Have The Same Ambition On Earth As You Will Have In Heaven — Zac Poonen

The New Covenant Must Become Daily Reality

I want to share with you from 2 Corinthians 5, as you know, I never preach anything new. I preach what I've always preached for nearly 40 years. Things that have changed my life, things that I've seen have changed the lives of others.

The same prescription always works. It's like sometimes you've had a sickness and you found one particular medicine worked every single time and you take it for years. Whenever you are sick with that sickness, you take that.

You know, that always works. I found it like that with the new covenant teaching. In every situation, the answer is here. The new covenant that Jesus established with his blood. Jesus spoke when he broke the bread, the last supper.

He said, this is the new covenant in my blood. And that's significant that he paid such a tremendous price. Blood means death. He poured out his life unto death to establish this new covenant. That's the only time he used that expression.

And he coupled it with blood. This is the new covenant in my blood when he passed the cup around. Signifying that death was a very important part of the new covenant, which signified by the blood of Christ, which he partake of in the Lord's table.

And it was not like that in the old covenant. In the old covenant, it was all ritual. Here we were getting into the reality of coming into the life of Christ. And he was showing us how we can come into that life.

And I say this, dear brothers and sisters, because I've seen that one of the great dangers, especially with folks who are intellectual and clever, like almost all of you are, anybody in the Silicon Valley area is a clever guy, is the danger is we can understand this in our mind.

And it may not become a reality in our daily life, in our home, in our office, when others have got road rage on the roads. There is where it's in the testing times of life when times are difficult. And if any of you are running short of finances, those are the times when we discover whether we really know the new covenant or not.

God allows such circumstances so that we don't fool ourselves. I'm deeply thankful that God has taken me through so many circumstances. I don't have to talk about it, for me to find out whether I'm fooling myself about having intellectually understood the new covenant or experienced it.

You've often heard me speak about the three parts of the tabernacle. The outer court symbolizing our body, the holy place, the first part of the tent, symbolizing our mind and emotions. And that's not the place where God dwells.

God does not dwell in the body or in the mind and emotions. He dwelt in the inner sanctuary, and the inner sanctuaries refers to our spirit. Man is body, soul, and spirit. And unless you get into that realm, you don't really enter into the new covenant.

And my great fear is that many in CFC who are clever have entered into the holy place, not the most holy place, and understood in their minds so well that they can explain all aspects of the new covenant to others.

I've met people like this. I remember one brother who said, preach such a fantastic message on the new covenant with all the points exactly like I would say, and he later on confessed it was all theory, but it was accurate.

It was in the realm of the mind. So I want to warn you, dear brothers, if it's not working in your daily life, in your relationship with your wife, with your husband, and with your unconverted relatives, and with people who are mean and cruel and evil to you, if it doesn't work in those situations, you have not understood it in your spirit.

It's only in your mind. So let's press on and get beyond the veil into the most holy place. And there God dwells there. And when we come there, it's revelation. Just like Peter, that dumb fisherman, uneducated fisherman.

The Lord told him, blessed are you because my father in heaven gave you revelation. That's when we are really blessed when God, Jesus can say to us, you're blessed. Because you didn't just understand it intellectually.

You got revelation from my father. So just bear that in mind as a general, overall thing that we must always bear in mind. Okay, 2 Corinthians 5, we read here. He's talking here about being at home in heaven or being here on earth in the first couple of verses.

He says our house is in heaven and dwelling, verse two, is in heaven. But now we are absent from the Lord, verse six, here on earth. So, verse nine, he says, whether we are at home in heaven one day, or absent from heaven right now on earth, our ambition remains the same.

Pleasing the Lord as Our Highest Ambition

It doesn't change, and that ambition is to be pleasing to the Lord. Not to impress people with our knowledge, or to be a great liar, or a great preacher, or any such thing. But to be pleasing to the Lord in every single aspect of our life.

You see, this is, you think of that in connection with the father from heaven, sending Jesus as a baby to the earth. And from the moment that Jesus understood, came to an age of understanding, whatever age that is with children.

