On Eagles' Wings Pt 70 — Don Courville

Well, it's good to be back with you again today on Eagle's Wings. God is still on the throne. He's still the Lord. No matter what kind of circumstances you're going through, you can have war, you can have peace.

Christ’s Unchanging Nature and the Knowledge of Eternal Life

It doesn't change the fact that there is a God. What does change is life, circumstances, but Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It's good to be back with you again. I trust that God has been teaching you more about the cross and the crucified life.

And I'm also praying that if you don't know Jesus as your Savior, that you'd get to know Him. He's worthy to be praised. He's worth knowing. If you miss knowing Him, you miss knowing life. And this is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God in Jesus.

Knowing Jesus is knowing life, knowing God. He that has a son has life. He that has not the son does not have life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you might know that you have life.

Spiritual Warfare and the Church’s Hidden Enemy

Well, I've been sharing with you in the last few weeks some things on the cross, some things in relation to the church. You know, in relation to war, there's different types of wars, and at certain times the church has had to go to guerrilla warfare, hand-to-hand combat.

That's the toughest there is. Out in the jungles of Vietnam, our troops were out facing an enemy they could not see, and that's tough. I was just watching the news a few days ago about the fellows on the ship, and they said it was hard fighting an enemy you couldn't see.

He was just a blip on the radar. And actually, when they started coming in and more of them started trying to attack, they said it was a lot easier because there was something to see. The blips were there more often on their radar.

Well, there was a time when, because of the martial and uncompromising spirit, the church found itself living in the catacombs. If you've ever been over there in Rome, as I was several years ago, and you go down underground and there's just miles and miles and miles of these tombs where they laid the saints, they carried on a kind of a guerrilla warfare.

That was, of course, back in the days when faith acted in scorn of consequences. The church of the catacombs was more consistent and more majestic than the church on the stage with popular footlights, Stuart said.

And he said, to a large extent, the church has become a band of suave sovereign tears when the Lord wants it to be an army of stern soldiers. When the church settles down to the comforts of a religious club and forgets its holy crusade, it abides alone.

Revival, Awakening, and Broken Vessels

Well, my friend, we're in need of a revival. We're in need of an awakening. We live in a land that's turned its back on the God of its fathers. We've changed our laws. We're changing our constitution.

We're changing our lives. And the change is not for the better but for the worse. Someone said, pictures for the lamps of God, hark, the cry goes forth abroad. Not the beauty of the make, but ah, the readiness to break.

Marks the vessels of the Lord, ready to bear the lighted word. God is looking for vessels that are willing to be broken out and crushed for Christ. He's looking for an army that's ready to go and fight, an army that's willing to go to its knees and wrestle before God in spiritual matters.

You won't see revival in your life personally or in your church or in the land until you first are seen on your knees. Someone said, in interpreting the causes of declension and departure, we must mention three glaring sins, the reasons for the loss of purity, power, passion, and purpose.

The First Sin: Fighting Over Secondary Doctrines

First of all is the tragedy of fundamentalism is that we are fighting over the wrong things, different doctrines. And the devil's just laughing while souls are perishing. And the heart of Christ is broken.

The spirit is grieved, the church is powerless. Someone has said, Pentecost is always associated with power. If you're in tune with God, then you're in tune with power. The greatest marvel of the Spirit's outpouring was the transformation of the disciples themselves.

Pentecostal Power and the Transformation of the Disciples

If you've ever been around revival, those that were truly changed in revival, that truly met God, their lives were changed. And that's what God did. He took some commonplace fishermen, tax gatherers, and he turned them into prophets and teachers and flaming heralds.

Their fearfulness and their timidity were burnt up in a blaze of Pentecostal baptism. In vain we would have looked for the Peter of the Judgment Hall on that day. He's become a new man. The Peter at the fire and the Peter baptized with the fire had nothing in common.

The Pentecostal robe was a mantle of power. They were robed with power from on high. The church is powerless until it meets God in revival, repents of its sin, of its carelessness, its coldness, its callousness, its apathy, its apostasy.

It will be powerless. And my friend, my prayer for you and for your church is revival. We don't need more teaching. We don't need more preaching. We need more praying and we need more power to turn back to the old Pentecostal power.

Peter was a new man. The Peter at the fire and the Peter baptized with the fire were not the same. I've said it once, I've said it twice, and I'll say it again. Those were two different men and it was the Holy Spirit that made the difference.

The Power of Prayer and the Book of Acts

What we've had in our country is a lot of educated, powerless preachers poured out upon the country. They've received great Bible knowledge, but until they've been taught at the foot of the cross by the Spirit of God, there's no power.

I read a story about one of the great teachers in one of the Bible schools many years ago. When he gave his class, he dismissed it and then he said, now, gentlemen, any of you that would like to follow me to my room can get an extra course.

