God Waits for Us to Come to a Zero Point by Zac Poonen

in the world the emphasis is more on what we do than what we are more on doing than in being and when jesus picked up a child he said we must be converted converted from this worldly attitude and be not do be like a little child so it's not so much what we accomplish in life it's not so much what we're capable of doing even preaching is something we do and so often in a church we can be taken up with being accepted because we do something maybe not preaching but something else and we want to be known for what we do but the lord is far more interested in what we are and our character is what we are when we are in the dark when nobody is watching us that's that's what we really are what we do is steam by others and when i when the bible speaks about being like little children i want to show you verse in 1 corinthians 14 [Music] and verse 20. it says brothers don't be like children in your thinking in evil be like infants in your thinking be mature so in our thinking in our understanding of god's ways we must be mature godly men and women there's no virtue in saying oh well i'm like a child i don't know well then you're disobeying the scripture which says every child of god must be mature in his thinking but in evil be not like a child not in the word their infant so it's referring to a i look at it like a one-month baby lying in a cradle see once you get a two-year-old a two-year-old can be quite naughty and evil sometimes but a one-month-old baby if you want to think of a child don't think of a two-year-old or even a one-year-old think of a one-month-old child that's our example not a one-year-old or a two-year-old a one-month-old child incapable of any evil it's helpless dependent on his parents for everything so many things i've spent many hours almost without exaggeration on meditating on a child you know lying in a cradle what are the thoughts passing through that child's mind and say lord are those my thoughts when i'm alone i mean the child is not thinking they're lying down what a smart guy i am or so many people come and admire this one month old child and he's not excited about it it's just so it's so innocent to be this this evil in pride and as i said the world is full of people who want to accomplish something you want to spend our life and say we've accomplished something for the lord even in christendom who other people are known as great in christendom people have done something accomplished they've gone here they've gone there they've written books and they've preached and they've done all types of things no those are not the people i've admired i would admire the one who's whose character whose attitude to money and who's fellowship with ordinary lowly people those are the people i've admired whether they accomplish something great or not is unimportant it's being and i think part of the reason is because like i always say if you don't read the bible carefully the bible is very exact i've come to i i've noticed that in six years of studying it and he has one verse which many people misunderstand acts of the apostle chapter one and verse eight acts one verse eight it says when the holy spirit has come upon you now the average person when he thinks of the holy spirit come upon him if he's a pentecostal it's immediately yeah he'll speak in tongues or if he's somebody else it's he says he'll be like dear lori or charles finney a great preacher the holy spirit has come upon they will do something almost every christian thinks of doing something when the holy spirit comes upon him lord i want to do something for you fill me with the holy spirit but notice that jesus spoke spoken about being [Music] understand the difference between being and doing when the holy spirit has come upon you you shall do something no you may do nothing you shall be very very important careless reading of scripture you may never speak in terms you may never be a great preacher you may never travel the world but you will be something your life will reflect jesus christ when you're filled with the spirit you will be a witness for me it's very important dear brothers and sisters in nccf to restore this emphasis otherwise we are not going to raise up another generation of people who understand what it means to be spirit-filled i remember when i had one of the first experiences of being filled with the spirit 46 years ago and i was at rock bottom failed in many areas of my life my inner life and my even my ministry and at that when i was at rock bottom the lord met with me and filled me with the spirit to teach me one thing that god doesn't fill with the spirit those who are in a very good position but those are utterly defeated and will fail in our failure and the word god spoke to me at that time was because you know i i decided that if this is a genuine fullness of the spirit the bible should become a new book for me because it's written by the holy spirit let me see if i learned something now from scripture which i never saw in all these previous 16 years of my being a christian up until then so i decided to start reading from matthew chapter 1 to get some confirmation that my experience was really of god when god met with me that day you know how doubts can come in when god has met with you and the next day doubts come in so when i turned to matthew chapter one and i was trying to look for confirmation of whether what god did in me was genuine or not first of all i went through that big list of genealogy and i was i didn't get anything out of that as to who begat who and whose son was who and all that i thought i'd get nothing out of it but by the time i came to the end of that chapter it's amazing how god speaks i read that the angel came to joseph and said don't be afraid this that has happened is of the holy spirit i said wow that is exactly what i was asking god for this that has happened to me is from the holy spirit or not and it was a i couldn't find a more exact verse to answer my doubt than that verse in the whole bible that's the one that hit me this is from the holy spirit in matthew 1 20 and from that the lord began to speak to me and said as i was meditating that first day after i had this wonderful experience god said the spirit came upon mary to produce jesus in her womb and the spirit has come upon you not to make you a great preacher but to produce jesus in you i'm so thankful i heard that the very first day and then the lord said to me that baby was not did not come out the very next day it took many many months a long period of time before that lady jesus came out for the world to see [Music] but there was a growth and christ's likeness will come in you not suddenly but over a period of time and that's why the holy spirit has come upon you and he went on from there that was not that wasn't the end of the message the lord said many people