From that moment onwards, right up to the age of 30, in every single situation, he sought to please the father. And that's why he got the certificate at the end of his life, not end of his life. When he went into the River Jordan to be baptized, the voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.

That is the greatest certificate you can get from God. If God can say that, I mean, I've longed for that all the time. Many times I pray to the Lord, Lord, can you say that about me? This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.

If you can't say that, I mean, all my life is worthless. All my ministry is worthless. I want you to say that. I don't care what men think about me, but I want you, Father, to say that. I pray that it'll be the passion of every one of your lives.

Say, Lord, at any cost, whatever price I have to pay, I want you to be able to say that about me every day of my life. I'm well pleased with you. I'm well pleased with the way you conducted yourself today.

I'm well pleased with the way you reacted in that difficult situation. I'm well pleased with the way you handled money in that situation, or the way you wrote that letter to somebody, or the way you spoke to that person on the phone.

I'm well pleased with you. I'm well pleased with you. It has to be our ambition. Ambition is a great word for young people. We always want our young people to have ambition, not drift along without any ambition.

And here we read that word ambition. It's good to have ambition if it's the right type of ambition. Paul said, I have an ambition. And even though he had a great passion to preach the gospel everywhere, that was not his ambition.

Some people, their great passion is to spread the gospel everywhere. Very good, but that's not the highest thing. If Jesus' greatest ambition was to preach about the father and to spread the good news everywhere, he would not have wasted 30 years in his home.

Peter left home when he was 12, when he knew the scriptures, and started out preaching so much that he knew. He didn't do that. There are a lot of people who go out as missionaries in a passion that is born in their mind, in their soul, or because they see a need somewhere.

Jesus never acted on the basis of need. Please remember this. It sounds very nice. So there's a need there, let me go and meet it. If Jesus had acted on that basis, he would have been restless. Because there was a need all over the world.

Yet he stayed in his entire life, he stayed within that small country of Israel, which is about the size of one of the smallest states in the United States. That's where he lived all his life. He had the same lusts and passions we are tempted by, the ambition to travel, to see places.

But he never yielded to it. He would not have sinned if he had taken a holiday in Rome. But he didn't go there, because it was not in his father's will. His ambition was not to go here and there, or even not even to preach the gospel.

It sounds very nice. His ambition was to please the father, and the only way to please the father was to hear what the father said, and to do it. That is why it is so important, I kept stressing this many times.

Hearing and Obeying God's Voice

The most important thing is to hear the father speaking. You have to develop the habit of hearing God speaking to us. The first chapter of the Bible is full of, and God said, and God said, and God said for six days, and whenever God said something, something happened.

And it's the same today, whenever God speaks something, something happens. And that's why it's so important for us to hear God speaking. And if you have had a few experiences of God speaking in your life, something really happens.

I've had a few experiences like that, God speaking, and you see the result of it in different situations. Long, long with all your heart to hear God speaking to your heart. He speaks even today. That's the message in the first chapter of the Bible.

All the days of the week, he speaks. There's not a single day he doesn't speak. On the seventh day, they sat and listened to him the whole day Adam and Eve spent with him. So God speaks seven days a week, and we must hear him.

That's why he said to Martha, when she was so busy at no time to listen to Jesus, was busy serving, serving, serving, serving. Jesus said to her, Martha, you're worried about so many things, but you have neglected the one thing needful.

And I believe, perhaps, if you have years to hear, the Lord is saying that to some of you. You're busy doing many good things. Martha was not doing anything evil. She was doing a very selfless thing, cooking food for Jesus and the disciples.

And you can be doing many good things, but like they say in the world, the good is the enemy of the best. And the best is, Jesus said, Mary has chosen the good part to sit at my feet and listen to my word.

Now, humanly speaking, if you went into that home and you saw Mary just sitting and listening, and Martha slogging away and perspiring in the kitchen, you would have thought, maybe I would have thought that way too.

Martha is so unselfish to work so hard to make food for the others. But Jesus had a completely different opinion. God says, my thoughts are not your thoughts. He said, Mary may look as if she's selfish sitting here and listening, but that is the most important thing.

