Church of Vidor Friday 2 — David Ravenhill

A little bit of a background, you've already assessed that I'm not from Texas, I guess, and I was born in England and lived there until I was 12 years of age. Then as a family we moved to Ireland, my mother is Irish, so we lived there for three years and then at the age of 15 moved to the States, lived for about seven years in Minnesota.

Any Minnesotans here? Thawing out, right? And then went through Bible college there, met my wife, we worked for a couple of years in New York City with David Wilkerson, and then went down to New Zealand, lived there for about 18 months, got Youth With A Mission, any Y-Wammers here, X-Y-Wammers, anyone?

No? Okay, Youth With A Mission is an organization now that has grown over the years to many, many thousands of young people, and of course because it's been going for so long there's a lot of old people in it as well, but anyway, we were instrumental in starting that work down in New Zealand, then we came back to the States, spent four years in California, then from there went down to New Guinea and did some missionary work there for several years, and then from New Guinea to New Zealand where we were involved in ministry for about 15 years, and then 10 years ago came back to the States.

Spent a year in Dallas, four years in Kansas City, another four and a half years up near Seattle, and then the last six months down in Pensacola. So anyway, if you roll all those accents together, that's the language I'm speaking to you in and I trust that you can understand it.

My wife and I have been married for 34 years, I think it is this year, and we have three girls, our oldest daughter is a missionary in China, she's 32 years of age, just had her birthday last week, and then we have a 29-year-old with three children, so I'm a grandfather three times over, and in fact they were just with us for a couple of days, left this morning when I left, and I'm glad I'm not, I better be careful, we've got a brother here that's due to have another one, I'm glad that those years are over, those kids exhausted me, it's always wonderful to see them, but I'm getting older or something.

And then we have a 22-year-old daughter as well that's living in Kansas City, just graduated from college and will be a high school teacher if she can find a job. So anyway, that's just a little bit of a background, and again, it's wonderful to be with you.

Revival as a Return to God-Consciousness

I want to share with you tonight on the habitation of God, the habitation of God, and God is doing a very wonderful work right now around the nation, around the nations. I have always been somewhat hesitant to use the word revival, I'm always afraid that once we call it revival then we've sort of given it a 10 in the gymnastic at least scoreboard and then there's nothing else to aim at.

But certainly there is a move of God that is unprecedented, there's a hunger, there's a desire for God right now that certainly in my 33 or 34 years of ministry I have not seen before, and not only in this nation but in the nations around the world, there's just a fresh longing for the presence of God.

And the word revive means really to restore, to bring back to life, a person that you know is drowning and is rescued and the paramedics come and he's unconscious, again they breathe life into that individual and he revives, he comes back into a realm of consciousness.

And I believe revival is coming back into a God consciousness that we've been out of. It's almost as though we've been asleep and there's a whole realm of activity there in the supernatural that we have been totally immune from if you like.

And suddenly there is a revival, we realize once again that God is on the move, we realize that God is wanting to use us and I believe that's what's happening right now. There is a God consciousness coming back to the church.

You know we've tried all the gimmicks over the years, we've tried all the various moves, discipleship, faith, prosperity, this, that, the other thing. The thing that this move of God centers around again is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We sang that song tonight, if I be lifted up I'll lift him up. And somebody said with the river, taking the analogy there from Ezekiel's river, that you know the waters initially are up to the ankles and then waters up to the loins and then eventually waters to swim in.

And they said when the waters are at the place where we can swim in them, only the head shows. And I believe we're getting to that place where only the head is going to show. The Lord Jesus Christ again is going to be exalted and magnified and glorified and the rest of the body if you like is going to be submerged and we're going to see the Lord in a way that we've never seen him before.

And I'm excited about what God is doing. But tonight again I want to speak to you about the habitation of God. I'm going to be using a number of words sort of interchangeably and the first part of this message is going to be somewhat light-hearted, there's a reason for that, I want to establish a little bit of a foundation before we move on.

But I'm going to be using a number of words, the word culture, the word environment, the word atmosphere, the word environment, all of those words having sort of similar overtones if you like because God I believe lives in a particular habitat, a particular atmosphere, a particular environment, God has a particular culture if you like.

