The Will of God for the Weak

Welcome to this weekly edition of A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. There are many people living today who feel they're at the end of their strength.

They feel they can't go on. But in today's message, Carter wants you to know there is good news for you. The will of God is for you. And Carter will share a very personal testimony that he believes will become a blessing to your heart. Here's Carter with today's lesson of hope. I'm going to be speaking on a message called The Will of God for the Weak.

And that's spelled W-E-A-K. The Will of God for the Weak. In Romans chapter 7, there's a part of the human condition where Paul says, I know what to do. As a matter of fact, I even delight in my inward parts in the thought of actually doing it. In other words, I see what God wants me to be.

I understand at least a measure. I see a slight picture of what he wants me to do or wants to do through my life, but how to perform it? Paul says, I don't know. He said, I find myself longing to do the things I'm supposed to do, but then I find myself doing the things that I know I'm not supposed to do. And Paul says, I am encased in a body of death.

That's, I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what he said. I'm encased in death. Who will deliver me from the body of this death? And he concludes his thought by saying, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.

Now, I'm going to explain a little bit of that. I want to talk about the Will of God for the Weak. Now, I want to share some good news with you that the Will of God is for you, and I want you to hear me.

I want you to hear me with your best ear, and I want you to let the words of God go right down into your heart. Turn with me now to John chapter 6 in the New Testament. John chapter 6, and then we're going to go to John chapter 11. John chapter 6 verse 32. Then Jesus said to them, most assuredly I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Then they said to him, Lord, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.

Let me say it again. I am, Jesus said, the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst. Now, go with me to John chapter 11 beginning at verse 23. Now, this is a scenario where a man that Jesus loved had died, and instead of coming to him when he was sick, he actually waited until he had died and was actually dead for four days. And the sister of the man came to him. Martha said to Jesus in verse 21, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died.

It's the type of a person that says, if you'd come sooner, I had hope back then, but I don't have hope now. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, he will give it to you. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.

Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. In other words, I have no hope for the present, but I have hope for the future. I know there's a day coming that those in the grave are going to hear your voice, and we're all going to rise. We're going to meet you in the air. You see, it's the type of person that says, my only hope is for then.

I have no hope for right now. But Jesus said to her in verse 25, I am the resurrection and the life. Remember he said, I am the bread. I am the bread that God sent down from heaven.

Whoever partakes in me will never hunger, and he will never thirst. And in verse 25, he says, I'm the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this? I am the bread of life. I am the resurrection.

Hear these words again. Whoever believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this? I spent a considerable amount of time talking about the first temple. This first temple that was given by the pattern of the Holy Spirit to David, he gave it to his son Solomon.

Solomon built this temple. Remember we talked about the work of God going on in silence in that temple. Now in 2 Chronicles chapter 5 and verse 10, there's something interesting happens. Now the ark of God has always represented the victory of God, right? When the children of Israel brought the ark of God into the camp, there was always this incredible shout, and it represented the presence of God going with his people into battle.

It even caused enemies fear. Even the Philistines one time says, oh, what are we going to do? The ark of God has come into the camp.

The presence of God has come into the camp. And inside that ark, the Bible tells us were the tablets of the commandments that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. There was the manna which God supernaturally provided for the people through their wilderness journey. This is the bread of heaven, basically. It was like a wafer, like coriander with honey. And when the people ate it, it was total complete utter nutrition.

You didn't need anything else but manna. And the people survived on it for many, many years in the wilderness. And also in that ark was the staff of Aaron. And remember there was a dispute one time of who really is the, who's the priesthood? Who's really called of God? And the Lord said, bring every man his staff and lay them in a pile before the tabernacle. And so they did that.

And the Lord said, I will show you who belongs to me. Now, these are all dead sticks. These are all just sticks that people use.

They're shepherd's staff is what they are. They've been long dead. They're dry.

There's no moisture in them. They laid them all in this pile. And in the morning, Aaron's rod had budded. Amazing. I mean, out of a dead stick comes life, comes foliage.