misunderstood mary they thought she was a prostitute they thought she was immoral that some roman soldier had impregnated her but she kept quiet she knew the truth even if others misunderstood her and the lord said to me you will also be misunderstood many people will misunderstand you and make false allegations against you you just got to keep quiet because you know what i did in your life christ will be formed in you and one day the world will recognize it like the world recognized finally who came out of mary that is a tremendous encouragement to me so being christ-like when you go back to the beginning of the bible in genesis chapter one you know god's purpose and redemption is to bring us back to his original purpose you remember when the pharisees came to jesus and said can a man divorce and marry again jesus said hang on how was it in the beginning god didn't make two women for adam only one so always jesus referred back to the beginning how was it in the beginning so when i turned back to the beginning in genesis 1 i find that god said let us make man in our image according to our likeness two words genesis 1 26 not let us make man so that we can do great things for us and here and there no it's got nothing to do with doing it is our likeness our image two words from multitudes of things god can do god did not make man to do things he made man to be something to reflect his image so like jesus said how was it in the beginning i would encourage you to think of that i tell you christendom has completely forgotten about it christendom has drifted away to doing to doing something for the lord to bearing witness that's good bearing witness but being a witness is what jesus said the world of difference between bearing witness and being a witness your bearing witness becomes useless if you're not being a witness like people say your life speaks so loudly that i can't hear what you're saying i don't hear what you're saying because your life is speaking much louder than your words and that's the tragedy of a lot of christendom but god created man in his own image and again it's repeated verse 27 how many times in the image of god he created him four times it's speaking about his image and his likeness and created his image and made this image that was god's original purpose and then from there he said okay now you can go be fruitful and multiply in verse 28 of course he's got to work for him to do he had a work for him to do in the garden and but before that there's another thing i learned here after he made man in his image he did not send him into the garden he said hang on hang on god work in the garden can wait i want you to spend 24 hours just with me i want you to fellowship with me i want you to worship me i want you and i to be together now and then i want you to go and work for me your work a lot better if you first spend one day with me that's how it was in the beginning and all of you all of us who get up in the morning and rush out to do things go back to how it was in genesis one and two begin your day with god before you get out of bed you like it's we read that verse which only quoted from isaiah 15. it's a very precious verse he wakes me up morning by morning isaiah 50 verse 4 to listen here as soon as you wake up dear brothers and sisters listen lord i want to hear you and i want to talk to you and be aware of you as i begin to say before you get out of bed it may be two minutes or five minutes but do that before you get out of bed that the first person you talk to when you wake up is the lord himself the first person you think of be like a little child he wants to see its mother and that's how we must be i mean when we read when jeremy said about being broken why does the lord have to break us because we are so strong we're so stubborn and so strong that he is to break us in order to make us like little children and if we have not yet become like little children the reason is that we are not yet broken sufficiently i think of think of the first miracle that jesus did uh mary let me paraphrase that whole section in john chapter two marriage of cana mary comes to jesus and says they have no wine and jesus says my time has not yet come that's his answer and i thought about that i never understood till recently why he said that and here's my understanding of why he said it now that's this is not in scripture you don't have to accept my interpretation but it is well mary i think there are five or six glasses of wine still left it hasn't come to zero i'll wait till it is zero my time does not come until there's not a single drop of wine left and when those last five or six glasses also run out then i'll do something i think that's the meaning of my time has not yet come it's certainly true in our life the lord begins to work in us we want him to work we want him to do a miracle in us we want him to multiply the wine and it's a picture of the holy spirit in our life and the lord says no my time has not yet come why hasn't it come brother in your life because there's still a little bit of that human strength which is not being broken yet the lord is waiting i know certainly it was true in my life that's what the lord was waiting for he wasn't waiting for me to pray more or fast more he was waiting for me to come to the end of myself and when i did come to the end of myself the lord met with him when the wine ran out in cana finally when the last drop there was not even one glass or one drop left then the lord says okay and what an abundance he he made each of 180 gallons can imagine 180 gallons of wine for how many people would have been in that wedding in that house when the lord does something it's always like rivers of living water he always does it in abundance it's not three four glasses that he does but that's the one thing i see in every miracle of jesus that's the first miracle wait till you come to an end of yourself the last miracle in john 21 same lesson you know peter had failed as a preacher man faith sorry failed as an apostle and so he told the others well i'm useless as an opposite but there's one thing i can do i can fish and the lord says aha okay go try and uh that's one day when this expert fisherman couldn't catch a single fish what was the lord trying to teach peter if you give up on my calling i call you to be an apostle and you turn away from that you'll be a failure everywhere even in the areas where you think you're a great expert dear brothers and sisters god's got a calling for your life and that is to be a witness for christ a lot of christians don't are not gripped by that and if you don't make that primary in your life i tell you as far as god is concerned you'll be a failure everywhere you can go fishing if you want thinking you're an expert fisherman you will fail i hope you fail if god allows you to succeed it means he's given up on you if god allows you to succeed in