And
I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the
throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with
them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will
wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall
there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have
passed away."
Revelation 21:2-4
When we first taste the labor of the harvest and
experience what it feels like to move through that devastated spiritual
battlefield with help from God….
When we begin to experience what it's like to be
able to see beneath the surface of people's "comfortable lives" to
the actual anguish in their souls…
To hear the cries
of their hearts…
When we begin to taste the joy of discovering that
it is within our power to raise devastated souls and give them living water
from the divine spring, who is Jesus…
We can hardly
believe it! It takes us back.
That we are
actually bringing people from darkness to light and
from the power of Satan to God!
He who
believes in me, the works I do he
shall do also. And greater works than these will he do because I go to
the Father.
We see
these words fulfilled on our jobs, in our
neighborhoods, among our relatives and friends.
Now, if these
newborn souls could all be quickly tucked into the City of
But time is the enemy. Months stretch out into years and years into
decades. And one day we wake up and discover that for all our efforts in the
harvest field, raising people from darkness to light, and from the power of
Satan to God, we haven't even scratched the surface.
As far as the eye can see from
north to south, east to west, lifeless bodies are scattered across the desert
floor. And among these spiritual corpses
are some of the very people we gathered to the Lord Jesus. What's wrong?
Moreover we ourselves, who have been laboring with
such enthusiasm, begin to grow weary. The joy is drained from our faces. We
start to snap at each other. Opportunities are missed. Sometimes we walk by
people who desperately need us and we don't even see them.
"How long do
we have to wait before the harvest is over?" you say.
"I would have
thought that by this time we would have arrived at the City of God."
"I'm sorry,
but I'm tired. I'm going over by that boulder and I'm
going to lie down
in the shade and rest for a couple of days."
Two weeks later somebody walks by the boulder and
sees your body lying there almost dead and realizes that if something doesn't
happen very quickly the vultures are going to be picking at your bones.
They rush to the spring and come back with two
flasks of water and pour them down your throat, "Here, my friend,
drink."
And as you begin to revive, you say, "Thank
you. Thank you. Whatever happened to me? I can't understand what went
wrong."
"You
lost your strength because you lost your vision," explains your rescuer.
"While you're
working in the harvest, make sure that you never lose sight of the City of
To be able to heal the sick,
raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers,
cast out demons,
to freely give without expecting in
return,
to never wear out or grow weary,
we need to be driven by a sustaining vision. To be upheld by that vision through the long
seasons of weariness and drought.
We need to see the City of
If we fail to see the City of
…
if we fail to stop from time-to-time and listen to the music that
floats out from its tower,
…if we fail to
breath the atmosphere it sends forth to us,
…if we neglect to
drink from that stream of living water that
flows from beneath its gates,
we
will lose our strength and we will sink down into death.
But precisely what does it mean for believers in
the twenty-first century to continue to have a vision of the city of
Three things are necessary:
1. We have to have our eyes focused there.
2. We have to make sure our treasure is there.
3. We have to make sure our name is there.
First,
if we are going to have a vision of the City of
Then the presidents
and satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to
the kingdom; but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because
he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said,
"We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we
find it in connection with the law of his God."
Then these
presidents and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him. "O
King Darius, live forever! All the presidents of the kingdom, the prefects and
the satraps, the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should
establish an ordinance and enforce an interdict, that whoever makes petition to
any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the
den of lions. Now, O king, establish the interdict and sign the document, so
that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians,
which cannot be revoked." Therefore King Darius signed the document and
interdict.
When Daniel
knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had
windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem; and he got down on his
knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had
done previously. Daniel 6:4-10
If ever there was a man who had reason to be
discouraged under the pressure of problems, and dangers, and enemies, and
misunderstanding, and ingratitude, it was Daniel.
The only way this man could survive was to get away
daily and look toward the City of God, which for him was Jerusalem.
And even though he knew that he was being watched
and his life was in danger, he continued to do it because, "What's my life
worth if I forget
And so he would climb to his chamber, open the
windows that faced west toward
If you and I are going to keep our vision alive, we
need to do the same.
The stronger the opposition,
the more hassles
we endure,
the more we
experience the pressure of time,
the more problems
that crop up,
the more ingratitude that throws itself against us, the more urgent it is that we discipline ourselves to look toward the City of God.
Our Father, who art in heaven…."But I thought God was everywhere," you
say. He is, but heaven is his
headquarters, his throne, and our destination.
Heaven is the City of
totally fulfilled.
Heaven is not "pie-in-the-sky
bye-and-bye" because we taste heaven now.
We taste it, but we're not there yet.