Probably there's fruit on that staff too as well. It was an absolute miracle of God. So all of these things are put inside the ark as a reminder of who God is. God requires us to obey the law at that time. God promises to be our provision. He promises to be the bread that will sustain us. And God promises to be the one who gives us life even when we've died, even when we're in a place of death and darkness or they're just beyond fruit bearing. There's just no possibility that our lives are going to bear the fruit that we feel is the will of God or that God requires of us. Now, when the ark is brought into the temple, something strange happens at this particular time.

A lot of people just pass over it and don't even stop to think about it. But it says when Solomon brought the ark into the temple and they put it behind the curtain in the most holy place where the Shekinah glory of God would sit on top of the ark, that holy manifested presence of God, so powerful, so pure, so holy that if you went behind that curtain and you weren't properly prepared, it was instant death to step into the presence of God. Now interestingly enough in chapter 5 and verse 10, the scripture says nothing was in the ark except the two tablets which Moses put there at Horeb when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel when they'd come out of Egypt.

So this makes it really interesting. So it garners the question, what happened to the bread and what happened to the staff? You know, realistically the ark and the temple represented the law and it was just law. It was an Old Testament covenant where the people had to come into the presence of God and make promises to Him.

Remember that? You had to make promises to God. And the inherent problem of man from the time of the Garden of Eden in Genesis was the ingesting of this sin nature, the satanic nature that says, I can be as God is or I can be a judge like God is and I can know what's good and I can know what's evil. I don't need God in a sense to live a holy life. I can choose what's holy.

I can choose what's right. That's what we see of course happening in our generation through the lives of those who have no living real relationship with God. And so in this particular Old Testament temple there would be a river of blood, literally.

People would be coming in, they'd be bringing in their goats and their lambs and their turtledoves or whatever their financial situation was, their social standing. And they would be offering these things for their sin, promising that they were going to try to do better. Like many people listening, you promise, you promise God, you're in a prayer meeting and you're just waiting for the chance to make another promise. I promise you I'll try to get out of bed. I promise you I'll try to stop doing drugs.

I promise you. And every week you come in or maybe every year, maybe it's been years that you've come in and the longer you go, just like the Apostle Paul, you can say, I'm just so weary of making promises I can't keep. It's hopeless. And you don't even know why in some cases you're still in this firmity because your voice is no more than a whisper in the dust and your faith is no bigger than the smallest mustard seed that's available in this particular season that we're living in. And you wonder why you're even here. You're hanging on by a thread.

You're on the edge in many cases of committing suicide. That's why the Lord has burdened us to pray for those that are losing heart and losing hope. And so the question arises now, why did God remove the bread and the staff from the ark? Why was it only the law left in the ark? And I believe, first of all, because it was the temple and the religion of that time represented the old covenant.

It represented our attempts to make promises to God, our attempts to be godly in our own strength, our attempts to obey the will of God by any amount of strength or pulling up our bootstraps that we could muster. Now there's a lot of theories. I took time to read about this and there's a lot of theories about what happened to the manna and what happened to the staff.

And some of the theories are interesting and some are ridiculous. Now some suggest that the Philistines stole the manna and the staff when they captured the ark under the priesthood of Eli. I rather doubt that because the judgment of God was so severe on them and the fear of God so gripped them.

It would be obvious they would return obviously with the ark, anything that that it associated with it to save themselves really. Others suggest that a careless priesthood may have taken it out of the ark and some suggest that it was stolen. Others suggest that the bread and the staff never were put in the ark in the first place.

Interesting, some of these theories. But there's one that really caught my attention and I just want to read it to you about where did the bread go and where did the staff go? Why after all these years of association with the ark were they suddenly taken away? Now the tablets represented the law. The rod and the manna represented the supernatural provision of living in relationship with God.

Remember the law, the tablets represented my requirement as it is for obedience or for holiness to live a godly life. The manna represented the provision of God. Remember I am the bread. I am the bread of God.

I am the bread of life. And the rod represented the supernatural life, the supernatural provision that comes from living in relationship with God. The law with its temple were both doomed to fail. There would be a day coming when one stone would not be left upon another of this system.