Because what you do without listening to God is worthless. It's just your own bright ideas. I've seen in all these years of my Christian experience, that the Christian world is full of clever people who've got bright ideas as to how they should serve the Lord.

Martha had a bright idea to go and work in the kitchen, but it was not God's will. Some of your bright ideas are not the will of God. They're just your own bright ideas. I've had bright ideas myself, and I found nothing came of it.

I wasted many years following my own bright ideas, not doing evil things, trying to do the Lord's work. You know that saying, which C .D. Studd said, only one life, and it will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last.

You've probably heard it. Only one life, it will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last. I've changed that. I say only what Christ does through me will last. There are a lot of people doing many things for Christ.

It will not last, because it is not in the will of God. Multitudes of workers, a lot of Christian work done for Christ. All that's done for Christ will last, no. I'm sorry, C .D. Studd, I don't agree with you.

But I understand his spirit must have been right, even if he expressed it not exactly accurately. The accurate way would be, only what Christ does through me will last. In other words, what I listen and do, that will last.

If you can understand this, I believe you live the most worthwhile life that you can ever live on this earth. So, excuse me, we have as our ambition to be pleasing to the Father. And it doesn't make a difference whether we are in heaven or on earth.

And that's the way I've looked at it. How will it be in heaven? I will not have any ambition there except to please the Father. I will have no ambition to get something for myself, or gain something, or get a name for myself, or any of these stupid things that tempt us on earth.

It will be only to please the Father. I'm sure it will be like that for you as well when we get to heaven. We'll have no other ambition. The point Paul says here is, it's exactly the same for me, he says, when I'm here on earth.

In other words, the direction I'm going is not gonna change one bit when Christ comes. It's gonna be the same direction, no deflection this way or that way. Pleasing the Father, finding out what is pleasing to him, doing it, and continuing in the same direction.

Ask yourself, my brother, sister, if Christ comes today, will you be going the same direction as you're going right now? Only wanting to hear what the Father wants you to do, and to please him. And don't think you have bright ideas of even sacrificial service.

I've spoken much about sacrifice, and we can think, I'm sacrificing. There are a lot of sacrifice, which is stupid. There are a lot of non-Christians who sacrifice so much thinking of, they will please the Father like that.

There are many Roman Catholics who travel on pilgrimages to Lourdes and different places, sacrifice, sacrifice, spend a lot of money. But it's not going to have any worth when Christ comes again. So sacrifice is good, but that's not the main thing.

We must have a willingness to sacrifice, but what we have to sacrifice is not money or time. What we have to sacrifice is our own will, which makes a choice as to what we should do. That's what we should sacrifice.

Lord, I have a clever person with bright ideas as to what I can do to serve you. I've got to sacrifice that. And if you sacrifice that, you're making the right sacrifice. And say, Lord, I want to do what pleases you.

Because when we appear at the judgment seat of Christ, 2 Corinthians 5 verse 10, every one of us is going to be rewarded. This is an absolute certainty for all of us. We're going to be rewarded according to what we did.

And then it says whether good or bad, and I don't believe we are doing bad things. I have faith in all of you. I don't believe any of you are doing bad things, not even accidentally. But it's a question of what do you mean by bad?

In the context, I see it like this. If I have not sought the Father's will, if I have not said, Lord, I have a longing to know what you want me to do. If I'm not in touch with God so that the Holy Spirit can prompt me in different situations.

What I think is good may be bad. Young people have ambitions, it's good to have ambition, good to work hard. Good to work hard so that particularly in the competitive world we are in to graduate, get a degree, and find a good job, excellent.

But I would, beyond all that, I would say, you do all that, sure. But I would say to our young people, seek to find the will of God for your life. Seek to find out what God wants you to do from early in life.

Seek to find out, when you come to marriageable age, seek to find out whom God wants you to marry. Let that be the passion of your life. I'm not preaching what I've not practiced. And then you'll have a very, very fruitful life.

You'll have a fruitful marriage. I've seen a lot of Christians who just do what they think is good. They find some believer and say, okay, I'll go ahead and marry that person. Okay, they don't divorce or anything, but that's not all we are to do.

