On Eagles' Wings Pt 69 — Don Courville

Well, we welcome you again to On Eagle's Wings. Trust that God has been a great blessing to you this week, that you've learned a little bit more about the crucified life, living by faith, learning to fly on eagle's wings is learning to let God do in your life what he wants to do, where he brings you to the point where you are crucified, dead to the world, dead to sin, you reckon yourself dead.

Day by day, it's dying daily, the Apostle Paul said, where you don't get angry. I'm not saying that the temptation is not there. Where you don't lust, where you get victory over besetting sins, where you don't get bitter, where God is free to do with you whatever he wants to do.

Entering God's Rest Through Victory Over the Flesh

That place is called rest in the book of Hebrews. He that has entered into his rest has ceased from his own works. You see, the thing that's manifested most of the time is the flesh and the fruits of the flesh.

All of the idolatry, adultery, lasciviousness, the covetousness, and the lust, the hatred, the greed, the bitterness, anger, all of those things are from the flesh, and unless we're filled with the Spirit, those will be the natural byproducts of the flesh.

Revival, Awakening, and Readiness for Christ's Return

The thing that I have a burden for is revival. Revival in your church, revival in the land, and actually an awakening across the land. Revival happens on the local scene, in the local church, among a body of believers.

An awakening happens in a large area, and what we're praying is for an awakening for our land, for North America, for God to work in this country to bring us to the point where we come back to him. And of course, you know, we're in the days of war now, and I haven't shared a lot about the war.

I know there's a lot of talk about prophecy, and I've been tempted to jump in on the prophetic band myself. I've done a lot of teaching on it, but I have a deeper burden for revival than prophecy at the moment.

And I'm excited at what I'm seeing. We are ready for Jesus to come. We say he could come today, but most of the time we're not planning and really living like it. But he could come today. I do believe he's going to come soon, sometime soon.

I don't know when. But all of the prophetic calendar is lined up and ready for the coming of Christ to come back, and then the world will go into a seven-year tribulation period, and those will be days that will not be fun.

Repentance, Faith, and Receiving Christ

My suggestion to you is that you consider carefully whether or not you're saved, whether or not you're ready for Christ to come back. The Bible says that we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

My prayer is that you receive Christ as your own personal Savior. Now, you can be religious. You can say, well, I go to church. I'm a member of a church. I do good things. I'm not that bad of a person.

Well, my friend, those are all good. But that's not the issue. The issue is, have you come to the point where you recognize that you are personally a sinner? And do you recognize that Christ died for you and paid the price for your sin and my sin on the cross, and that you have to personally receive him as your Savior?

But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become the sons of God. I was talking with a young man the other day who didn't believe that he needed to receive Jesus. Well, it's not my idea.

It's God's. And it's God's idea also that you repent of your sins. What we have today is a lot of conversions without repentance. I call them spiritual stillbirth conversions. And we have a gospel that's being preached without power and without the preaching of the cross, where all you have to do is believe and you'll be saved.

But there's a little bit more to that. That word believe is a word for commit also, where you commit your life to him. He is all you need. And at the cross, God wants us to see that he's all you need.

And the question is, is he all you want? Well, I trust that God administered to you today. I'm praying for you. I'm praying that God will reach into your life, into your church, into your area and do a work like we've seen him do in the area that we're in now.

Revival in a Wicked City and Burdens for Pastors

We've seen God do some mighty things. And the city that I've moved in now to help and back up this pastor, well, to put it like this, Paul Harvey wrote about it as one of the wickedest cities in the nation.

High in drug capital, full of a lot of transient people. It's a railroad town. All kinds of stuff goes on here. And this is the place where God has chosen to do a work in revival. It's been almost a year ago, but it's continued.

Almost a year ago, last April, it started, but it's continued up until now. And God continues to do things in the area of revival. I trust that you're not asleep, that you don't get caught asleep. But anyway, that passage of scripture in Jeremiah has intrigued me where it says that Moab had been at ease from his youth and he had settled on his lease and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity.

Therefore, his taste remained in him and his scent is not changed. Now, like I said, I don't know much about wine, but I do believe from what I can see from this passage that unless the dregs are removed, the lees, the little bitty pieces of seed or whatever that are in the wine, it will affect the taste of the wine.

And he says Moab had been at ease from his youth, he had settled on his lease. In other words, the trash and dregs of life had settled into his soul, into his life. And he had not been emptied from vessel to vessel.

They would take and pour it out from one vessel and over to another and try to get out the dregs each time. Neither hath he gone into captivity. He had had a life of ease. Therefore his taste remained in him and his scent is not changed.

Now, what I'm saying to you is that the church has settled on its lees. The taste of the world is there. The church has not gone through a sifting, a refining, a chastening, a cleansing, a purifying period and thus the taste of the world is in the church and there's no power.