And they went in there and they'd spend three or four hours in prayer. That's where it was. And those young men went forth to turn the world upside down. The Acts of the Apostles is the subsequent history of Pentecost.

In this book, the Book of Acts, and let me encourage you to read it, you'll find a testimony of power. You can write this word power over every chapter, every verse, every instant. The apostles now had power to come out from behind closed doors.

They had power to testify, power to suffer, and power to die, James Stewart said. And while in the home of the Reverend Sidney Evans, who was a brother-in-law and the co-worker of the late Evan Roberts of Revival Memory, those of you that know Revival history will know these names, they listened in awe to the firsthand account of the mighty movement of the Spirit in 1904.

And in this work of grace by the Spirit of God, it was called Something Wonderful Happened. Yes, what it was is the Holy Spirit was given His rightful place in the church, and that's what happens in revival.

Repentance and Obedience to the Holy Spirit

The men that are running the church, the pastors that are running the church, acknowledge and repent before God that they've been doing it. They planned their programs, they planned their revival meetings, they planned everything without checking with God to see what He wanted to do.

And if God was to move in and wanted to change something and they didn't like it, then it was too bad for God. But I've got a word for you, my friend. God will not be mocked whatsoever a man reaps that he will sow.

He will not be mocked. Ichabod will be written across the life, will be written across the church if the Holy Spirit is driven from it. I have seen that happen over and over again. I've been in a town, I've been in a town where there was a revival meeting and the Spirit of God says, no more, this is it, I'm leaving, and He left the meeting.

And praise the Lord that the evangelists and the pastors that were involved and that were in tune with the Spirit of God, they all agreed together that God had left. His blessing was not on the meeting and they packed up their stuff and they all left and I left too because I was there.

It was a fearful thing. It shook the town, it shook the people for miles around. The fact of the matter is that the people were playing games and were not obeying the Spirit of God, a powerful thing. We do not have a book of the resolutions of the apostles, but we have a book of the acts of the apostles.

The people that do not know their God shall be, that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. The book of acts is a book of action. There was great power, great grace, great fear, great wonders, great miracles, great persecution, great joy, and great suffering.

And if you're not willing to suffer, then you're not willing to walk with Jesus and you won't soar on eagle's wings because there's never been a saint of God that soared on eagle wings that did not first know the suffering of the cross.

Paul’s Thorn and Strength Made Perfect in Weakness

Paul tried to get away from it. He asked the Lord three times to take something away from him, and the Lord says, no, my grace is sufficient for you. Maybe we ought to turn back to that passage. I hadn't thought about sharing it with you.

But it's in 2 Corinthians 12, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, if I can get there, it's a tremendous passage on the cross where Paul said in verse 8, for this thing I besought the Lord three times that it might depart from me, and the Lord said, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

And Paul said most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, my weaknesses, my inadequacies, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. You haven't been trying to get away from that thing, have you, that's caused you heartache and struggle?

Therefore I take pleasure, Paul said, in infirmities and reproaches, in necessities and persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong. When I am weak, then I am strong.

The Second Sin: Denying the Personhood of the Holy Spirit

The sin of fighting about the wrong things, writing articles about other Christians that don't have the same view as we have, getting up in the pulpit and pounding on things that are not issues, is a tragedy among the fundamental believers in America.

There's no power in that kind of stuff, and there's no joy. The second sin is the denial of the personality of the Holy Spirit in the fundamental churches. We have elevated the God of education and replaced the Holy Spirit with that.

He is a person, He's offended, He feels, He loves, He joys, He's grieved, He's quenched, He feels, He's God, He loves you, He's hurt when you sin against Him. How do you like it when you're rejected or neglected?

He feels the same that you feel. When you're slandered, if someone curses you, He feels all those things. We've forgotten that God feels. He's tender, He hurts, He cries, He weeps, He wept over Jerusalem.

Learning, Education, and the Broken Vessel

We are not against culture and learning. I'm not against education. I've tried to get all I could. I needed all the help I could get. I praise the Lord for one of my teachers that used to stand me in the corner in speech class and make me give my speech.

I was the only one he did it to. In a corner because of my southern drawl coming out of the deep south, I slurred my words. And those of you that are speech specialists, you would say, well, that old boy, he doesn't have very good speech.

Well, I'll just agree with you, I may not. But I'm using all I've got for God. And it may not be a lot of great talent and ability and maybe not a lot of great intellect, but I'm trying to use all I've got, 100 of me, for God, weak as I am.

It's not me that matters. It's just the fact that if the broken vessel is laid into the hands of God, He will take that vessel and make something out of it. If you've got a doctor's degree, God bless you, I've always wanted one.