some area where he does not want you to be he's given up on you look at the multitude of worldly people who are succeeding we're in god's not with them at all in god's will when god has got a purpose for a man he'll allow him to fail everywhere until he comes back to what god has called him to he has to be broken brought to zero that's what happened in the first miracle that's what happened in the last miracle that is to make that person like a little infant what can an infant do in a cradle nothing it can't can't even hold a milk bottle it can't do anything can't lift itself up don't wash itself can't clean itself can't do a single thing and that's the place the lord seeks to bring us to that's what it means to be a child that's what it means to be an infant and that's what it means to be really humble so the delay is because of a lack of brokenness and sometimes it can take a long time i'll just show you one more miracle and that is john chapter 5. it's the same message in every miracle that jesus did jesus went to the pool of bethesda we read in john 5. and it says there in verse 3 a great multitude no one what is multitudes not ten people ten people is not a multitude multitude means i say maybe two three hundred people lame blind withered waiting for the moving of the water because an angel of the lord would come down at certain seasons they know didn't know which season and stir the water and whoever stepped into that water first would be healed and it was one of the mercies of god towards the nation of israel that he sent an angel once in a while to stir the waters and all these 3 400 people were waiting waiting waiting waiting and jesus comes along there and you know the story there was a man we read in verse 5 of john 5 who had been ill for 38 years he was lame he couldn't get up and he and jesus says do you want to get well he says i've got nobody to help me see this is where he had come to and this is the place we need to come to john 5 7 i have no ability myself and i have nobody to help me i am at a zero point ah really okay get up pick up your bed and walk have you come to a zero point the notch is okay you can go and he left all the others there who said that jesus healed everybody who was sick if you have a 500 400 people and he healed only one and the lesson there is this guy had tried for 38 years to jump into the pool first every time somebody beat him to it he always thought i'll do it next year no after 38 years he said no i give up i just go to the corner and wait there i'm not even going to sit near the pool every effort of his had failed he had come to zero that's the message jesus came then even the raising of lazarus in john chapter 12. is lazarus sick oh i can't go yet wait till he can't even lift a little finger when he's dead i'll go then the message in all these miracles is one thing [Music] god wants to bring us to the point where we are zero we are like a little infant not like a two-year-old child like an infant in a cradle that can do nothing and then he comes and does a miracle to us and then he comes and fills us with the holy spirit and if we remain like that the trouble i've seen this through the years with people who are filled with the spirit have a genuine experience of being filled with the spirit you see them a few years later and they become self-sufficient and proud god uses them a little bit and then they think no end of themselves and you know how so many great preachers have fallen away just because of that they started out as nobody's but in a few years they became somebody they were no longer nobodies my dear brothers and sisters please take a warning from all that happens around us and the stories you hear be a nobody all your life never seek to be a somebody in christendom that's what ruins people and don't try to be a somebody in nccf be a nobody and you'll be safe it says in hebrews 13 who are the type of people we should follow paul said follow me as i follow christ and one of the wonderful things i see about the apostle paul was he was a nobody in his own eyes right till the end of his life he called himself less than the least of all the saints now that was not artificial humility it was inspired by the holy spirit that he writes i'm less than the least of all the saints that means he we thought of all the believers he knew and he says no i'm not as good as any of them [Music] i'm less than the least that's why he was such a godly man that's why god could use until the end of his life that's why he finished his course that's why he ran faithfully till the end yeah and he says follow me as i follow christ there are very few examples like that i tell you i've been around and christendom for 60 years i've seen numerous missionaries who came to india and i'll tell you people i've seen hundreds of them i respected almost none of them i can only think of one or two among all the hundreds i met of missionaries who gave up their jobs and came to india to preach whom i could respect as godly men they were somebodies they were not like infants they were capable and yeah they were not an example from you i never wanted to follow any of them but here it says here in hebrews 13 and verse 7 remember those who led you who spoke the word of god to you and considering the result of their conduct then imitate them or in the margin it says see how they ended their life don't look at them when they're 30 40 years old see how they are 40 50 years later not at the beginning see how they ended their life then imitate their faith and there are very very few like that that we can follow those are the ones who understood what it is to be like little children see if you are like a little child i'll tell you something you'll never make anyone feel inferior to you if when people meet you they feel inferior or you make knowing anything they feel impaired on their own we can't do anything about it but if you make them feel inferior to you by your bearing or your speech or your conduct you're not like a little child a little child lying in a cradle does not make anyone who watches it feel inferior he's the most helpless person there i'm less than the least of all the saints that is what brokenness means to and i believe we should work towards getting there get to that place where we're like a little child meditate much on an infant a two-month-old infant in a cradle not a two-year-old child i'm an infant that is what it means to be a witness because when you come to that place the lord will be your power without me you can do nothing but with me you can do everything and i believe that if we are like that god can accomplish and fulfill many things in us even primarily he'll make us christ's life and that is what what will draw people to him amen

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Length: 27min 18sec (1638 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021