"LIFT UP YOUR EYES AND
LOOK ACROSS TIMESCAPES"
OCTOBER 14, 2001 am
MF Blume
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Ephesians 1:3-6 Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen
us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption
of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure
of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made
us accepted in the beloved.
Ephesians 1:10-12 That in the dispensation
of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In
whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according
to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own
will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in
Christ.
Ephesians 1:17-18 That the God of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom
and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding
being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and
what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
Look at what Paul says we will be involved with for the praise of
God's glory.
Ephesians 2:6-7 And hath raised
us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace
in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 3:10-11 To the intent that now
unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by
the church the manifold wisdom of God, According to the eternal purpose
which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:
Ephesians 3:16-19 That he would grant you,
according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by
his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith;
that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with
all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And
to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled
with all the fulness of God.
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I am going to preach this morning one of the most awesome sermons God
ever gave to me.
I am filled with inspiration and anointing today, after having been
so tremendously blessed by God in my studies for you to receive God's word
today.
Folks, when I study, I have you in mind to feed you the best spiritual
dish I can be used of God to give to you.
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And its truly a privilege this morning to minister to you and for you,
in God's service for my life.
Paul was inspired of God to set your vision on ages that lie ahead.
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He was inspired of God to talk about awesome wonders of God's plans.
-
He was made privy to mysteries that were kept in God's most holy realm
in the eternals, to lay before you, when angels and prophets down through
millennia were kept away from knowing.
-
All so that you could receive a faith and strength in a powerful entity
known as HOPE, to be able to let go of certain problems you could never
seem to otherwise release, to successfully serve God.
I took this inspired principle of Paul's and was moved on by God to relay
it to you.
-
To help you experience a burst of faith to overcome any dreary slowdown
you might have bogged yourself into
If faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, then this is
going to be one of my most faith-inspiring messages I have ever given to
you.
-
Its Paul's message in no less than two entire epistles, known to be epistles
of tremendous spiritual knowledge -- Ephesians and Colossians
Let's begin.
Paul went back to the beginning of time, and further.
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He spoke of the choice God made before the world even was created... before
the foundation of the world...
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Which choice was the thought of having you and I in Christ.
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Way back then, God started something.
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Over thousands of years ago.
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And that purpose is towards the goal of having us be the means for God
to be praised in His great glory.
We later discover that God's idea of our involvement in being the means
for Him to receive praise and glory refers to AGES and EONS that have not
even come yet!
Ephesians 2:7 That in the ages to come he
might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us
through Christ Jesus.
Ages-- eons of time.
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Like landscapes, these vast lengths of time can be called timescapes.
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You can look no further than the nose on your face and notice the objects
around your feet.
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And even then you see the glory of God in the miracle of a mere flower.
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But to think that there are vistas and landscapes which, if you stand in
the right position in this land, will stretch out before you in absolutely
awesome splendour.
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And how many miracles of single flowers or a billion other miracles of
creation fill up those landscapes?
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How great is our God?!!!
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Similarly, there are also timescapes.
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Ages and ages... eons and eons -- looming out before us in the eternity
future.
Paul said that when Jesus Christ came, the dispensation of the fullness
of times occurred.
Ephesians 1:10 That in the dispensation
of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:
He said that all the ages that came and went before Jesus were all destined
to come together in a glorious main point... all worked together for a
certain purpose...
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Since before the world was even created, this single point was in the mind
of God.
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And that was to have Christ come and unify all the various elements in
existence into Him.
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Gathering all things both in heaven and earth in him.
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All the saints of God who lived in various ages under different workings
of God, from Adam to John the Baptist, would be unified in one grand body
in Jesus Christ.
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And Paul adds..
Ephesians 1:11 In whom also we have obtained
an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who
worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
And we're in on it too, since Jesus came.
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We're still in this dispensation of the fullness of times.
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One day, the opportunity as we know it, that was predestined before the
actual creation, to be baptized into Jesus is going to be over.
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And then God will move on with His next age.
This might Holy Ghost experience which is the goal of every seeker of God,
as great as it is, is only the earnest, or downpayment of what Paul calls
the INHERITANCE for those of God.
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We already noted Paul's thought about our purpose as being God's means
to receive glory in all the ages to come.
