministry today. There are many godly pastors, and I thank God for every one of them. Yet it is still a fact that more and more ministers are racing down the road of compromise.

The Bible warns that we are not to worry about this. God has a plan that we can read about in scripture, mostly in the first four chapters of 1 Samuel.

The prophet Samuel is a type of God’s last-days people. The Lord chose him during the worst of times and hid him away in training until it was time to reveal his new thing. God told Samuel, “Behold, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle” (1 Samuel 3:11, NKJV). What would so amaze and startle all who heard it? It was the judgment of God on the backslidden religious system and the raising up, training and anointing of men and women committed to him.

God does in every generation what he did in Samuel’s day. He raises up a praying people after his own heart.

Do Not Live by Bread Alone

David Wilkerson (1931-2011)

If you think you’re too ordinary to be used of God, listen closely. God is not going to do his final work through big-name evangelists or pastors. They alone won’t be able to handle the great moving of the Holy Spirit! The fact is that God is going to need every person who loves him, young and old, to carry out this work. These will be Christians who have been weaned from bread alone. Let me explain.

God said through Moses, “Man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3, NKJV).

Bread stands for all natural, material things necessary for this life: food, shelter, clothes, labor, wages, etc. Bread represents livelihood, those things we need that are not evil in themselves. Many Christians, however, live only for the things of this life. They live on bread alone.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). First, though, he said we were to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10). We are to focus first on God’s interests and pray for his will to be done. What have you been thinking about more than anything else these past six months? What has consumed most of your time and prayers? Has it been mostly bread issues, personal needs?

If you focus only on bread, then you have no life. You are living in a wilderness just as the children of Israel did. They rose daily and began crying for bread and their personal needs every day for forty years.

Beloved, that is boredom, drudgery! God never intended for his children to live like that. Instead, he told Israel through Moses, “You should be living by every word that proceeds out of my mouth. Yes, I told you I would give you bread, but don’t stop there. Move on. I have told you there is a land flowing with milk and honey, with rivers, trees, forests, green pastures; and I want that place for you.”

God is raising up a people who are focused on his will for this midnight hour. They are tired of living in a wilderness of mere survival. All they want is to know and do God’s will. Every member must be ready and prepared in heart because God is poised to release his great, final outpouring.

A Difference between Healing and Miracles?

Gary Wilkerson

Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service but the same Lord...to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:4-7, ESV). There are nine gifts of the Spirit, but lately I’ve been zeroing in on two of them: miracles and healing.

A miracle is an instantaneous work of God. One of the Greek definitions is literally “that the man of God may be established.” A sign, a wonder, happens. Jesus performed stupendous miracles so amazing that two thousand years later we stop in wonder as we read about them. The disciples also performed miracles; as the Holy Spirit allowed, the gift of miracles served to advance the gospel through them and grow the young church. Even today we see miracles performed by a holy God who works mightily in the affairs of men and women. No doubt about it, all kinds of miracles take place around the world in response to people’s obedience to God’s word.

Healing, on the other hand, implies process. One of the many Greek words for “healing” is therapeuo, meaning “therapy,” “cure” or “medicine.” It therefore isn’t religious rhetoric to say, “Okay, I’ve just been prayed for; I’m healed in Jesus’s name” even if you are still manifesting symptoms. You did receive healing, but it may take weeks, months or years. I’ve experienced this. I’ve known of flat-out miracles of divine healing with before-and-after X rays to prove them. However, there are other times when God has had me cooperate with him in the healing process. That usually engages the body, mind and spirit.

Is it healing when you begin to change your diet, get more sleep and shed unhealthy habits? Is taking advantage of remarkable medical advancements to combat disease part of the healing process? Is it healing when you spend concentrated time and effort with God to adjust your attitude, mend a relationship, restore balance in your life? Yes! Who are we to limit God’s methods? The key element is that when we pray, we work in partnership with him.

We have God’s promise that he does all things for our good. He hears the cry of each heart and will use miracles, healing and every good gift to accomplish his will in our lives.