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 Sermon > Official Service |
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Title |
Blessing |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
Numbers 6:24-26 |
Date |
2010-02-07 |
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[Passage]
[Numbers 6:24-26]
"The LORD bless you, and keep you; [25] The LORD make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you; [26] The LORD lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace."
Introduction
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Today's passage, Numbers 6:24-26, is the word of blessings that God gave to the high priests for them to proclaim to the sons of Israel.
It says, "The LORD bless you, and keep you; the LORD make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace."
God always wants to bless those believers who worship Him and live by His Word.
He always protects them and gives them grace and peace.
Especially, when we give something to Him, if we put a special meaning in it, God also accepts it in a special way.
So, He gives us back greater blessing than usual.
We can find such an example in our prayers, too.
If you make a vow to offer to God special prayers in Daniel Prayer Meetings, God gives you more grace and inspiration than usual.
When you offer a fasting, God may accept it more greatly if you do it on some special days.
When God explained to me about the spiritual realm, He sometimes moved my heart to offer such a fasting.
He led me to fast on days like national holidays or my birthday, on which we usually eat and enjoy ourselves.
Then, He accepted this fasting more greatly than usual and began to reveal to me the secret things of the spiritual realm.
Biblical festivities, revival meetings, healing meetings, or some celebrations of the church can be your special days to receive greater blessings according to how much you prepare for them.
This year's Lunar New Year's meeting will be one of those occasions.
On every Lunar New Year's Day, many of you come to receive my prayer to achieve your goals of the new year.
God considered your longing and deeds of faith and has given you grace every year.
Just last year alone, He blessed you so much through the Lunar New Year's Day and the Party of Blessing.
And God proclaimed this year 2010 is the year of reaping and year of blessing, facing the third stage of Manmin's history.
So, God promised us more special grace for this year's Lunar New Year's Day.
Through this message, I hope your longing for it will become greater and prepare for it with heartfelt prayers in this week.
As the Bible says, "even though God said He would do something, we still have to pray for it," the grace of God He promised us will come upon you in different measure according to how well you prepare for it.
I pray in the name of the Lord that all of you will prepare yourself with great yearning so you can meet and experience God.
Main
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, first, I will tell you the three kinds of blessings that God has promised us through this Lunar New Year.
First, it is the blessing for you to realize your self-righteousness and frameworks.
(I will deliver separate messages on the self-righteousness and frameworks during the Sunday morning and evening services next week.)
The deeper your faith becomes, the deeper you have to realize the heart of God and the more spiritual growth you have to achieve.
But many people are stuck within their own limitations, even though they think they are leading enthusiastic Christian lives.
They think they are doing well and that they are righteous, so they cannot go into deeper levels of spirit.
Sometimes, some leaders or workers of the church who are supposed to have received blessings already, are still undergoing trials of health problems, family problems, or financial difficulties.
In most of these cases, it is because they have their own self-righteousness and frameworks insisting that they are just.
If you realize this self-righteousness and your frameworks and break them, you can then have a great spiritual growth.
You will receive many blessings in physical aspects, too.
You will receive answers to the problems that haven't been resolved for a long time.
Even if you are receiving some blessings, the magnitude of the blessings will be different.
Therefore, I hope you will realize why you listened to so many messages but have not changed much. I want you to recognize, within your limitations what your spiritual blockage is that prevents you from understanding the will of God. I also urge you to prepare with prayers so you can receive the power to change yourself.
Some people find out their self-righteousness and frameworks, but just keep them because of their pride or stubbornness.
Some others mentally understand that the flesh is so dirty and meaningless, but they do not realize it thoroughly in their hearts, so they cannot cast it off.
Therefore, through this forthcoming opportunity, I challenge you to realize yourself and understand thoroughly the meaninglessness of the flesh, so that you can receive the strength to cast it away.
Secondly, in this Lunar New Year, you will experience the power of God that is in different dimension than before in terms of the quality, quantity, and speed.
Of course, you have always been experiencing the powerful works of God.
Just in last year, through the party of blessing, many of you resolved the fundamental problems and received blessings by making impossible things possible.
The impossible things by human strength became possible by the power of God.
Many of you testified that, after receiving my prayer, the things you had to give up or the things that would have taken a long time were resolved very quickly.
Of course, I believe in the power of God when I prayed for them, but when I actually heard the testimonies of receiving the answers, I was very surprised to see how fast God worked for them.
But beginning with this Lunar New Year's Day, you will experience even greater works of power.
It's because the influence of the power bestowed on me was enlarged and your faith has also grown.