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If the downpayment is so great, what will be the actual inheritance in
those ages to come?
How many miracles and wonders and blessings have been absolutely poured
out upon God's people in only the last 2,000 years of this single age?
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And to think there are ages and ages yet to come, with who knows how many
thousands and millions of years?
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I don't think time is going to stop soon.
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If this is one age, and some say the millennium is coming with at least
1000 years more, and then time is no more--- if they're right, that is
only this age and one more to come.
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But Paul spoke of AGES to come.
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Beyond this age, there are entire AGES to still come.
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And AGES involve TIME.
When we read in Revelation 10 that time shall be no more, that does not
mean there will be no more years.
It actually means there will be no more waiting.
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Something has come that has been waited for since centuries gone by.
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And there will be no more waiting for it, for it is then come.
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People have misconstrued that verse.
Paul talks about our eyes being opened to be able to LEARN REVELATION AND
SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE AND TO GROW IN WISDOM concerning the things of the
Kingdom of God.
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He speaks in chapter 3:11 of an eternal purpose.
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He even says that ANGELS will see what they've desired to see.
Ephesians 3:10-11 To the intent that now
unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known
by the church the manifold wisdom of God, According to the eternal
purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:
Peter told of how for centuries and past ages the prophets and angels desired
to look into this mystery.
1 Peter 1:12 Unto whom it was revealed,
that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which
are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you
with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels
desire to look into.
They will see it.
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Through us!
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Imagine!
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A truth and reality about God's mercy that angels have wanted to understand
for thousands of years as God directed the great drama on earth with mankind,
leading up to the first major step with Jesus Christ.
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ALL SEEN THROUGH US.
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In the ages to come!
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The church and what God did with us will never be outshone by anything
a billion years from now as God gets involved in whatever else he has planned
out there in eternity future.
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We will always be the number one means through all the ages rolling into
eternity of everything out there knowing God's riches of His grace.
Church, I don't want to be tripped up by something that is not even going
to get past this single age, and not go on into eternity with God!!!!
All the sins we face and are tempted with....
All the demons we confront, and often don't even know it is demonic
attacks....
All the pleasures of sins we are lured to delve into...
NONE OF THEM ARE WORTH LOSING OUT IN THIS FIRST AGE INTO WHICH WE CAME
INTO EXISTENCE... and not making it on into the eternal ages stretched
out before us like timescape after timescape.
To think that we can be so short-sighted as to get so stressed out and
overly concerned with issues that will not even be hardly a memory for
those who successfully serve God and enter on into the eternals before
us, where no such temptations will ever exist again!!
In trying to get our eyes lifted up to see over the horizons of eons
ahead of us, Paul said....
Romans 8:18 For I reckon that the
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the
glory which shall be revealed in us.
We get so taken over by things that will not even survive past this one
age!
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We look at trials in this life as insurmountable mountains, until we give
into them, and live a life that is less than what Jesus paid for on the
cross.
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But when you lift up your eyes, as Paul is helping us to do in Ephesians,
and look across veritable light-years of time, you can begin to realize
God is a whole lot bigger than those trials.
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And they seem to start looking more like ant hills rather than mountains.
There's something about the power of HOPE.
Hebrews 6:19 Which hope we have
as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into
that within the veil;
Ephesians 1:18 The eyes of your understanding
being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his
calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
Hope seems to erode the temptations and obstacles of the present into vapours!
The Bible talks about men like Abraham and Moses and the Hebrews of
the Exodus who left their homes and walked away towards places God gave
for them.
Hebrews 11:15-16 And truly, if
they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might
have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country,
that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God:
for he hath prepared for them a city.
We read that these people would have been tempted to go back and quit God's
life.
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But something called HOPE was in their hearts.
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HOPE of something far greater and more awesome before them, making what
was behind them a ditch.
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It put all their past homes and lives in t the shadows.
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They were not going to miss what God had in store for them.
You need this kind of preaching as much as you can get it.
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You're going to have to be reminded of the HOPE.
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This world can really get hold of you until you're so discouraged that
you feel like giving in to it.
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But the Word of God tells you of these glories before us.
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And the Spirit we feel together is literally out of this world.
Right now we're in the age that we will look back upon, when the devil
is here to contend with.
