A Message for 2014 — Zac Poonen

This is an unexpected opportunity to be here. We had no plans to come at this time. But there are many things God plans that we don't plan. We praise the Lord. His way is best. As I've been sharing with different folks over this New Year time, there's a word that's been on my heart from the book of Deuteronomy and chapter 11, where Moses was preparing the people of Israel to go into the land of Canaan.

They had wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. That was not God's will for them. They had come out of Egypt, and God planned for them to be two years in the wilderness. That's all. And then they were to come to the borders of the land of Canaan and enter in.

From Egypt to the Promised Land

So they were in Egypt, and then they were in the wilderness, and then they were in Canaan. And that's a picture of three areas of our Christian life where we can be. One is out in the world, unconverted.

Egypt is a picture of that. And then a life of struggling under the law, never really fulfilling God's will, never accomplishing what God wants us to do. And when God brought them to the borders of the promised land and asked them to go and come into a life of victory where you kill the giants and occupy the land, they turned back.

And you know that out of 600 ,000 men who came out of Egypt, only two entered the land of Canaan. And as I have observed Christians around the world, my personal conviction is out of 600 ,000 believers who are born again, about two enter a spirit-filled life of daily overcoming sin and the devil.

It's true. It's unfortunate, but that's about how it is. And yet all 600 ,000 could have entered in if they had trusted God to take them in. Why is it most Christians don't enter into a life of overcoming, even year after year after year after year?

I'll tell you why. Because they're content with their defeated life. The only picture I can compare it to is with a person who's content with having cancer or content with having leprosy when they could be healed.

You see, it's okay. Not so bad. When a day comes in our life when we are really convinced that sin is worse, that the smallest sin is worse than any sickness, when I realize that to sin and disobey God, to lose my temper and to get angry, to lust with my eyes and to have bitterness and an unforgiving spirit is worse than having cancer and leprosy and AIDS all together.

The day I'm convinced of that, we'll be serious about getting victory. I'll tell you, two out of 600 ,000 believers I've met believe that and are serious about it. And that's the main reason why most believers never enter into that abundant life that Jesus came to give.

And they think it's okay. I believe it's a slap in the face of Jesus to say, it's all right, Lord, you came to give us life and abundant life, but I couldn't care less for this abundant life. I just want to go to heaven when I die.

I believe that's a slap in the face of Jesus and I never want to do that. I want to satisfy the heart of my Lord when I think of that he gave his life for me. He gave everything he had that I might have life and have abundant life on this earth and with the one life that I have to be able to manifest Christ to a world around me that does not know what Jesus is like.

Most people, when they look at Christians, they're not seeing Jesus. Most Christians are carnal and I believe the reason why God raises up small churches like this is to emphasize that which is not emphasized in most of Christendom, who are just happy to come out of Egypt and wander around in the wilderness for the rest of their lives.

God wants us to enter the promised land. So I want you to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 11 and I want you to read what Moses told him. In verse 10, the land into which you are entering to possess it and instead of land, read life.

In the Old Testament, it was a land. In the New Testament, it's a life. The life that you are going to enter in to possess is not like the other life which you had before till now, where, you know, you used to sow your seed and water it with your foot and struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle to produce some fruit.

This life, which you're about to cross in to possess it, is one that drinks water from the rain of heaven. It's not the result of a lot of self-effort, pumping water with your foot from the river Nile, getting water into your garden.

This just drinks rain from heaven. It's a life where the Holy Spirit comes down and not by our struggle that we're going to produce fruit. That's what he's trying to say. The Christian life is a life of rest.

Entering Christ’s Rest

Jesus looked around at people and said to them, people who are struggling under the law, you know, like this, pumping your water, all you who are weary and heavy laden, or I paraphrase it, those of you who are sick and tired of your defeated life, come to me.

That's how I paraphrase Matthew 11, 28, well-known words, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, I'll give you rest. Jesus says, come to me, those of you who are sick and tired of your defeated life.