We have what Timothy says is a form of godliness, but no power thereof. Someone said, must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease while others fought to win the prize and sell through bloody seas?

You see, we have some over in a land shedding their blood right now in a war, paying the price while others are at ease in this land doing nothing, maybe even protesting their death when in actuality they are dying for freedom.

No matter how corrupt the arrangements of wars are, and I believe a lot of the wars, at least in the last generations, have been man-controlled, finagled, rigged wars for monetary gain, for power, structure, and organization, and for all practical purposes.

Actually what we're seeing in these latter days, these wars are lining us up to receive the Antichrist. You see, I'm really not so much interested in babbling and what's going on over there. What I am really watching is how things are lining up to make the world want peace bad enough to accept the Antichrist.

We know it's going to get bad, and it's going to get worse. It's going to get to the point where the world will be desperate to have one man rule them, and that's when Satan steps in. But in the meantime, God wants to bring a revival.

He wants to bring an awakening. He wants to do a mighty work in this world, and my personal belief is that Christ is going to come, this is at least my hope and desire and prayer, is that he's going to come in the midst of a glorious awakening, and he's going to lift his church out in the midst of that, and then the world is going to go on into the tribulation period, but it's going to be jolted, and we're going to see a great turning to God through that.

Now right now, if Christ was to come, in actuality he would rapture our harlot church. This is why my burden is for revival, for God to work in this land, and I've traveled around this land, dozens and dozens and dozens of places, sharing my burden, and I have a real burden for pastors.

I get into as many conferences as I can. I like to be with the pastors, and the pastor that I'm working with has a burden for pastors too. We're committed to reach the pastors. Ourselves, having been there, we know what it's like.

The hardships, the struggles, the bitterness, the temptations, the trials, the faithlessness, the low pay, the ungratefulness that you have to go through, the long hours, the hardship on your family, the separation from family.

We know what it's like. We've been there, and we are there. We travel. We don't like to be gone, but when God says go, we go. He gives us a plane ticket and says, I want you to go over to a certain place, and I want you to minister over there, and then we go.

We are yielded to him, vessels in the hand of the Lord. You know, the church is to be a mighty church, a dynamic church, a church that loves the Lord, a church that is powerful in its testimony. And I've been going through this little booklet by Stuart on the dynamic church and going through different things that are there, and it's powerful.

One of the things that he said was that our buildings, our large membership roles, our high-salaried pastors and popular evangelists are no proof of dynamic Christianity. The early church had none of these elements of success.

God must deliver us from the awful discrepancy into which we have drifted. The godly remnant in the book of Lamentations, after surveying the awful condition of Zion, cried out in agony, wherefore dost thou forget us forever and forsake us so long a time?

Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old. That's from Lamentations 5, 20 and 22, through 22. I like that part where it says, turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned.

I don't know what it's going to take for God to turn us back to him, but as for right now, we have turned our back on God. And our nation, our nation is a reflection of the state of the church. We are not humble, we are proud, and we've got nothing to be proud about.

We say our denomination is the best, and it's a lie. I don't know where the best denomination is. I personally am convinced that it's not God's idea for denominations, it's something that we've just had to tolerate and live with.

And I might share with you a little bit more here about doctrine, maybe a little bit where I stand on this. But God is sick of all of our pride. Oh God, forgive us. Oh God, bring us back to the place of simplicity and power.

Revival's Practical Return to the Cross

This would be revival. Do you want it? This would be a restoration, this would be recovery, this would be renewal, whatever you want to call it. The church has allowed herself to become the custodian of dead creeds, rather than the trumpeteers of living faith.

We are playing with the grave-digger shovel when God wants to give us a resurrection trumpet, from James Stewart. Now what I want to do is take a little time and share with you about some practical aspects of the cross, practical results of revival.

The thing that revival will do is it will bring you back to the cross, it will bring you back to the crucified life. And the church is in such a need today for this. I was sharing with you about Moses, Moses, his life, the man, great man of God.

Moses and Israel's Exodus Into Freedom

Last week I just got into it a little bit with you. You know what the definition of exodus is in the book of Exodus, if you want to turn there? But it means the way out. You know it seemed really foolish for Israel to go into the desert to escape from Pharaoh.

And they were laughing all the while. At any moment they thought they were had by Pharaoh as they escaped. But after they got on the other side of the Red Sea, they realized they were free. They had gone through the death, burial, and resurrection experience of the Dead Sea, and then they came out and they were free.

And then the next thing that happened, Satan began to tempt them to not be content in their freedom in Christ. He started lying to them, you're going to die of thirst, you're going to die of hunger. And the fact of the matter is, it was a lie.

God always takes care of his children. But if you accept the lies of Satan, you will actually be destroyed. And so it seemed foolish to go into a desert. And it might seem foolish for you to go through the things that you're going through.