Our testimony at the end of our life should not be, I never divorced my wife. That's crazy, there are non-Christians who have that testimony. Our testimony should be that as a family, we glorified you and fulfilled your will.

So at the judgment seat of Christ, we will discover that bad is not our earthly definition of bad today, like adultery and murder and theft. No, no, no, no, we discovered at the judgment seat of Christ, 2 Corinthians 5, 10, that bad is where I did not seek God's will.

Seeking God's Will in Ministry and Service

I found this also, I mentioned this before in my service for the Lord. I used to get so many invitations, I still do, to go here, go there, come here, come here, and for this convention, this conference, the other thing.

And I found that Jesus did not respond to everything that everything that he's invited to do. And I came across one or two people, servants of God, much older than me, whom I, when I studied their life, both in India and abroad, that there was something that characterized their life.

They did not go by, yeah, there, there, there's an opening for me there. Somebody invited me, great opening, 10 ,000 people will be there at that conference, I'll go, they did not operate like that. That sounds right to our mind, 10 ,000 people at a conference, boy, what an opportunity to preach the new covenant, but they didn't operate like that.

They operated by, father, where do you want me to go? And I found that the ministry of such people always resulted in the planting of a church, and when I saw that as a young man, I was 35 or so, I said, Lord, that's the way I want to live my life.

I don't want to waste my life going to this conference and that conference and say at the end of my life, I traveled to 50 countries or preach to 1 million people, I have no interest in that. Jesus said, I have come to earth to build my church.

I want to build a church that the gates of hell will never prevail against. I said, Lord, I want to be a co-worker with you in that ministry. Not the ministry of traveling the world and preaching to millions of people, but a co-worker in building a church that the gates of hell will never prevail against.

And so I decided I want to seek the Lord and find out how to do what God wants me to do, where does he want me to go? I remember one particular instance, there was a huge conference of a Pentecostal church that in with about maybe 10, 15 ,000 people would come and invited me for a particular conference in one part of India.

And that was in a particular week, in the same week, another very, very small group of people who were in some other denomination church. I mean, some other believers church asked me whether I would come to speak to them.

We had no CFC church in those days in that area anywhere. And I prayed about it and the Lord said, go to that small group. So reject that big conference. So I wrote to that big conference committee and said, I'm sorry, I can't come.

And I wrote to the small group of about 20 people or so and I said, okay, I'll come. The result is by the time I finished the one week's meetings in that small group, a church was planted there. And that church has flourished like anything and has spread from there to all over the area.

That would not have happened if I'd gone to the other big one, just got a big name and probably give me a big gift. And I'd have wasted my time. That's one example. And that's happened again and again in different places I've gone to in India.

And I've seen the reality of this. I say, if you listen to God, he may lead you to some small place and to some what looks like a small work. But there's a seed that God's going to bless over there, which will produce a lot of fruit.

And this is what I've seen again and again and again, and not only in India, but in other countries as well. One small little visit, I remember another place outside India, where I've been to visit two brothers who I knew from India, who were interested in the truth and they were the only two brothers there.

I said, okay, let me go and visit them. And I visited them. And today there's a flourishing church in that place. Another country, where there were three people who asked me to come. I traveled all the way to that country.

And interesting thing is, the church started there and went to other parts of the country. And the people who initially invited me fell away, it doesn't matter. It was a leading of God because I see the final result.

And I said, dear brothers, not all of you are called to church planning, but I'm just using that as an example in your life. Even if it's a question of meeting people, say, Lord, I want to be led by you.

I've longed to be sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit. You know how Jesus was? He'd walk down a road and the Holy Spirit says stop. And he'll stop on the middle of the road. And the Holy Spirit would tell him, look up at the tree, somebody's sitting there.

You'd see somebody and the Holy Spirit would tell him, his name is Zacchaeus. Tell him to come down, you've got to go to his house today. I said, Lord, is it possible for us in our day to walk as you walked?

To hear you, I want to be able to, maybe not at that clarity because he was so free from sin, he could hear with such clarity, but at least to a little degree. We must have a longing to hear the voice of God, man shall not live by bread alone.