Cultural Understanding in Christian Ministry

I became very aware of the fact that people are not the same in different culture, in different countries. I came over as I said to America when I was 15 years of age, my father based his ministry for a while at a Bible college in Minneapolis, Bethany Fellowship, some of you are familiar with Bethany Book Publishing, and we lived on that base for about seven years, I'd only been there about three or four days when I was horrified to discover that some of the kids that I was playing with, these were staff kids, staff brats as they were called, I was horrified to find out that they were swearing, and they were equally horrified to find out that Leonard Ravenhill's son, this wonderful evangelist that had written these books and so on, that his son was also swearing, until we realized that we had a clash of cultures, that swear words in England are not necessarily swear words in America and vice versa, and I was not swearing in my particular culture, I was an American, and they were not swearing in their culture, but they were in mine, and I realized again that just because we spoke the same language, there was a difference in culture, and one of the things of course that you learn as you travel, and I've had the wonderful privilege of traveling now many, many years and visiting various countries as far as, as well as living in different countries, and that is that you begin to appreciate a person's culture.

They teach you now, of course, as you go out on missionary activity, that not only do you need a knowledge of the Word of God to explain the Gospel, but you need to understand the culture to which you're going.

It's very easy to offend somebody. The book of Proverbs says, a brother offended is harder to be won than taking a city. And some of you know that, I guess by experience, you've offended somebody and that offense is maybe still there, you've done everything you can, you've written letters, you've picked up the phone, you've apologized, but somehow that offense has caused a breach in your relationship, and so we need to understand cultures.

We need to understand, again, the way in which somebody operates, that their value system may not be the same as your value system. What they appreciate may not be what you appreciate, and as I've again traveled, I've discovered that not everybody does things the way we do them.

In fact, when my wife and I were in New Guinea, we were talking to one of the missionaries, we were in the major city there, Port Moresby, and New Guinea, if you know anything about that nation, it's a nation of three million people, and it has 700 languages, not dialects, but languages, and then there's the various dialects as well.

It's a very mountainous nation, one of the worst flying countries in the world, and of course Wycliffe had the largest base there, and we got to know some of these missionaries that were working in one of these very remote areas, and they were telling us some of the sort of humorous things that they'd come across, and one of them was that after they'd been there for a number of months, the nationals, they don't like to be called natives, but we would refer to them more as natives, but the nationals came up to one of the American missionaries that was translating the Bible into their particular language, and he asked a question, and the question was this, he wanted to know about the handkerchief.

They had never seen a handkerchief before until the Americans came along, and they were somewhat mystified, and they wanted to know if they would explain why, when they blow their nose, they keep this particular substance, and they wrap it up so carefully in this white handkerchief, this white cloth they refer to it as, and then they put it in their pocket, and of course in their mind it was something of tremendous value, because they said you always have a very white cloth, which to them of course spoke of something that was sort of almost sanctified, but you take this very white precious cloth out of your pocket, you very carefully blow your nose, and this substance is then very carefully folded up and it's placed back in your pocket, and the question was, what do you do with that stuff?

We want to know, we've wasted that substance for, you know, thousands of years, and obviously you have discovered a priceless commodity, that the way you handle it, the way you are so careful to put it in that white cloth and preserve it, what do you do with it?

Now again, that's rather humorous, and it is humorous, but you see in their culture they did not understand, it was a mystery to them, now we would obviously just, we grow up in our particular culture, it's something that we're taught, it's something that we do automatically, it's something that we don't even think about, but to a Stone Age culture, again they thought it was quite strange, in some cultures it's appropriate in the middle of the meal to belch, and the longer and louder the belch, then the more you're enjoying the meal, and basically what you're saying to the cook is, this is a wonderful meal, we gathered with some of the pastors tonight, had a wonderful meal, some of the wives had spent all day preparing it, and it was delicious, but I was not about to belch in the middle of the meal, to let them know that I was enjoying it, I expressed it in a different way, but in some cultures, again, if you don't belch, then you would offend the host, you would offend the cook, because there is no sign of appreciation, now again, when somebody belches at the table, especially if you have visitors, you know the appropriate thing to do is for a father to sort of look with one of those looks right across the table, or if he can reach you, kick under the table, remind you that we have guests tonight, be on your best behavior, it's embarrassing when your teenager belches at the table, and we don't do that, but again, in certain cultures you do.