The reason we gather with other believers week by
week, is to be given by God a foretaste of the City of
He gives us bread
and wine, which is the banquet of the New Kingdom – the Body and Blood of the
Lamb, indeed, but also the foretaste of the coming glory.
He pours out upon
us the Holy Spirit who is the atmosphere of heaven itself. And by this means we
continue to keep our vision bright.
God help us to be
faithful!
Second,
if we are going to continue to have a clear vision of the City of
Do
not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and
where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in
and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Matt 6:19-21
Fear
not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do
not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief
approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also. Luke
12:32-34
Certainly, if we need transportation, there's
nothing wrong in saving money to buy a car.
If our roof leaks, save to get the thing fixed or install a new one –
it's not sinful.
Whatever it is that we need in the material realm
save for it, buy it.
But keep in mind
that, if we're not very careful, we begin to get
caught up in
"things."
If we are not
careful, we get so bogged down with the cares, and
the riches, and
the pleasures of this life that we lose our vision of the City of God.
Jesus says, "Do
not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth"; for many people the "treasures on
earth" have to do with mammon – money.
But it is not always money. It may be money, or it may be something that
money can buy. Or it may be something
that money can't buy.
Your treasure
might be your status in the fellowship.
Your treasure
could be your "success" as a harvester in the kingdom.
Or your
"grasp of scripture."
Or your
"spiritual gift" now used in the service of your ego.
Your
"work" for the Lord, which has subtly become your private
kingdom. We need
to be on guard.
Suppose we invent a new "ambulance" for
the harvest field that can rescue the lost ten times faster than before. This "gospel ambulance" can pick up
a hundred souls a day!
Suddenly, we're
worried about how to finance our gospel ambulance.
How to keep it in
repair. Now we're into
fund-raising.
And where are our
hearts? Has our "gospel
ambulance" distracted us from the real focus?
Hence, the Master keeps encouraging us to
continuously trim down. To make sure that we neither get too complicated nor
too comfortable.
Fear
not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Sell your possessions, and give alms;
provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the
heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For
where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Luke 12:32-34
God help us to continuously make sure that our
treasure is in the City of
The third
and final essential, if we are going to keep our vision of the City of
.
To
him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a
white stone, with a new name written on the stone which no one knows except him
who receives it. Rev 2:17b
He
who conquers shall be clad thus in white garments, and I will not blot his name
out of the book of life; I will confess his name before my Father and before
his angels. Rev 3:5
If our lives are "hid with Christ in
God", this especially includes our names.
If we are born again and walking with Jesus, our
names do not belong to this world; they belong to the City of
There is no way I can go through this world, even
the religious world, trying to enhance my name, and still keep my vision of the
City of
Our Father,
who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name…Matt 6:9
Therefore God
has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and
under the earth…(angels, men, demons)… Phil 2:9,10
Not unto us,
O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name give glory…
Psalm 115:1
But our tendency is to do the very opposite; to
scoop off at least a "percentage" of glory for ourselves. Our "commission" as servants of
God!
Our name then becomes a cumbersome weight as we
walk through the harvest field seeking to lift people out of their bondage, and
out of their disease, and out of their darkness. How can we do these things with integrity and
still worry about our name?
When we drag names through the harvest field with
us, a strange thing happens. Instead of
reviving these broken lives, we begin exploiting them.
These are the
people whom we raised up! We put labels and tags on everybody we were
instrumental in saving or helping.
The minute we catch ourselves letting our names get
in the way, it's time to abandon them again to the City of
If we are followers of Jesus, we have no name in
this world. Our name is hidden with our
Lord in the City of
We are… the
voice of one crying in the wilderness,
"Make
straight the way of the Lord."
Until the day when we are safely inside the gates
of the City of
May God help us never to let a
single day go by without renewing our
vision.
-- in Jesus' name, fixing our eyes afresh each day upon the City
of God,
-- daily making sure that our treasure is
only there…and not "here."
-- daily
yielding our name to be hidden there.
And
I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice coming
from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will
dwell with them and they
shall
be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear
from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or
crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."
If we fail to look beyond this world to the
destination of our journey, we will soon grow weary and faint by the way.
But when we remember daily, who it is who has
prepared a place for us in the City of
We will mount up on wings of
eagles.
We will walk and not grow weary.
We will run and never faint.
A prayer:
Father, help us
run the race without growing weary,
To endure the long
periods of monotony without losing heart,
To deal with each
crisis that comes along, and still remain fresh.
Enable us to be
thankful in season and out of season.
To minister to the
ungrateful, never looking for anything in return.
To keep our hearts
fixed on the City where true joy is to be found,
Our expectations
centered on your throne,
Our minds ruled by
your Spirit,
Ever beholding the
face of your beloved Son, our Lord, Jesus.
Amen