But God has showed me I didn't need one. I needed the power of His Spirit. And no matter how close you get to attaining all that you've wanted in life, if you miss out on the power of the Spirit of God, you've missed out on it all.

The Third Sin: Compromise with the World

Someone said, those who lean on degrees will die by degrees. The third great sin is compromise with the world. And I've mentioned that to you in the past. We are filling up our churches with the world's pleasure.

We have a Hollywood style of religion. And it's no wonder we've soaked it in for so many years that we've begun to act, think, look, smell, and dress like Hollywood. And our music is a reflection on it.

And by the way, I'm still offering that booklet on rock music, Christian rock, so-called Christian rock, to the preachers that will write to me this month, during February, for the free booklet. For the rest of you, I've been asking for a donation of $5, a powerful little booklet, on the rock scene, the Christian rock.

It's destroying our youth, and we're letting them do it. The third great sin is compromise with the world, this thing of the music. Someone said it's a sheer cant for a pastor to cry out for revival and yet to compromise with the enemies of the cross.

It is mere hypocrisy to plead for evangelism while compromising with those who deny the evangel. A revival which is not based solely on the fundamentals of the faith is like a blaze of pine shavings which ends in smoke.

Fundamental Doctrines and the Gospel

The apostate system of the Protestant church will in a coming day pave the way for the Antichrist. And you and my friend, you and I know it, my friend, that this is what's happening today. I don't fellowship, and I can't have fellowship in the gospel with any man who denies any of the fundamentals of the faith.

I'll try to help you get saved or minister to you, but we won't have fellowship if you have a view that's different than that, that the scripture is verbally inspired, that man is guilty before God, that he needs to be born again by the blood of Christ, that the virgin birth of Christ was a miracle, that his sinless life was lived there as an example for us, and his vicarious atonement sacrifice was made for us, his physical resurrection was literal, and his glorious ascension and coming again is literal and true and will happen, and that those that don't trust Christ will die and go to a literal hell.

Those are the basic fundamentals of the faith, and if you believe that, you're a fundamentalist. If you don't, then you're off in another category. Those are the basic elements of the faith. You take those away and you've cut out the heart of the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

The Church’s Loss of Witness and the Old Paths

But yet we have those that are fellowshipping and having supposedly spiritual fellowship that should not be. Someone wrote a poem that goes like this. The church and the world walked far apart on the changing shore of time.

The world was singing a giddy song, and the church of him sublime, half shyly the church approached the world and gave him her hand of snow, and the false world grasped it and walked alone, assuring an ascent low.

And they of the church and they of the world walked closely in hand and heart, and none but the Master, who knoweth all, could tell the two apart. All their witnessing power at last was lost, and the perilous times came in, the times of the end so often foretold of form and pleasure and sin.

And thou art poor and naked and blind, with pride and ruined and thawed, the expected bride of a heavenly groom, now the harlot of the world. Where's your church, my friend? Is it in harlotry, idolatry, gross sin, a form of religion but no power, people don't get saved in your church?

There's a lot of commotion and a lot of motion, but there's no moving of the Spirit of God, lots of flesh. Where are you at? As Jeremiah said, talking about the prophets, they have healed also the hurt of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.

Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush. Therefore they shall fall among them that fall at the time that I visit them. They shall be cast down, said the Lord.

Thus said the Lord, stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way? And walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls. You come back to Calvary. We need to come back to an utter abandonment to the Holy Spirit, to abandon ourselves to Him, give up our devices of carnality, our gimmicks to get people in, our games that we play in our churches.

We need to come back to the God of revival. We're fully persuaded that if pastors, the elders, evangelists, Bible teachers, missionaries, if we would all go on our knees before God and open up our book and pray and get back to God, that we would see a mighty awakening in our land.

And many are doing this today. Whenever in any period of the Church's history a little company has sprung up that's been plastic and pliable in the hands of the Divine Spirit, then a new Pentecost has always dawned.

Moses, the Cross, and the Birth of a Deliverer

Are you willing to do that? Well, in the last few minutes, I'd like to just share a little bit with you on Moses again to give you some practical application to the cross and the crucified life. And it might be good just to take a little look at the birth of Moses, the training of Moses.

And let me encourage you to learn a principle from every message, every passage of Scripture. Get you a principle out of it. Learn it. Apply it to your life. Use it. Now, in a little bit of back into Exodus chapter one, a little bit of background just to jump into this as time allows it.

In chapter one, verses one through seven, there is the naming of the twelve tribes and they were fruitful. Eight through fourteen, a new king arose and he was afraid of Israel. And so he planned to destroy Israel.

And you know the story. First of all, he tried it by hard work and that didn't do it. And then he tried by getting the midwives to kill the children and that didn't do it. And then he commanded them to throw their babies in the water, drown them.