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Right now we face trials.
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We are tempted with things that won't even exist in twenty years, let alone
by the time this life is over.
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The devil is not going to last beyond this single age.
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We get all caught up with thinking of how hard it is to get past the devil
and his temptations in this life, when he won't even be around a fraction
of the time we will spend in ages with God.
When we were kids we thought of our parents being 30 years old, and were
awed by how OLD people are in this world.
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We turned 30 ourselves and laughed at that.
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But when we look at those 70 and 80, we realize, as far as we have gone
to get where we are, these folks have gone twice that and MORE!
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But the folks at those senior years will tell you that you will think life
was hardly long at all when you get their age.
We gauge children's age by days after they are first born.
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Then weeks.
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Then months.
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And finally years.
We jokingly say we're half a century old when we get fifty, and that is
supposed to shake us into thinking of how old we are getting.
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Our beloved brother Baker is almost 93 years old!
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His next 7 years will bring him to an entire century!
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He's about twice as old today as a man who is fifty years old!
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And yet he remembers things that occurred 80 years ago, over two times
the length of my entire life, like they were yesterday.
And whereas we gauged lives from units of days up to years, Church, such
measurements are peanuts in contrast to the thought of entire eons and
ages that present-day Christians will gauge their eternities by !
If an entire life seems so short right now, and there have been thousands
of lifespans in this single AGE so far, since Jesus, imagine how short
and how small and how meager this life will seem like by the time we've
been around for three thousand EONS!!!
It sort of makes life's temptations today seem MINUSCULE!
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Less than insignificant!
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Less than nothing.
My girls are only 4 and 6 years old.
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Yet they can talk and understand and reason and go to school on their own!
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Seven years ago they did not exist!
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And so much is here now in their little lives.
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And I think of the awesome creation that mankind is.
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But I have been around about ten times as long as they have.
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Some others here over 20 times!
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But all of us have only just begun!
100 years of age is NOTHING in comparison to the EONS stretched out before
us.
We think everything is here and now.
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We know the bible speaks of eternity ahead, but we don't really get it.
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Our actions and over-infatuation with the microscopically significant things
that we face in this life expose our true beliefs and perspectives.
Paul opens our eyes and broadens our visions to look across timescapes
in order to help us get to the victory over things in this first age.
After he speaks of such profound thoughts, he writes words that are
his main point and deal with this PRESENT AGE and making it through towards
the one ahead....
Ephesians 4:1-3 I therefore, the
prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith
ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering,
forbearing one another in love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace.
He asks us if it is now too much to think lowly and forbear and overlook
others faults in this life, after telling us about ages and ages that loom
out before us, that are going to be experienced only by those who do God's
will in this eon.
LET ME SAY IT AGAIN....
=====
Paul was inspired of God to set your vision on ages that lie ahead.
-
He was inspired of God to talk about awesome wonders of God's plans.
-
He was made privy to mysteries that were kept in God's most holy realm
in the eternals, to lay before you, when angels and prophets down through
millennia were kept away from knowing.
-
All so that you could receive a faith and strength in a powerful entity
known as HOPE, to be able to let go of certain problems you could never
seem to otherwise release, to successfully serve God.
I took this inspired principle of Paul's and was moved on by God to relay
it to you.
-
To help you experience a burst of faith to overcome any dreary slowdown
you might have bogged yourself into
If faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, then this is
going to be one of my most faith-inspiring messages I have ever given to
you.
-
Its Paul's message in no less than two entire epistles, known to be epistles
of tremendous spiritual knowledge -- Ephesians and Colossians
=====
I may be speaking to somebody who is struggling to let go of a sin in
your life that you know is wrong, but simply has too much of a hold on
you and occupies too much of your time and attention to have you completely
serve God like you know you should.
-
I'm talking about sins and temptations that you feel are too powerful for
you to overcome, leaving you left to simply indulge in them, and settle
with a life of always knowing you're not right with God.
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A life of giving in to these lusts and sins.
-
You've just resorted to knowing you can't serve God.
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If you will lift up your eyes, and look past this life, itself, on towards
and through entire ages and eons, and gain the strength and hope to see
actually yourself there when all this world is long gone...
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Where is the strength for this kind of faith?