But if you come to the point to where you can praise God and give him thanks for everything, as the scripture says, and everything give thanks, you'll enter into the resurrection life and you'll learn to fly on eagle's wings.

Moses's Background and the Call to Deliver Israel

Now, let me give you a little bit of background quickly. Joseph was taken down into Egypt as a slave, and later on his family joined him down there and 70 entered into the land. But by the time Moses came along, there was around 2 to 3 million.

They had multiplied. They took literally the scripture where God said, be fruitful and multiply. They wasn't aborting their children and killing them. This is the plan of Satan to abort children. Anyone that gets in on that program is into the plan of Satan, who is a murderer.

And if you've aborted one of your children, then you are a murderer. But let me tell you, the blood of Christ covers murderers. He said, Father, forgive them. The very ones that were killing him, he forgave.

The fact is that if you've committed some kind of crime and you've done some kind of sin, God is willing to forgive you. But if you refuse to accept his forgiveness, then you'll have to go on and pay for it yourself.

But the choice is yours. Do you want his forgiveness? Well, anyway, they ended up down there in the land as slaves, because through circumstances and them growing, the Egyptians decided they were getting to be too many for them, and they were afraid they might turn on them, and so they made slaves out of them.

And so they were in the state of bondage. Then God raised up a man, a man named Moses. And Moses in actuality was a type of Christ in many ways. And we can really identify with Moses, though, because he was like us, too, with like passions.

And he got into trouble like we did, too. If you want a pure type of Christ, there's Joseph, where there's no record of any flaw in his life, a beautiful type of Christ. But Moses was a type of Christ also.

Now, Moses was misunderstood. The Scripture says in Exodus 2, 13,. You see, Moses grew up and he knew he was a Hebrew, and he knew that God was raising him up to use him to deliver Israel. That was all right.

But he was not understood. They didn't understand what God was doing. And actually, Moses didn't understand the way God was going to do it. In Acts chapter 7 and verse 25, it says,. Have you ever been misunderstood?

I think that's one of the greatest burdens in life, is to be misunderstood. To not understand what God is doing in your life. To not understand the struggles that you're going through. To not understand the pressure that you're under.

To not understand the heartache. And I'm not God. And I'll just confess to you that I can't understand everything you're going through. But I do understand this, that God understands you. And I do know this, that you and I need to learn to go to God.

We need to get to the point where we've graduated and we've received our wings and we can fly, no matter what kind of opposition, no matter even if we're understood. Well, this thing really got to Moses.

Not only did his own people not understand that he was trying to help them, but he got himself in a jam now, because they weren't going to stand behind him, it looked like. And so, he had to take off, because Pharaoh was after him.

And so, you know the story. He ended up out in the desert. And what he thought was his greatest mistake, actually, he makes another mistake later on, I think that's his greatest mistake. It was a big mistake to act in the flesh.

God takes those things, though, and he turns them out for good. He's a great problem solver. You may have problems in your life that you think nobody can solve. But let me tell you, you haven't tried God yet.

You're limited. You're just looking at yourself. You're just looking around at your neighbor, your boss, your husband, your wife, your relatives, your friends. And you're saying, nobody can help me, but God can help you.

Moses Learns to Wait on God in the Desert

And Moses may have thought it was all over, it was finished. His career was over. Forty years, he was raised up in the palaces of Egypt. And he thought that God was going to use him to deliver Israel, and that was right thinking.

He just had a little problem with waiting on God. And so, God, in essence, says, OK, I'm going to give you a little time to wait this thing out. I'm going to teach you some things in the process. So he had 40 more years to his education to go into.

But you know, Moses was a type of Christ in this area also, in that he gave up the treasures and the pleasures of Egypt. Hebrews chapter 11, if I can get back over there, in verse 25, has a good verse that says, that Moses chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

Let me tell you something about the man Moses. He had a heart for God. He stepped out by faith. He had a heart for God's people. And he was willing to give up the throne of Pharaoh, and all the treasures and the pleasures of Egypt.

But this is where he's like Christ. Because, you see, Christ was misunderstood also like Moses. And Christ gave up his throne also for a time. Matter of fact, just before he was going back, he said, And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own glory, with thine own self, and with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

You see, he gave that up to come down and live among people, with the sweat and the smell and the cursing and the poverty and the dirt and the dust and the grime and the bugs and the spiders and the snakes.

He came down and lived among us and was one of us, that he might take us up to another level of life in heaven where there's no tears and there's no hatred and there's no murder. He left the treasures and the pleasures of heaven to come down and die for you and to take you there.

But you have to go his way. Your way won't get you there. He says, I'm the way. You say, how do I get to heaven? Jesus is the way. The Bible says, he that has the Son, he that has Jesus, has life. And he that has not the Son does not have life.