When my wife and I lived in New Zealand, just ten years ago, in fact it was about eleven years ago now that I made a trip down to the city of Dunedin, down in the South Island of New Zealand, that's the old Scottish city, settled by the Scots, and our oldest daughter was in university there, and I went down to do some meetings, and I was staying at the house that she was also staying at, and while I was waiting for breakfast that particular morning I picked up the morning newspaper, and there was an article on the front page that caught my attention, it was an article concerning a museum exhibit that was touring Australasia, it was going to New Zealand, then over to Australia, I think up into Malaysia, but it was an exhibit from the Inca civilization, the Incas from Peru, South America, and the article described this particular museum exhibit, it said that they had various pieces of pottery and jewelry and artifacts pertaining to the Inca civilization, some gold and some silver vessels and so on, but it said the pride and joy of this particular museum exhibit was the mummified remains of an Inca person, and the purpose of the article was to say that New Zealand was the only place on this particular tour where these mummified remains were not being displayed, and it said the reason was that the Maori people, who make up about 15 or 20 percent of the New Zealand population, they're the original inhabitants of New Zealand that would be equivalent to the American Indians, they are very superstitious when it comes to anything to do with death, and so the New Zealand government was sensitive to their particular culture, knew that it would be highly offensive to have a dead body on display even though that body was supposedly thousands of years old, and so they were not displaying this particular mummy, all the other artifacts were on display.

Again, they were sensitive to another culture and they realized that they could cause a breach in the relationship that the government had with the Maori people. In Malaysia, if you've travelled in Malaysia, I've travelled reasonably extensively in Malaysia, when you go into a home, it doesn't matter if that home is poor or if that home is rich, that before you cross the threshold of that house or that home, you have to remove your shoes.

I remember going with a Chinese doctor, medical doctor, that I was staying with during a week of meetings up in a place called Penang, and we drove to his home, beautiful Mercedes Benz, very rich family, got to the entrance of the house, there were some gates, they automatically opened, we went in, there was a maid at the door, and I proceeded to walk into the house and there was a tap on my shoulder, I was reminded, pointed down, and here was a series of shoes, I thought maybe a melder was there, but anyway, I was asked if I would remove my shoes.

There were dozens of shoes at the door, there were no shoes worn in that house, even though there was no carpet in the house. Again, because of the heat, most of the floors are trots or tile flooring, but you see in that culture, you would never ever think of going across the threshold into a house without first of all removing your shoes, it's just the way in which they operate in that particular culture.

And so understanding a person's culture is absolutely essential. I was in Thailand many years ago, doing a missionary conference there, and they were asking me, at that time I was living in New Zealand, and they asked me about a particular person, did I know a particular person, and I said yes.

Happened to work with this gentleman, and he had been there as a speaker the year before I had, and they were still talking about something that happened, he was illustrating his message and he took off his shoe, and he threw his shoe, I think he was talking about David and Goliath, he didn't have any sling, so he took his shoe off and he threw it across the audience, and they were horrified because in Thailand, the shoe is the most despised, the lower you go in the body, it's more and more despised, and the foot is the most despised part of the body.

In fact, it's sort of an insult to sit and to point the sole of your foot at somebody or to point your shoe at somebody. In that culture, that's highly offensive. These people on the front row would be offending me if I was Thai, don't worry.

And so what he did, he did something that was culturally not acceptable, and here it was a year later, and they were still talking about it. So again, we need to understand that not everybody operates the same way.

What we value, other people don't necessarily value. We get so used to operating in our particular culture, don't we? Most of you tonight, I'm sure, had some sort of a meal, and you used a knife or a fork or a spoon to eat with.

And yet, you know, there's well over a billion people that won't even know how to begin to use a knife and a fork. They use chopsticks, and they are just as adapted to using chopsticks as we are with knives and forks and spoons.

But because we have been raised that way, we just automatically think the rest of the world operates the same way. So I'm going to share with you tonight something of God's culture, if you like, the environment, the habitation of God.

The Believer as God's Dwelling Place

The Bible says that we are growing into a habitation of God. In other words, we are being prepared by God to be the dwelling place of God, to be the home of God. The Bible says that we are the temple, the house, if you like, the temple of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Now the word habitat in the dictionary, it means the usual place that someone or something is found. In other words, the usual place that someone or something is found. That's the word habitation or the word habitat.

I lived up in Seattle until six months ago, and of course that whole area of the great northwest with its magnificent scenery and the wonderful trees and so on, you know, they've had the environmentalists up there saying that we should not be cutting down some of that old forest growth because of a little bird called the spotted owl.