And that didn't do it. And that brings us on to the scene of the birth of Moses because his mother and father noticed that he was a goodly child, a special child, and they didn't do it. And Moses had a strong spiritual heritage.

And Hebrews 11, 23 tells us how they felt about him. They saw that he was a proper child and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. And so by faith he was hid. Why? Because they saw God and they were not afraid.

Conviction, Faith, and Commitment in Moses’ Parents

But you see, they were living the cross. God exposed them to the cross. And I believe that his parents may have been guided by these three principles. One was parental instinct, survival, do the best, give the best.

And the second was divine meditation. They had meditated on the scripture and they knew from Genesis 15, 13 that a deliverer was coming. And they thought that Moses was probably him. And the third principle was hope in God's deliverance.

They were looking for a deliverer. So what they had basically was they had conviction. And I know they had conviction because conviction will destroy fear. And then they had confidence. Confidence always develops faith.

They hid him three months. And then they were committed. Commitment always dares to follow God. And because they were committed to God and doing what he wanted, they were able to commit Moses into the hands of God.

And James Elliott said, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. What do you have that you're trying to hang on to that God is wanting you to give up? Are you struggling about it?

Surrendering What We Cannot Keep to Gain What We Cannot Lose

You see, they had Moses and they knew that they had to give him up. And by giving him up, they demonstrated to God that they were trusting him. And there were some principles that we need to learn from this.

And by the way, one of the principles is whatever is given to God is never lost. But whatever we try to keep, we lose. And that was what James Elliott was saying. It's just like a corn and wheat. You don't lose it when you put it into the ground, but it multiplies.

Whatever you give to God, he always multiplies it, just like the loaves and the fishes. And there were some victory principles here. Jochebed had to die to self. Her self-effort, she'd done all she could to keep her baby.

She had to die to self-struggle. And also she had to rest on God alone. And I want you to note that faith is not reckless abandonment. She just didn't take the baby out and throw him into the river in that ark.

No, faith is reasonable actions. She had the daughter take Moses down and then the daughter hid and watched. She did as much as she could to protect Moses. She put her problem in a basket and she put her basket in the river, in God's hands, committed to his will.

It's interesting that Pharaoh had commanded death by the river, but yet life came by the river also. Moses was drawn from the river. What was the result of that action? It was victory. Short-range, Moses was cast into the hands of God and rescued, of course, by Pharaoh's daughter.

God’s Long-Range Deliverance Through Present Trials

The short-range thing was Moses was saved. But the long-range, which is what God is after by taking us to the cross, is that Israel was freed. God has a long-range plan according to what he's bringing into your life with the short-range.

And you think, boy, short-range, it looks terrible. It looks like my world is crushing. Everything is going apart. There's nothing can come out of this. And Jacobette, if she would have looked at it humanly, she would have said, it's all over for Moses.

The chances of him being saved are slim to nothing. And of course, Pharaoh's daughter was no dummy. She knew that that was a Hebrew baby. But God knew how to touch little Moses and make him cry just at the right moment.

And it touched that woman's heart, the mother's heart of Pharaoh's daughter. You see, God can take your problem and just with the right twist, turn it all out into a miracle. But you've got to give it to him.

You've got to commit it to him. Jesus will lead you by the way of the cross. There's no other way that will lead you to safety, security, and peace, but by way of the cross. He will do it. He will take you there.

The Mountain and the Valley: Living Out the Crucified Life

Jesus leaded them up into a high mountain apart by themselves, the scripture says in Mark 9 .2. You know, Chambers says, we have all had times on the mount. When we've seen things from God's standpoint and have wanted to stay there.

But God will never allow us to stay there. The test of our spiritual life is the power to descend. If we have power to rise only, something is wrong. It's a great thing to be on the mount with God. But a man only gets there in order that afterwards he may get down among the devil possessed and lift them up.

God gave Jochebed the grace to descend, to die to self, to give it all to God. And by her dying to self and giving Moses completely to God, came a great deliverance for Israel. Give it to God. Why don't you just step back and let him show you what he can do.

Chambers said, we're not built for the mountains and the dawns and the aesthetic affinities. Those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in.

And that is where we have to prove our mettle. Spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels if only we could stay there on the mount.

The times of exaltation are exceptional. They have their meaning in our life with God. But we must beware lest our spiritual selfishness wants to make them the only time. You see, self wants to go back to the time when there was no persecution for our babies.

Jochebed would like to go back when she could just raise her baby and hold him and let him cry and laugh. But God is going to take you a different route. Sometimes, let him do it, let him have his way with thee.

While our time is gone, I trust that God is richly blessing you and will be free to do so in your life. Until next time, I trust that God will richly bless you, my friend, in Jesus' name. Amen.