Also, as I explained above, if you break your self-righteousness and frameworks, your faith will grow up very quickly, too!
Then, you will receive the answers in a very different way than in the past, in terms of the quality, quantity, and the speed.
For example, you testify often that you receive pressed down, shaken together, and running over after you give something to God.
But from this Lunar New Year's Day, you can even receive five or even ten times more than that.
If you don't sense it realistically, why don't you consider the use of some numbers?
Doubling 1 million won is 2 million won.
And if 5 million or even 10 million won is given to a person who is expecting only 2 million won, how great a blessing this is!
He will be filled with joy and say that it was truly the work of God.
Likewise, not only in the quantity of blessings, but the speed of receiving it will be different.
Before, it may have taken a month to receive an answer to a certain problem, but if you can get it in just a week or in a couple of days, how amazing this is!
Even though the time is shortened to receive blessings, the fruit does not have lower quality, but you will receive only better fruits.
Not only in financial matters but for healing or any other problem, you will experience blessings of a completely different dimension than before in terms of quantity, quality, and the timing.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, thirdly, through this Lunar New Year, God will increase true hearts and perfect faith in us.
Hebrews 10:22 says, "let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water."
A sincere, true heart is a pure and clean heart that has no evil or untruths.
It is truthful heart that has no deceit or changing of mind.
Also, perfect faith is the faith that has the full measure of the Christ.
To accomplish a true heart and perfect faith means that our soul is prosperous, and so it is the shortcut to being prosperous in all things and to be in good health.
Through this Lunar New Year, you will experience great power of God. And through this, you will get closer to the true heart and perfect faith.
New believers will be able to break their fleshly thoughts and believe in and long for the truthful things.
Also, those who are already close to the true heart will have more of the true heart.
In the past, numerous people left God even after being healed or receiving great blessings by God's power.
They had the experience of meeting God but did not have true faith. That is why they loved the world more and left God.
There are also people who have seen, heard, and experienced many spiritual things, but have not had faith for a long time.
But through this Lunar New Year, God said, He would give them divine healing as well as the faith in heart and hope of Heaven.
He will also give them fullness of the Spirit, understanding the grace of God, and longing for spiritual things.
He will give them the spiritual blessing along with the divine healing so that they can realize what they really have to seek.
Some of you have been praying for a long time to receive divine healing but have not received it.
I hope you can understand why.
If you are not healed of certain diseases, it's not because God is incapable or that the power manifested in this church is insufficient.
If you will just prepare the vessel to receive the answer, you will definitely receive the answer.
Furthermore in this church, we have many cases in which the problems are solved through the love going beyond justice.
So, we can receive the answer with the measure of faith that is much less than the measure actually required by spiritual justice.
For example, let's say you have to fulfill the measure of justice up to 100 by doing good deeds in faith.
In this situation, God accepts my prayer and fills the measure up to 90, and God gives you the answer if you will just fill up the other 10.
You just have to fill up the 10, but some of you, as I explained before, pile up 2, 3, or 4, or more, but then bring it down again and again.
To 'pile up' is to pray, fast, give offerings to God, and lead a faithful Christian life.
While storing up their deeds, they give out evil if they don't like something, and they doubt if they don't have any progress.
Then they resent and complain.
Likewise, through the deeds and words that are not of faith, they tear down their effort by themselves.
That is why they cannot receive the healing because they cannot fill up even the 10 measures, or the pain might go away but they still have the disease. Or they just receive a partial healing.
This way, as time passes, their longing for healing also decreases.
If they have true faith, their primary goal should not be the healing, but to go into better Heavenly dwelling places.
They must be deeply thankful just for the fact that they are saved. They have to do their duties of men and constantly change themselves to become true children of God.
But they don't do that. They just think from their own standpoint saying, "Why am I not healed even after trying so hard? It's so difficult!" This way, they cannot even fill up just the 10 measures of justice.
So, even God feels very sympathetic because He wants to give answers to them.
I hope all of you will receive the answers by checking what kind of heart you have and by understanding what kind of longing you have to prepare yourself.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, now why has God given us this kind of opportunity of blessing and why does He tell us to prepare for it?
Of course, it's because of the love of God who wants to bless His children.
But the more important reason is to fulfill the providence of God towards this church.
Primarily, it's because we are at the final stage of going into the Canaan Sanctuary, where you have to make the fragrance of your heart more beautiful.
Ultimately, it is for the construction of the Grand Sanctuary.