And they are great proponents of defending that helpless little bird, I guess. In the meantime, people are dying, of course, because they don't have jobs and can't afford to feed their families, but that doesn't seem to matter.

But anyway, they tell us that there is a particular habitat that that bird needs in order to survive, and if we destroy that habitat, that bird, of course, will go into extinction and so on. In order to preserve that bird, we need to, oops, we need to maintain the habitat.

And so, again, the dictionary defines habitation or habitat as the usual place that someone or something is found. Now the word habitation in the Bible is an interesting word. You can go home, if you like, check it out on your computer, on your strongs.

It's a word that is translated tabernacle, a dwelling, a place to settle, a place to dwell, a place to marry, a place to keep house, and a place to rest. And there are various other ways of translating that word habitation.

A place to settle, a place to marry, a place to keep house, a place to rest, a place to abide. All of that, and you'll notice that all of that, of course, has one thing in common, a place where you feel at home.

When you get married, you establish a home. It's a place where you can rest, you can settle, you can settle down and just, that becomes your habitation, that becomes your habitat. Now, if you have your Bible tonight, turn with me to Exodus chapter 25.

Exodus 25 and verse 8. And this is God now speaking to Moses, and he says in verse 8, And let them construct a sanctuary for me, that I may dwell among them. Now notice, this is God taking the initiative.

This is not Moses at the end of 40 days of prayer and fasting, sort of begging God to come and to dwell in the midst of his people. It's not Moses saying, God, it's about time you paid us a visit. After all, we're supposed to be your kids, and you know, you're supposed to be a father, why don't you come, why don't you dwell with us, why do you sort of distance yourself from us, and so on.

And after 40 days of prayer and fasting, he finally gets God's attention, and it's not that way at all. This is God taking the initiative. God coming to Moses and expressing a longing, a deep desire that God has to dwell in the midst of his people.

And how many of you know the Bible says, I am the Lord and I change none. That God still longs to dwell with his people. I believe the heart of any father, and especially father, is to be with his family.

And he says, I want to come and I want to dwell among them. So first of all, God expresses his desire. The second thing we find is that God expresses his demands. First of all, his desires. Secondly, his demands.

In other words, God says, even though I want to dwell with you, I will not dwell anywhere. And so he says to Moses, Moses, according to all that I am going to show you, as to the pattern of the tabernacle, the pattern of all its furniture, just so, you shall construct it.

In other words, God says to Moses, Moses, don't get any bright ideas about building me an environment, a culture, a habitat, an atmosphere. I'm going to give you all the details. I'm going to tell you exactly how to build a habitat, a habitation for me, a tabernacle.

A place where I can dwell, a place where I can settle, a place where I can marry, a place where I can keep house, a place where I can feel at home. And he says, I'll give you the dimensions. I'll give you the color scheme.

I'll give you the type of furniture. I will show you every single detail. And God says, and just so, you shall construct it. And so we find that even though God has got a tremendous desire to dwell with his people, he also has certain demands.

God’s Standards for His Dwelling Place

Now as we look at this tonight, we need to understand the ways of God. See the psalmist cried out many, many times, Lord, show me thy ways or teach me thy ways. If you like, teach me your culture God, how you operate, your value system, the way you do things, what you appreciate, what you don't appreciate and so on.

If we are going to get along with somebody, we need to know what they appreciate and what they don't appreciate. I think it was A .W. Tozer that sort of summarized the Christian life this way. If you want to grow spiritually, you need to learn what God loves and love it and learn what God hates and hate it.

And that really is the essence of the Christian life. Find out what God loves and begin loving what God loves. Find out what God hates and begin to hate what God hates. Now if we really honestly did that, because God has some lists of hatreds, you know, I hate those that sow seeds of discord among the brethren.

You know, if we really hated that, like God hated it, there'd still be an awful lot of churches together instead of divided, right? And so on. So we need to understand, again, God's value system. And so God says, listen, I want to dwell with you, but I will not dwell anywhere.

I've got standards that need to be met. We need to understand that about God right from the very beginning. So he says, let them construct a sanctuary. The word sanctuary means a clean place. One of the things we know about God is that he will not dwell where there's uncleanness.

The word sanctuary means a clean place. Now, one of the things you discover when you travel, you begin to, well let me back up and say this, you can discover a lot about a person by visiting their home.