But by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, what does that mean? Does it mean just reading the Bible? Of course, it includes reading the Bible. And that's where I started. I spent years, for seven years of my life, first seven years after I was converted, I spent studying the Bible.

Of course, you can't hear God's voice if you don't start with studying the Bible. So if you're beginning, then start with studying the Bible. But we want to move on from there to be able to hear God speak to us in different situations, maybe not as spectacularly as Jesus.

And because he had such clarity, his conscience was always so clear. There was never any sin in his life, so the voice of God was clear. And I don't expect it to be that clear anytime on earth, because we don't have that degree of walk with God or that degree of purity.

But it should get better and better and better every day where we come to the end of our life and we look back over our life and say, thank God I lived a worthwhile life. I pray that'll be true of every one of you.

And it doesn't matter how much you have failed in the past. I want to encourage you, my brothers, at least from now onwards. And it doesn't matter how ignorant you are. God bypasses all this human cleverness.

If your spirit is right and you walk with a sensitive conscience, he will lead you in amazing ways, even if you're a young person. He will lead you in amazing ways so that many years later when you look back over your life, you look back and say, well, I'm glad I lived my life in a worthwhile way.

I pray we need to encourage our young people to walk that way. And also as a church, you see, NCCF has most of you have come out, almost all of you have come out of some other church, drawn here by something you heard, which you felt that was preaching a message that you needed to hear and you were gripped by it and you came here.

And I'm sure every one of you will admit that you've been blessed by having taken that decision to join NCCF. I don't have any doubt about it at all. It was a new movement that God started here with a few brothers in the beginning.

And if you know the early history of it, it started with a lot of people getting offended and leaving, which is one of the best things that happens. And if it happens right at the beginning, much better.

In RLCF in Colorado, it took a long time before it happened, before the people who got offended left. But the real work started only then. There has to be a purging of people who are not serious about paying the price to build the body of Christ, then the work begins.

Guarding the Church Against Spiritual Decline

But in NCCF, it started early. That purging took place very early before most of you were there, and God began that work. Now, are we a new covenant church? Is separated from other churches because there's so many old covenant practices there.

We have many, many good qualities. For example, in all of our CFC churches, nobody receives a salary. All elders are self-supporting, including me, in the last 46 years. We don't depend on anyone, which is a unique thing about us compared to other churches.

And that's protected us from a lot of problems. But over a period of time, even the churches planted by the apostles began to decline. So, and many people who studied church history would say, every group that started, there were different groups.

Martin Luther started a movement, and then that declined. And John Wesley started something, and that declined. And William Booth started Salvation Army, and that declined. And the Brethren started something, that declined.

The Pentecostal started something, that declined. But every group said, it won't happen to us what happened to others. But it did happen. Now, today we say, it won't happen to us, well, I hope not. We're not better than the apostles.

The churches planted by the apostles, think of Ephesus. Paul spent three years, it says he preached night and day, Acts chapter 20. Now, if that is literally true, Paul preached 2 ,000 sermons, night and day for three years in Ephesus.

Can you imagine sitting listening to 2 ,000 sermons of the apostle Paul? You'd say, boy, I'm set for life. And our church is set for life. But it wasn't. Before Paul left, at the end of three years, he says, I know what's going to happen after I leave.

These wolves who are waiting to come in, who did not dare to come in as long as I was here, will come in. And he told those elders, if I were to paraphrase his words, you guys think you're all very spiritual and all.

But you're no match for those wolves of Satan. Not only that, not only they'll come and destroy this church, they will come and infiltrate you elders. When you seek your own and you gather groups after yourself, because you want to be popular at the expense of another elder.

You want to be more popular than the other elder. What a lot of that is in many churches where there are elders. One elder wants to be more popular than the other one. Crazy. It happens in so-called Christian churches.

And it happened in Ephesus. And so that about 20, 25 years after Paul died, just 25 or 28 years after Paul died, the church where he spent three years and its elders have become so bad. In Revelation chapter two, the Lord says, I'm going to remove the lamp stand from you.

In other words, I'm going to de-recognize you as a church of Jesus Christ. You say, is this a church the Apostle Paul sat with 30 years ago? Just 35 years ago, the Apostle Paul was here and it has come to such a pathetic state.