Not just the temple, the whole system. When Jesus came into Jerusalem near the end of his three-year ministry on the earth, the final three years of his life on the earth, and he cursed the fig tree, I have always believed he was cursing the whole system of human effort and human covering. Remember in the Garden of Eden it was Adam and Eve were covered in fig leaves. When they embraced this thinking of Satan that I can cover myself, I can procure and produce righteousness in my own strength. You think of how ridiculous Adam and Eve must have looked and how ridiculous human effort looks in the sight of God when we try to be godly without God. And God knows it's impossible.

The problem is, humanly speaking, humanity doesn't know it's impossible. So we keep making promises and we keep getting more discouraged and we come back into the presence of God and we confess our sin and we say we're going to do better and we try to do better. But the whole system of you and I making promises to God was doomed to fail. That's why there needed to be a cross and supernatural life and provision were removed from that old system only to be returned at the cross. I really believe God took them out of the ark. I really believe the hand of God, however he chose to do it, removed the bread and removed this promise of life coming from death because it was only going to be returned through Jesus Christ. It was going to come back. After the old system had failed, the bread, which Jesus said I am the bread of life, and the resurrection, that means life from the dead, were both going to come back by God's design through Jesus Christ. Oh thank God.

Thank God. Nothing, nothing, nothing in the scriptures happens. Nothing in biblical history happens by happenstance. It's all orchestrated by God.

It was all leading to one conclusion. There's no hope for me. There's no hope for you apart from divine life through Jesus Christ. Apart from the covering of his blood, apart from the forgiveness of our sins, apart from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, there really is no hope for the future.

And so I'm going to go back to the question, what is the will of God for the weak? I want to share with you an experience that happened to me. I have been a believer now for about 43 years and about roughly 30 something years ago, left full-time employment and I went into full-time ministry and we bought a church and we renovated a church and we started a food bank and we were reaching out and I was preaching like a house on fire, fasting, doing everything I knew to do to be a good pastor, to be a good Christian, to serve God and to serve the people. But one day I ran out of gas. I'll never forget that day.

I just ran out of physical strength. No other way to describe it. I remember coming into the church. Now the church is in revival really. I mean the people are shouting. There's lots of good things happening.

People are coming from miles and miles and miles away to come to experience the presence of God. But I just ran out of strength. I ran out of gas and I was standing in the front of the church. We used to stand pastor Teresa, myself and some others in the front row and that Sunday morning I couldn't even sing. I was so weak. I couldn't sing. I couldn't lift my hands.

I couldn't pray. I could hardly speak and as I stood there the thought came into my mind, I'm finished. I'm done. I'm at the end of strength. I can't do this anymore. And I was standing there and I was due to preach probably in 15 minutes or so and I thought, how am I going to tell the church that I'm done? I can't do this.

I just, I have no strength left anymore. And it was at that point when my mind, I was thinking about how am I going to tell the church this. I heard a voice, an audible voice. You see, I was you see, I've only heard a voice one time in my life unless you think I'm one of those guys that's led by voices and dreams.

I'm not. I'm led by the word of God and God's always spoken to me all my Christian life through his word or through strong impulses in my heart most often when I've been in his word. That's how I've known the voice of God.

But this time was an audible voice. It was not an impression on my heart. It was not something I was thinking in my mind. It was somebody actually spoke to me.

I don't know who it was. Was it an angel? Was it the spirit of God?

I have no idea. But it was a voice. It was about five inches from my right ear and in the midst of my deepest despair this voice said these words, I have come to help you. And it was in a whisper. It was like, I've come to help you. Like that.

As clear as that. And it so startled me that I jumped and I looked over my shoulder to see who it was who was speaking to me and there was nobody there. There was nobody even close to me that could have spoken those words but yet I heard them and I heard them audibly spoken in my ear.

No more than five inches away from my ear. In the strength of that word, in the sudden sense of the infusion of God's help and power, I got up into the pulpit and preached that morning and never turned back. Not in my strength but in the strength of God. From standing in a front row unable to go into the pulpit, unable to sing, unable to raise my hands, unable to pray, I have traveled over most of the world. I've preached to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people by this time. And I thank God to this day that I don't know who it was but God sent a messenger to me and he spoke into my ear at the weakest time perhaps of my life when I was ready to give up and not go forward. And he just simply said, I've come to help you.