In the course of my travels over the years, I've stayed in many many different types of homes. I spent an entire week once in a castle, a very beautiful, magnificent castle, right up in the St. Lawrence Seaway, believe it or not, in this country, built by the head of Singer's sawing machine back at the turn of the century.

It cost something like $4 million back in 1904. So you can imagine, it's on a nine acre island right in the St. Lawrence Seaway. They've done some filming there, Hollywood has, and a Christian gentleman bought it.

This is going back now about 30 years. I don't know if he still has it or not, but we spent a week in that castle. Knights of armor, beautiful stone arches as you walk in, just a magnificent place. You go into a huge library and on either side of this big fireplace there were two panels and bookcases starting, thousands and thousands of books.

The gentleman showed us, he reached in behind one of these books and he lifted up some sort of a lever and all of a sudden the panel on the side of the fireplace opened up and there was a passageway and that entire castle was full of secret passages.

It was amazing. It was built after some sort of castle in Europe. You could almost go into every single room, our bedroom, for instance, had a closet. In those days people didn't have quite as many clothes, but it was in the corner of the room.

It had three hooks at the back. You lifted up the middle hook and the whole back of the closet opened and you could find your way into passages. There was even a little area that was a prison back in there that you could never find anybody if they were put there.

It was just a fascinating place. But I spent a week there. I've slept on dirt floors in Fiji, right up in the mountains of Fiji where it gets extremely cold at night, covered in all sorts of mats and trying to keep warm and so on.

I've been in all sorts of homes, but you can tell a lot about a person by going into their home. All you have to do is walk in the front door and just look around. You can tell if they're rich or they're poor.

You can tell if they're clean or they're dirty. You can tell if they're educated or uneducated and so on and so forth. I could go on. You could tell the likes and the dislikes, the type of furniture. Maybe some homes have very beautiful antique furniture, others old, very modern type furniture, others contemporary furniture, various color schemes.

Some that you think, how do they live in these sort of colors and so on. It tells you about that person. It reflects the personality or the personalities that live in that home. Sometimes, of course, instead of being in a motel I stay in a home and many times either a guest bedroom, maybe a teenage bedroom where the teenager has been asked to sleep in the basement or something and I've gone into his room or her room, whatever the case may be.

You can tell a lot about that teenager just by looking at the posters on the wall, looking at the CDs that they have, looking at the sports equipment that they've got and so on. All you've got to do is sort of look in that room and you know this guy's into baseball, this guy's into football, this guy's into tennis, this guy's into music big time or whatever it is.

Sometimes I'll look at the bookcase in a home and I'll look over the books. Sometimes they're all medical books and I think well obviously somebody in this home, either the husband, maybe they haven't arrived yet, it's a doctor, these books are all concerning medicine or maybe there's a nurse in the house.

Other times I look and all the books are about science and so on. I think obviously this guy's well educated in the sciences. Other times it's all sports stuff, fishing gear or photography magazines or whatever it is and all I've got to do is look and I can tell what sort of person inhabits that home.

Sometimes I look and there's cookbooks everywhere and I think this is going to be a great weekend and so on. But anyway, you learn to know something about that person without even meeting them just by being in their home.

That home reflects the type of person that lives there or the type of people that live there. And what I want to do tonight, I want you to visit with me as we go into God's house. We've already established from the Old Testament that God says I won't dwell anywhere, that we have to make a place that is suitable for Him.

The Throne of God in Revelation 4

So let's turn now to Revelation chapter 4. You see when Moses was told that by God, he was told that he wanted to dwell in the midst of his people and he says, but Moses I'm going to show you how to make that house.

And of course Moses was taken up into the mountain and for days and days and days God gave him revelations of the tabernacle. He basically said, Moses this is what I live like up here. And what I want you to do, I want you to duplicate what you see up here down on earth.

Obviously in a smaller scale, but the basic ingredients or components that I'm used to up here I want you to replicate or duplicate down on earth. I will give you all the details. I will give you the color scheme, I'll give you what needs to be gold, what needs to be silver, what needs to be bronze, what needs to be purple, what needs to be whatever it is.

I'll tell you the dimensions, I'll tell you the type of furniture. I am particular about where I dwell. I want to have a habitation on earth that is the same as my habitation in heaven. You see God says I am the Lord and I change not.

