Don´t Draw Back

I'm not going to draw back for the rest of my life, so help me God, as God gives me help. I'm not going to draw back, and neither are you. We're not going to draw back as the Church of Jesus Christ.

We're glad you're with us today on A Call to the Nation. As Christians, we must be careful of those voices who are trying to draw us into human effort, away from trusting that it's all God who's doing the good in our lives. We must pray for God to do a supernatural work in our life. Don't draw back.

Move forward in faith, and expect the miraculous, because God has a special plan for your life. Here's Carter Conlon with today's message. Galatians chapter 6, beginning to read from verse 14, the words of Paul the Apostle. But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one trouble me, for I bear in my body, the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

Don't draw back. Several years ago, we took an outreach team and went into Jos, Nigeria, at that time being the red line between forces of Islam and some form of Christianity that were fighting with each other. The last time that they had been allowed to publicly assemble figure I was given was that 6000 people died. And it was an area of deep division and deep trouble.

We felt led of the Lord to go there to conduct an outreach. And I remember after we got to Nigeria, people telling me the difficulty we're about to face the things that could go wrong. There's always more people willing to talk about what could go wrong than what could go right. Have you ever noticed that? And then you add it to the frailty of your own heart. And suddenly, the problem has a capital P and Jesus has a small J.

And you're you're looking at you're magnifying the problem and not the the one who overcame every obstacle we'll ever face. And I remember I was in my hotel room and I was laying on the floor. And suddenly it was one of the very, very, very few times in my life that I almost turned and went the other way, apart from faith. And I remember thinking I've, I've taken on too much here. I've come here presumptuously, half a million people are going to be gathering.

And there's going to be an outbreak of violence, it would have taken one gunshot in the place where people would have died, numerous numbers would have died. And I remember thinking I've taken on too much, I'm out of my league. I know what God spoke to my heart back in New York City, but maybe I misinterpreted the fullness of it.

And I'm on my face and I'm having a real a real spiritual pity party. At that moment, Brother Chooks, one of our elders comes walking into the room. And he says, What's wrong? And I poured out my heart to him.

His counsel was rather abrupt. He just said, Get up. So God sent you here to do a job, get up and get it done.

That's all he said. And so those of you who know Brother Chooks, you just simply do what he says. It's amazing how a few well spoken words can change the course of a person's future. And these are my words to you today.

Don't draw back. God called you to do something, God called you to be something. And he promised that he was going to do it through you and for you. Think about what would have happened had I succumbed to the unbelief of that moment that was trying to get a hold of my heart. And I gotten up and think about if the counselor coming into the room had presented to me an alternate plan, maybe we can go home, we'll cancel the event, maybe we'll come back some other time.

Hey, we could do this on video, it'd be a whole lot less dangerous. You know, just all these alternate plans that could have been. And if I had gravitated to that, I dare say that this would be a different church today. It would look a whole lot different than it does today. And this in effect is what Paul the Apostle is talking about through this whole book that he wrote to believers that were known as the Galatians.

They lived in a specific area of the world at that time. And he's writing to these people and because people were coming into them and, and offering them an alternate way, other than faith. Now it had religion all over it. Alternate ways always do. They're filled with religion.

They're exciting quite often to the flesh. And they present a lesser difficult course than the one that oftentimes is required by faith. And all of the methodologies, of course, because God's not on that course, what has to come with it is a whole bunch of human effort to make it happen. Human zeal, strategies, steps, plans, committees, all these things have to come when we've walked away from faith. Remember, the writer of Hebrews said these words on God's behalf.

If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. If anyone draws back, remember that God defined himself. He said, without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he that comes to God must believe that he is and he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. He is conqueror. He is the victor. He is the one with the keys to every prison. He is the one with the lamp that shines on our path and leads us into the future. He is our resource, our strength, our power, our guide, our guard, our provision.

He is all of these things. And as we seek him, these things begin to sovereignly by the power of God, begin to be known in us and through us. God's people on the earth were always destined to be a supernatural people. We are to walk with him in a way that it can be imitated, but it can never be achieved by human effort.