-
Look back to the beginning of this age, which is now known as the dispensation
of the fullness of times, when Christ came and died on the cross.
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Look back to the period before the world and think about when God first
made His choice to include you in this awesome plan...
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Realize that such a HOPE thrown way out across entire EONS is there for
you and encouraged to you to look forward to by the God who fills this
infinite universe and promised to strengthen you to serve Him and MAKE
IT ALL THAT ETERNAL WAY!
If you've been sitting in neutral for a few years now, and getting
no further ahead than you were months and months ago -- in fact, perhaps,
backsliding down the hill of progress to where you first started !! --
then its time to shift gears and start moving ahead.
Come on, church!
God just did not lay this awesome destiny out there and hope to see
you do your best and meet him a billion years from now.
Paul prayed....
Ephesians 3:16-17 That he would
grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with
might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts
by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
This unbelievably awesome God is here right now offering you HIS STRENGTH.
And he stops and adds...
Ephesains 3:20-21 Now unto him
that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church
by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Look at Paul's confidence in your success!!
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After talking about our purpose to bring glory to God in the ages to come,
Paul notes for us to ask God for strength....
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Ask the God who wants you to get there more than you want to get there...
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Paul then says, its going to happen.
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He said IT WILL HAPPEN THAT GOD WILL RECEIVE GLORY IN THE CHURCH THROUGHOUT
ALL AGES!
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That means people will have had their eyes opened to look across these
timescapes, and turn to God asking Him to strengthen them to be able to
stand strong right now in this first significant age, that they might be
there way ahead in eternity, to one day look back and thank God in praise
beyond what they can now attempt to thank Him, for giving them that strength
to carry on.
God can strengthen you beyond what you even can imagine Him to do.
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In your greatest dreams and most daring thoughts that pressed your imagination
to the limits of what an Almighty God can do, you have not even scratched
the surface of His abilities.
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Of what He wants to do for you!
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Awesome God!
Now that God has broadened your vision, and you've lifted your eyes above
the ground around your feet, and the temptations that accompany you in
the here and now...
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Let go of the weights that so easily seemed to be able to beset you.
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That sin and disobedience and rebellion is not worth losing eons and ages
over.
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Don't be a fool and go down with the devil in this first significant age.
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You won't even get past first base if you miss this now.
Don't let Satan make buffoons out of you, getting you all concerned over
some less than significant issue or sin, that moves you to put your entire
progress in God on hold, wasting precious years.
These years may be small in relation to the eons that lie before us.
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But think of the INVESTMENT in a few days of total surrender to God, and
release of all the devil's excuses to keep you from doing anything for
God at all, will yield in giving you eons of eternity that are laying out
there right in front of you, still within your reach NOW.
Saints who've given up long ago and laid back in a rut of settling with
defeat and less than second best Christianity, when once you danced in
the Spirit, worshipped freely and held nothing back from God.... HEAR ME.
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These ages are still there before you yet.
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This age is not yet over.
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We're still in the ENTRANCE INTO CHRIST age, from which He is really beginning.
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Today, right now, you can get back to where you once were, and far beyond.
You who are just entering in on this life.
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You were just baptized.
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You just started within the last couple of years...
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You've done well so far.
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And you can continue to do well.
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You think you've not done well?
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You're still coming, aren't you?
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If Satan had his way he would have killed you the moment you thought to
get involved.
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And you've been here for a couple years now!
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Don't stop now!
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You've needed top hear this kind of message to give you a good boost and
inoculation of FAITH to push you beyond your hold-up.
With this much power of God for me to rely upon, I'd be insane to think
I cannot make it!
The hardest thing to endure is suffering for wrongs done to you and
patiently hold on in thanks to God.
But this is the very thing Paul said God wants to help you with.
Paul said...
Romans 8:24-25 For we are saved
by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth
he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience
wait for it.
And then he said...
Romans 8:31 What shall we then
say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
YOU CAN MAKE IT.
Let's use this faith and say...
WE WILL MAKE IT.
Thank-you, Paul, for praying that my eyes be opened and my vision and
sight broadened to look across entire timescapes!
People, use the faith God has just gifted you with in this message,
and let's come to altar and overcome these anthills together!
Look beyond the little fusses you've made over people talking about
you, and offending you.