It's like Paul said. So we don't just blame the elders. I believe everybody in the church has to be alert. The church is a body. And I don't believe corrupt elders can lead a church astray. The body is strong.

Sure. So I don't believe any corrupt person can lead the church astray. Each one of us seeks to be strong and seeks to please the Lord. And say, Lord, I don't want to seek my own. That's a warning to us.

Scripture, Christ, and the Danger of Pharisaical Religion

I want you to turn to John chapter five. You know, among the people in Israel, in the gospels, we read about two groups of people who oppose Jesus, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. There were two big groups.

There were other smaller groups, but the Sadducees and Pharisees were the big groups. And the Sadducees were the rich people, the upper level of society, the people from whom the chief priests and the high priests and all came from that group.

And the Pharisees were a little poorer people. But when it came to scripture, the Pharisees were stuck to scripture more to follow it exactly. As the Sadducees, they compromise. They're like, you know, modernistic Christians.

They didn't believe in the resurrection and they didn't believe in angels and things like that. Whereas, but they were the rich priestly class. It's usually like that even on earth today. There are Christians who belong to the upper class who are a little more modernistic.

And then there are poorer Christians who stick to the word. But what happened? The Pharisees started 150 years before Christ and they were concerned about the decline in standards. You know, the children of Israel had gone into captivity in Babylon and they came back to Israel through Ezra and Nehemiah and they built the temple.

And they were happy with that. Oh, the temple is built and they all were happy with that. But just like decline set in with the Ephesus, decline set among the Israelites also, that passion to please the Lord and the passion that Ezra and Nehemiah and all had had disappeared by the next couple of generations.

See, they came back in around 430 BC or something. By the time of 150 BC or something, it had all declined. In 250 years, it had all gone down. And there was a group of people who said, we're concerned about this decline.

We must do something about it. And they formed a group called the Pharisees, the separatists. They called Pharisees because they were separatists. They separated just like us, you know, separate from the dead churches.

We wanna have a pure testimony. We wanna stay away from all this dead religion. That's how they started. But that same group 150 years later had declined so much that they wanted to kill Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine? They were still holding onto the doctrine. Very clearly in Matthew 23, Jesus says to his disciples, everything that the Pharisees tell you to do, do. Jesus was giving a certificate to them in Matthew 23.

What they're teaching is correct. You disciples, what they're teaching is correct. And he also gave them another certificate in Matthew 23. You clean the outside of the cup. That means their external life was very good.

Imagine if Jesus tells you your external life is good. Great. The trouble with your Pharisees, he said the inner inside of the cup is dirty. But there are two certificates that Jesus gave. You read it in Matthew 23.

What you teach is correct. Your external life is correct. But you're a bunch of hypocrites and you won't escape the damnation of hell. This group started out well, seeking for purity. The doctrine was right.

That external life was right. Now let's compare that with ourselves. We broke away from other churches in order to preserve a pure testimony for the Lord. I think all of us, our external life is good.

Our doctrines are right. Okay. But the Lord never approved of the Pharisees. It's so important to say, Lord, am I pleasing to you? Not just are my doctrines right? Am I a member of good standing in NCCA?

Worth nothing. Lord, I want to be pleasing to you. I want to live before your face. I urge every one of you to really seek to live before God's face and seek his approval. You know, this is something which Paul told Timothy, seek God's approval.

How should we do that? John chapter five, the Lord was speaking to the Pharisees and he said to them in verse 39, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. Were they seeking for eternal life?

In some way they were, Jesus says that. You search the scriptures because you think there you have eternal life. They were students of the scriptures like we are. But these scriptures testify about me, Jesus said, and you don't come to me that you may have that life.

You come to the scriptures, but you don't come to me. The scriptures are meant, you read verse 39 and 40 together. The scriptures are meant to direct you to me. The Lord says, because that life is in me, not in that printed book.

And I fear this is the danger that we can face too, to think that life is in a printed book. The printed book is important. Jesus read from it in the synagogue and Paul told Timothy to pay attention to the scriptures, very important, but the life is not in that book.