There's a huge difference. When you start walking in the flesh, everything changes. I think of Abraham for a moment when he presented Israel. Remember, he ran out of faith at a certain point. He's given this incredible promise. Abraham, Genesis 15, go look at the stars in the sky.

And this is how numerous your descendants are going to be more than can be counted. Now Abraham's getting older and as he's getting older, the promise is not being fulfilled. And then finally gets to the point where he starts to fear that the promise is not going to materialize. And so he succumbs to a plan and creates a wild man. God said he's a wild man. He creates this guy called Ishmael and said he's a wild man. His hand will always be against his brothers and his brother's hands against him. And it's amazing when you begin to see, and I can see Abraham presenting Ishmael to the people.

Here's Ishmael. And you know, you'd have to have people with signs saying it's time to clap, time to rejoice because it's a work of the flesh. It's something created by human effort.

And it always brings about its baggage, its entourage. But think about years later, 13 or so years later when he presents Isaac, the child of promise, that which could not be born apart from the miraculous working of God within Abraham and his wife, Sarah. And the scripture says it was laughter.

There was laughter there. There was rejoicing because only God could have done this. Oh, I thank God that God's plan for you and I is to cause us to laugh when we go home, to cause us to look in the mirror and say, God, only you could have taken this and done something with it. God's plan for you and I is that we be constantly in awe of him, constantly coming into his presence saying, Lord, I'm excited about meeting with you again because every time I meet with you, something new happens. Morning by morning, new mercies. Morning by morning I'm taking places I couldn't go.

I'm given words that I know are not, don't come from my natural understanding. I'm given things in my heart that I've never possessed, abilities that could only come from the spirit. And it makes this walk with God an awesome walk, an incredible walk. Oh God, help us to never draw back. It's sad for any pastor having seen new believers in Christ and I've seen it over and over throughout the years and they find this incredible life in the spirit, which God freely gives only to for whatever reason draw back into the hopelessness of human effort and the seeking of exterior signs to prove that they still belong to God.

That's exactly what happens. I remember years ago we had the so-called revivals in North America and I remember how sad I was in my heart because when God's people are seeking an exterior sign to prove his presence, they have lost touch with the supernatural at that point. When we're seeking the supernatural outside, that means there's nothing going on inside. I didn't have to go anywhere. I don't have to run. If somebody tells me that people are able to jump 18 feet off the ground in some meeting, I don't really care. I don't have to go to see it because I can jump 18 feet in my spirit of my prayer closet anytime off the ground. You understand what I'm saying?

The supernatural work of God is inside, so I'm not looking for something outside. And this is what Paul was fighting against because those that would always draw the church of Jesus Christ back into powerlessness always were there and always will be among us. And they're quite often exciting. Their words are good.

They're marvelous speakers. They're positive, but they pull away from the cross of Jesus Christ, the victory that was won by another, and they start infusing into their audiences the sense that we can do this, you can do this, and I can do this. We all have this inheritability in ourselves to be godly. The Bible tells us that God brought the law into existence in the Old Testament to prove to the descendants of Abraham that that is an impossibility. We can't be godly in our own strength. We can't do the things that God only can do through us. No matter how high we try to jump or how loud we sing or how much we look into the mirror and say, oh, you're just great and grand today. No matter how many times we do these things, we cannot produce the supernatural life of God that his church requires. And more so in this hour.

This is a dark season in history. The Bible says that we are a light set upon a hill, and this light that's supposed to be in you and I cannot be hidden. It must not be hidden. We must not be a people that can be imitated by anything in the flesh or the world. When those 120 new believers came out of that upper room and they burst into the marketplace, standing before them were 3,000 plus people encased in religion and religious works. They had all the exterior markings as they saw to belonging to God. They had the garments, they had the hats, they had the boxes of scripture on their foreheads and their arms and all the trappings that go with religion. But they saw 120 people, common people, supernaturally possessed by the spirit of God. And when they looked at that, they said, we have a lot of stuff, but we haven't got that.