God is not some sort of chameleon that adjusts to the environment that He's in. And we need to understand that. And so in Revelation chapter 4, we have John being invited in to the house of God. And let me just read here in verse 1, after these things I looked and behold a door standing open in heaven.

Let me just sort of candid as we look at this. God's got a door, if you like, and the door opens and from inside the house the voice of God speaks and John is invited up. In verse 2, immediately, I was in the spirit and behold a throne standing in heaven and one sitting on the throne.

Let me back up to the last part of verse 1. Come up here and I will show you what must take place after these things. So the door opens, there's a voice that says John come on in. John comes in to the house of God.

He comes in to the abode, the dwelling place, the habitation of God Himself. And as soon as he steps in to the house of God, the dwelling place of God, he sees one thing. One thing dominates the house of God.

One thing dominates the mind of John. As soon as the door opens and he comes in the spirit realm into the dwelling place of God, it says in verse 2, immediately I was in the spirit and behold a throne was standing in heaven and one sitting on the throne.

Now we need to understand something about what John saw. You see, if God is going to dwell in your life and my life and He longs to do that, that's the desire of God. That's an unchanging desire of God to be with His family.

He created us, again, for His pleasure. He created us for Himself. And He wants to come. He wants to make Himself manifest in our midst. But if He comes, He demands the throne. If He's going to come and be who He is, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, He demands the throne.

You see, He again would say to us as He said to Moses, David, Susan, John, Mary, whatever your name is, if I'm going to come and reside in your life, if I'm going to bring heaven down to earth, there is one place that I always sit.

You see, the word habitation is the usual place that someone or something is found. And the place that God is not usually found, the place that God is always found. Old and New Testament, He is always on the throne.

And if He is going to reside in your life and my life, He demands the throne. Now the throne speaks of His government. The throne speaks of His kingdom. The throne speaks of His authority. It speaks of His power.

It speaks of His will being done. It speaks of His laws and so on. And we need to realize that we will never ever make any spiritual progress in our Christian life until there is a surrender of the throne.

You see, prior to Jesus Christ coming, you and I sit on the throne. It's my money, it's my time, it's my car, it's my possessions, it's my this, it's my that, and so on. And we have a little kingdom, if you like.

There was a song years ago that the verse went something like, Jesus be the Lord of all, the kingdoms of my heart. We have kingdoms, don't we? And we reign over those things. Again, they are my possessions.

It's my motorcycle, it's my boat, it's my yacht, it's my fishing rod, it's my camera. Those are my clothes. That's, again, my room and so on and so forth. It's me and mine and we have our kingdom. And God says, listen, if I come, it becomes my kingdom.

You see, when you pray, Jesus said, pray this way, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Here is as it is in heaven. He sits on the throne. And we need to understand that. We will never ever, let me say that very clearly, let me underscore that, we will never make any spiritual progress until Jesus Christ really is Lord of your life.

Until you have abandoned the throne and asked Him to come and reign and rule over every facet of your life. And that's easier said than done. You see, God says, I will not dwell anywhere. See to it, Moses, that you make it according to the pattern.

And so, the first thing, if we are going to cultivate, again, a habitation, if we are going to prepare an atmosphere, an environment conducive for the presence of God, He has to, first of all, have the throne of God.

And if you've never done that tonight, you can do that. I possibly will share one of these nights on the cross and a little bit of my own testament. But one of the greatest battles that I faced, and one of the reasons that I put off accepting Christ year after year after year as a teenager had nothing to do with sin in the sense of all the horrendous things that I did.

I hadn't done a lot of horrendous things. I was a good self-righteous sinner. But there was one thing that I was not prepared to give God. I was not prepared to give Him the throne. And it dealt with a particular area of my life, a particular goal that I had in life, a particular ambition that I wanted to fulfill, a destiny that I had dreamed of doing all of my younger days, and I thought when I graduate from school I will do this, that, and the other thing, and so on.

And I did not want God interfering with my plans. And there was a battle that raged in my life for four or five years, a very real battle. And it wasn't the fact that I didn't want to get rid of my sin.

I longed to be right with God. I longed to have peace with God. But it was over this issue of the throne. I wanted to maintain control of the throne. Again, it was my time, my money, what I wanted to do with my life.

And so we've got to come to this place where God takes over the throne of our life. The second thing that John becomes aware of, as he comes in again into the house of God, in verse 8 it says, the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within, and day and night they do not cease but to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was, who is, and who is to come.