The duties that God gave to us, the world evangelism and the construction of the Grand Sanctuary, are something impossible in the eyes of men.
But God has guided us through each step to accomplish these duties.
He has been refining this church without a rest until we gained the faith to fulfill these duties.
Though invisible, He let us believe that there is a spiritual realm, and He has changed us so we can offer up to God a beautiful aroma of the heart.
He raised us as workers who understand God's love and also love Him back.
From the opening of the church until now, God has always made me pay the price of justice with my perseverance and hard work.
Even for the things that I could receive the answer by my faith, He didn't answer me immediately but let me wait with endurance.
When He allowed for our church to go through great trials, He always told me to only give thanks and rejoice, telling me they were the trials of blessings.
In those processes, I had to pour out so many tears and so much effort along with countless fastings and prayers.
The fact is that even until this day I am still paying such prices every day, every week.
Through this, the conditions of justice have been met so that our members can change and go into spirit.
The hardened hearts melted down, and God's grace fell on you so that you could fully comprehend what you couldn't have realized by yourself.
In so many cases God gave us special grace. Namely, those who were in very difficult situations to be saved were brought back to salvation.
Furthermore, God opened the door of salvation so greatly that countless souls in the world could hear the gospel of holiness and see God's power.
Of course, you have been trying hard too.
You believed and obeyed the word preached from the altar, and fasted and prayed diligently.
You sowed at your best and endured and faithfully served God. You have tried to become sanctified with your love for God the Father.
Brothers and sisters, in fact, even among the biblical figures, there aren't many who are qualified to enter New Jerusalem.
And what do you think it would be like in this end time when people are stained with so many sins?
But this church is different.
We continuously experience the power of God and hear the gospel of holiness all the time.
What if you didn't come to this church and had not seen any of God's power manifested and had not listened to the holiness gospel at all?
Can you imagine how long it would have taken for you to go into spirit?
Or, can you even confidently say you could at least reach the rock of faith in the third level of faith, not to mention going into spirit?
Or, how do you think you would have dealt with diseases or disasters in life?
You should realize how thankful a thing it is that you can listen to this holiness gospel every day and experience the power of God all the time.
You have been trying hard in that gospel and power, and so, many of you have come into spirit, and many more are coming into spirit.
But even though you are trying so hard in your Christian faith with the holiness gospel and power of God, God does not say it is enough.
He has always given us special opportunities many times a year so we can spur our growth of faith.
As I mentioned above, biblical festivities, New Year's fasting, revival meetings, pastors' conferences, special Daniel Prayer Meetings, and the overseas crusades since the year 2000 were all such occasions.
Just in last year alone, God gave us many opportunities including the party of blessing.
Even though God the Father wants to give His children great faith, He cannot just give it any time.
There are rules of justice and the ways to do it.
That is why He sets apart some special occasions, let me harbor those days in my heart, and lets you prepare for them with longing.
According to the rules of justice, we cannot reap without sowing.
Because you know this, you have always been sowing with your very best whenever you had the chance.
Those who have been riding on the flow of spirit for last several years probably know what kinds of blessings they have received.
You sowed again and again, but God filled you up more and more so you could sow even more.
But the most important thing is that you can see how much your faith has grown up compared with several years ago.
In this year 2010, the year of harvest, God proclaims blessing once more.
This is the blessing that He is pouring down on the spiritual foundation that we have laid like above.
Thus, you will firsthand experience the different magnitude of blessings that is very different from previous years.
Conclusion
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, beginning with this Lunar New Year, you will feel the space that is formed anew with unceasing power.
In that space, your measure of faith will increase and the aroma of the hearts that are mature will be gathered, so the God-pleasing sanctuary will be revealed.
And finally, the Grand Sanctuary, with which God will be pleased so much more, will be revealed.
This Grand Sanctuary will be built through the aroma of hearts of the believers who have accomplished true heart and perfect faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.
God does not accomplish it unilaterally. It is a symbol of God's glory that will be accomplished by the combination of God's heart and the aroma of the believers.
For the joy of this day, God has been allowing you to have experiences of faith unceasingly.
He is giving us this kind of opportunity once again in this Lunar New Year, and He is urging you to more diligently and more quickly have perfect faith.
We don't have very many days left for human cultivation.
I urge you to quickly break down your self-righteousness and frameworks and accomplish true heart and perfect faith, so that you will all become precious workers of God.
In doing so, in this year 2010, I pray in the name of the Lord that you will receive not only abundant blessings but also quickly have the qualifications to enter New Jerusalem.
[AMEN!!!] |
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