Whatever you have, that's what we want. We're willing to cast off these robes that we might find this life that God promises through Jesus Christ. The tragedy in the church of Jesus Christ always has been that there are people always willing to pick those robes up and find a new crowd to put them on. And this was what was happening in Paul's day. People were coming in and they were standing up against the gospel that Paul had preached. He had preached to them about the completeness of Christ, the full victory of the cross, the power of the resurrection and the free giving of forgiveness in life that could belong to any man, any woman, anyone who came to God with an honest heart, they could be changed and become a new creation. But those tried to creep back in among the people of Paul's day and instill in them markings of the flesh, things on the outside that would identify them as belonging to God and bringing them back into a pattern of trying to work to obtain the favor of God and working to prove to their society that God was indeed among them. Paul, the apostle warns a young pastor called Timothy in second Timothy chapter four verses three and four. He says, the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.

That's the time is our time. He's talking about the last days beginning in chapter three, but according to their own desires, because they have bitching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers and will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. That's an interesting, it's not that they're, it's not that they've left religion. They've just embraced speech that has no power.

Stories that don't do anything. They're not the word of God. They're man centered. They're man focused.

They have a semblance of freedom, but they bring no life. They can move the hearer to tears. They can bring the audience to their feet, shouting and clapping, but they're fables.

There's no power in it. The scripture tells us that they will have people's attention and they will have people sitting in admiration because they're very, very gifted speakers. You think about Jehoshaphat and Ahab the day before they were about to be defeated in battle.

400 of these prophets are standing at the throne of Ahab. In Zedekiah, the son of Chenaiah says he made horns of iron and he's telling the king Ahab with these, he said, you're going to push the Syrians. You're going to push the Syrians. You're going to push them until they be driven in the sea. In other words, human effort, human effort, human effort.

You're going to make it. The man is one day from death and here he has voices, positive voices, 400 of them shouting, go and prosper, go and prosper, go and prosper. Strangely enough, there's one man left in the crowd and in his heart he's got a sense, oh, I don't know.

I believe, see Jehoshaphat was a righteous man in measure and I believe that he knew this spirit of schmoozing when he heard it. He knew that these men were prophesying for their own advantage. They wanted access to power.

They wanted access to people's hearts. They wanted access to the king's court and that's what causes him to say, is there anybody else after 400 voices? He says, is there anybody else out there? Remember Ahab says, oh yeah, there's one guy, Micaiah, but I hate him.

He never tells me what I want to hear about myself. He's a kind of a guy, I don't hate you brother Turks, but he's the kind of a guy that says, get up from where you are. There's a job to be done. God's called you to do it. Let's get at it.

Let's get going. He says, he never tells me what I want to hear. Micaiah comes in and says, I saw the people of Israel scattered as sheep without a shepherd. In other words, I saw what happens when men listen to the voices of other men and they stopped listening to the voice of God. Most of this theology that they bring builds up the fallen nature and leads people to believe that apart from Christ within us, that we have the ability in ourselves to be as God is.

It's an amazing thing. Paul identifies these teachers as man pleasers. In Galatians in chapter one, verses nine to 10, he says, we've said before, now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than that you have received, let him be accursed. For now do I persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bond servant of Jesus Christ.

Paul identifies this voice that comes to try to put these old robes back on the body of Christ. They come as men pleasers. They'll tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear, but what you want to hear.

You want to hear. Your sin nature wants to hear how lovely you are. Your sin nature in yourself. I'm talking about apart from Christ in you. The sin nature wants to cause us to believe that we can climb mountains.

We can walk the seas. We can conquer the valleys all in our own strength and all with our own reasoning and all Satan needs to lead the body of Christ into era is a man pleaser. Somebody that will not tell you that if you continue in willful sin, that you cannot call the kingdom of heaven your home. They will never tell the people that. They will not talk about the cross. They will not talk about the blood. They will not talk about sin. They will not talk about repentance. All the elements of salvation will be thrown out of their theology.

My friends, would you please beware? Would you please hear me on this and beware of what we are facing in this generation? The biggest assault we're facing against the church of Christ is not necessarily liberalism and all of its things that it brings into a society. The biggest assault against the church of Jesus Christ is always from within. It's the raising up of voices that do not speak for God, but they profess to speak for him. They lead the people of God away from the spirit because these men and women don't know anything about the spirit of God. Paul says in Galatians again, chapter four in verse 17 says, they zealously court you, but for no good.