Six little words and it changed my future and it's over 30 years ago and I've been everywhere. Believe it or not, I have been sent to get you. I know that in my heart. I know what I'm called to do. I am the voice from God as his messenger to you saying, on God's behalf I have come to help you. God is speaking to you. I've come to help you get out of your weakness, your struggle, your trial, your self-loathing, your tendency to want to commit suicide, your fear of crowds, your dependency on drugs, whatever it is that you're going through, whatever has caused you to say, all I'm asking God is to take my life. No, he won't answer that prayer. He said, I've come to give you life and come to give it to you more abundantly. You can't ask God for what he clearly said he didn't come to give you. He won't answer that prayer and thank God he won't answer it. No, he's come to give you life. He's come to help you. On your part, you have to just do what I did and you simply get up and you move towards that first place that God has put before you. The first place I had to go in that place of weakness was into the pulpit and speak for the next 30 minutes.

That was the first thing. He didn't show me. He didn't show me India. He didn't show me Africa. He didn't show me the civil wars that's going to be sent to help. He didn't show me myself standing in the houses of prime ministers or presidents or kings or whatever they are.

He didn't show me any of that. He just showed me the pulpit that was right before me. You see, that's where it begins. It begins at the beginning and for you it's time to just get out of bed.

May I put it that way? That's the first thing. It's time to go to your kitchen, open your Bible and start reading it.

You start at the beginning. I feel in my heart that God has called me to call this last day weakened army into a place of strength that only God can give. It's not about obeying the rules anymore. You will instinctively do it because God promised to write his law in your heart.

You won't have to read it to obey it. It'll be inside of you. He said, I am the bread. I am the bread.

The bread that was maybe taken from the ark in that old system. I am the bread that's come down and if you partake of me you won't be hungry anymore and you won't be thirsty anymore. The promise of Christ is that I will satisfy your desire. I will strengthen you with a strength that you can't get anywhere else but from me. The promise of Christ is that I am the resurrection in the life and even if a man die yet he shall live.

Do you believe this? You see, that was the promise through the rod of Aaron. Even if you're dead and dry like an old stick and you know there's no hope of producing life apart from God.

He says, you come and you lay that down before me and before the morning comes there be blossoms in your life and there be fruit in your life and it will be done supernaturally not by human effort, not by making promises to me. You can't live by making promises to me says the Lord. You live by my promises to you. I promise to be God to you. I promise to be strength to you. I promise to be life to you. I promise to raise you from the dead. So get up. Interestingly, I wrote this up in my notes last night.

Isn't it amazing? And so here I'm again just telling you on God's behalf get up and trust Jesus for your strength and for your life. Don't make any more promises to God.

You can't keep them. He promises to be life to you. He promises to give you fruit in your life that you can't possibly bear in your own strength. He promises to be bread that supplies and water that causes you never to thirst again.

That is the promise of God. That is who the end time army is going to be. You, you are the end time army of God. You, who are suicidal. You, who can't get out of bed. You, who are addicted. You, who are afflicted. You, who hate who you are.

You, whose hearts are broken. You are the end time army of God. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. Hallelujah.

I'm not just trying to stir you up or make you happy. I have a word from God for you. You are the end time army of God and I've just come to help you. I can't lift you up, but I can tell you who can.

If you will just go forward, just go forward. I couldn't see any more than the 12 feet in front of me that Sunday morning, but I went forward in the strength in the strength of God. Preach the word that God had given me.

I've never looked back ever since. Father in Jesus name, in Jesus name, I ask you, God raise up your people. Raise up your church, Lord.

Raise up. God we are, we are hungry. We are thirsty. We recognize we can't bear fruit on our own.

None of us can, but we recognize that what was taken from the ark in Solomon's temple was given back at the cross. When you were raised from the dead, Lord, you took our captivity captive and showered us with gifts, with life, with nourishment. This is who we are. This is who you are. This is what you've asked of us in this generation.