If you don't have Jesus, you don't have life. And if you don't have life, you've missed it all. And that's eternal life. It's in Jesus. Without Jesus, you don't make it. You have to go to hell. That may sound hard and cruel, but hell is still a fact and it's still a reality.

And Jesus is the one that told us about hell. It's not a man-made invention. And not only was Moses a type of Christ in that he was misunderstood and he gave up the treasures and the pleasures, but also he was a deliverer.

Hebrews chapter 2, 14 and 15 says,. For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, Christ also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.

You see, through the death of his cross, he destroyed the power of Satan. He has no power over you unless you let him have that power. And we all know that the rise of Satanism is increasing tremendously.

But it's doing it through those that want to do it. And if you give him an opportunity in your life, he will take it. The scripture goes on to say,. And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Are you free? Do you have fear of death? You know, I used to lie in bed and wonder what would happen if I was to die. I was afraid. And I was afraid because I didn't have life. I didn't have Jesus. I'd gone to church.

I was very religious. I was there. I can make as much trouble at church as any other kids. But I didn't have Jesus. And when I had Jesus, it changed everything. He's the difference. He's the deliverer.

Moses as Mediator and the Three Stages of His Life

And not only was he a type of Christ in that he was misunderstood, and he gave up the treasures and pleasures, and he was a deliverer, but also he was a mediator. The scripture says in Deuteronomy 5 .5 that Moses stood between the Lord and Israel.

That was his greatest moment of victory. When he laid his all down on the line for his people. And as we go through the desert survival series on the life of Moses, we'll see that. So his life basically is divided into three parts.

His 40 years in Pharaoh's palace. His 40 years in the desert of Midian. And then his 40 years in the wilderness leading the children of Israel to the promised land. And during that time, he received his doctorate of desertology, I like to say.

He had his doctor's degree in Pharaoh's palace where he had all the degrees of science and learning and economics. But when he went into the desert of Midian, after his seemingly disastrous fatal mistake, God gave him another degree, which I call his doctorate of desertology.

And he was out there through that hard time of being alone with God that he learned to know God. To the point where God said, OK, it's time. And he brought him up to the burning bush and he commissioned him to go.

And we'll look at his commissioning exercise and his excuses. And we'll look at the cross and the aspect of a practical point of view. But his training in the world did not teach him victory over self.

Desert Training, Crucifixion of Self, and Power for Ministry

God taught him that out in the desert. And his training in the world in Egypt did not equip him to deliver Israel. He thought that he had it all, but he didn't. When he went out into the desert, he learned Galatians 2, 20 and 21.

He learned that he was crucified. He was dead. And when he became a dead man, then God was able to use him. And when you and I come to the point where we reckon ourselves dead, consider that we're dead and that Christ lives in us, then the resurrected power of Christ moves out.

But as long as self is there, then Christ is crucified. But if self is crucified, then Christ is resurrected. And so his training in the desert did these things. His training in the desert taught him how to have victory.

And his training in the desert equipped him to deliver others. But you have to have that training before you can help others. His training in the desert did the things that his training in the world could not do.

And your desert experience is designed to kill you, the self-life. But not to harm you, but it's designed to kill the self-life. And as you allow God to take you through your deserts, you'll learn to fly on eagles' wings.

He bore them on eagles' wings. And you're going through something now. Many of you are going through deep trials. A loss of a loved one. Loss of a job. A family trial. Rejection or whatever. But if you'll meet God in your desert and learn to endure, then you'll learn to survive.

Endurance, Death to Self, and the Life of Christ

You know, endurance is vital. It's vital that you learn to endure. Because if you don't, you'll give up, you'll cave in. The Bible says, if I can get over to James chapter 1 and verse 12, listen to this.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation. For when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord had promised to them that love him. Are you enduring? James 5 .11, listen to this. Behold, we count them happy which endure.

Are you happy? Are you sticking it out? You see, we often try to run or get rid of that very thing that God has designed for us. And until we come to the point of learning the cross, and the cross is exemplified and taught in many ways in the scripture.

John 12 .24 is one of them. Unless the corn of wheat die, it bides long. But if it'll die, it's going to bring forth much fruit. God wants you to die to self and let Jesus just be your life. You know, the scripture says in the book of Acts, the disciples said, in him we live and move and have our being.

He was their life. He was everything. And John even understood the cross when he said, he must increase, but I must decrease. Moses, the shepherd. He led the flock to the backside of the desert and he came to the mountain of God.

And there he met God. Are you meeting God out in the desert? If you'll follow Jesus, you have to turn your back to the crowd. Turn your back to the criticism. Turn your back to self-pity, to despondency, to the rejection and all of that stuff and just turn to God.

He's all you need. Is he all you want? Well, our time's gone. Until next time, may God richly bless you, my friend.