Yes, they want to exclude you. In other words, they want you to be set apart that you may be zealous for them. In other words, they draw to themselves, folks. It's not hard to pick them out.

They're man pleasers. They draw to themselves. I'm telling you, if you walk out of this church, speaking my name and not the name of Jesus, I have failed you. I have drawn you to myself. I'm not going to turn back. Paul said, oh Galatians, having begun in the spirit, are you now going to be perfected in the flesh?

Answer me this. He said, the people who do miracles among you, do they do it by the hearing of faith or do they do it by the works of the law or in other words, human effort. Human effort can only produce that which human effort can produce, but the heart of faith gets hold of God and begins to know something that only God can do. I'm not going to draw back for the rest of my life. So help me God, as God gives me help, I'm not going to draw back and neither are you. We're not going to draw back as the church of Jesus Christ. My brother, my sister, we've come too far to turn back now. We are now right on the edge of I believe Christ's return.

I don't know exactly when, but he's coming soon. I know that in my heart. We're so close to that moment in history. We're so close to everything the scriptures ever promised us. It's not time to turn back.

It's not time to look for an easy way. The days ahead are going to be hard, but Christ in us will give us the strength. God's Holy Spirit will give us the power to walk through fire, flood, difficulty, and trial, and he will never leave us. He will not forsake us and every tongue that scorns us and rises against us in judgment, we have the power to condemn it.

This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. Don't try to win the battle in your own strength. If you try to win it in your own strength, your whole life, the course of your life will take a different turn. What if I had not gotten up off the floor? What if another counselor had come into that room?

I want you to think of all that would not have happened in those moments. And you better thank God if you're in a church where you are provoked to faith. You're provoked to turn away from what you want to do in your own heart. And you are provoked to believe God and to go into those places of impossibility. And if you'll listen to what I'm telling you in the days ahead, there'll be fruit born through your life that you never believed was possible.

You didn't believe it. God put it in your heart and you decided to simply get up and say, God, you've given me a job to do on this earth. I'm going to get up and in the strength of God alone, I'm going to it's going to be done not in my strength, but in the strength of God within me.

This job is going to be done. I challenge you with all my heart, all your declarations of love and loyalty, all your efforts to be something other than what you naturally are. For many here have failed you. You're tired of trying to win the battle in your own strength. But today, I want to invite you to come unashamed to lay hold of the victory of another, the promise of new life that was won for you on the cross 2000 years ago. To lay down your attempts to change, lay down your plans to go forward your strategies for life as you see it and say, I'm going to lay hold of the victory that Jesus won for me 2000 years ago. That's going to be my strength.

It's going to be my song. It's going to be my life and it's going to be my victory. I'm not going to draw back. I'm going to press in in faith. I'm going to believe God for everything he has for my life, even though it looks impossible in the natural.

As a matter of fact, it is impossible in the natural, but it's possible to God. I'm not going to be sold short on this journey. I'm not going to die in my final moments of life with a bunch of if onlys on my lips. No, I'm going to take the journey now and at the end of my day is going to say, thank you Lord God that you didn't let me turn back. Thank you that you kept me going forward. Thank you Lord that you didn't let the testimony of your life inside of mine be diminished by my circumstance.

You gave me the strength and power I needed to be the person that I was called to be milder called so very simple is for all those who are tired of fighting this battle in your own strength. You're tired of trying to figure out you've come this far by faith and now fear wants to take its place and you just don't know how you're going to get through. You're going to get ahead.

You're going to proceed from here. You will by just simply laying hold of God by faith. Lay hold of the victory that Christ gave you 2000 years ago and begin to move forward. That's the cry of my heart.

Don't forget his benefits. Don't forget what he's done and let him be your God in the future. Let your life be a supernatural life.

Let nobody in the natural be able to imitate what God's going to do in you. You've been listening to Carter Conlon from Time Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk in Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. And be sure to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.