If you're not sick and tired of your life, defeated life, Jesus says, don't come to me. Stay where you are. Remain wandering in the wilderness forever. But if some of you, maybe two out of 600 ,000 are sick and tired of your defeated life, come to me.

I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you or take my cross in your daily life. The world and the devil will say it's a burden to take up the cross. It's not. My yoke is easy, Jesus said. My burden is light.

If you have found the Christian life to be heavy, you have not got the yoke of Jesus, that's for sure. You got a yoke of the law, of a life of struggle. You're not drinking water from the rain of heaven.

You're watering it with your own, peddling your foot and getting water out. That, I want to say to you, that is not the life God planned for us. He allows us to go through that in the beginning so that we learn a lesson.

That's not the way to do it. He wants us to enter in. This is a land, Deuteronomy 11, 12, and this is the verse I want you to see. A life which the Lord your God cares for. Look at this phrase, the eyes of the Lord your God will always be on you from the first day of the year till the last day of the year.

What a wonderful promise as we enter a new year. To take that to ourselves and say, Lord, this is wonderful. This is the life I want to live. Where the eyes of the Lord are upon me from the beginning of the year till the end of the year with not one day left out.

Every single day, His eyes are going to be upon me, watching over me, caring for me. Caring for me exactly like He cared for Jesus when Jesus was on earth. If I were to ask you, do you believe that the Father in heaven was watching every single day of Jesus' life on earth?

He surely was. Right from the time where Jesus was born in that stable, the Father was watching. His eyes were on Him. And when His eyes saw that Herod is marshalling some soldiers to kill the baby, He planned for that and took Jesus away to Egypt.

That's how He cares. It's wonderful. The eyes of the Lord always, there was another time when the people in a synagogue, maybe 200 of them in Nazareth, stopped Jesus in the middle of a sermon and pulled Him off from the pulpit and took Him to a cliff.

You read about it in Luke chapter 4, to throw Him over the cliff and kill Him when He was 30 years old. That wasn't the way that the Father had planned for Jesus to die, being thrown over a cliff. The eyes of the Father were on Him.

It couldn't happen. And so something happened there and Jesus, it says, Jesus quietly walked away. It's amazing. The eyes of the Lord are upon a person. Or when there's a storm in the sea, it doesn't matter.

If Jesus is sleeping in the boat, that boat will never sink. Every other boat may sink, but not the one when Christ is in, because that's not the way He was supposed to die. He was not supposed to die of drowning.

So I find that it's a wonderful thing when I think of how the Father cared for Jesus from the very first day of His life. And when I realized this wonderful truth, John chapter 17, where Jesus says He wanted the world to know through us, many people think that the only thing we're supposed to be witnesses to is that Christ died for your sins, folks.

That's very important, because that's their greatest need. You're a sinner, but you don't have to get discouraged, because every wretched sin you did, Christ took the punishment on the cross. It's finished, He said.

You can be forgiven if you receive that forgiveness on the cross. But there's something more that we are to witness to the world. Turn to John 17. He says, I pray, Jesus says in verse 23, John 17, 23, that I will be in them, and you, Father, in me, so that these children of mine will be perfect in unity, so that the world may know.

Here's what the world should know through me, that the Father sent Jesus. I have to be a witness to that, and the world must know that the Father loves me just like He loved Jesus. I don't know how many of you have taken the second part of that testimony seriously.

I never did. For nearly 16 years of my Christian life, I didn't even know there was such a verse in the Bible. I didn't even know that the Father loved me like He loved Jesus. I know He loved me, but as much as He loved Jesus, I never knew that.

And not only that, that is something that the world, when they look at my life, must see. Here's a man who's loved by God. There's no other explanation for his life. Here's a man who's loved by God so intensely, that's why so many things seem to fall into place in his life.

There's no other explanation. Men can be against him, demons can be against him, but it's obvious that God is on his side. The world must know, I want each of you, my brothers and sisters, to please take this challenge in the new year.

And just like the eyes of the Lord, the Father was upon Jesus, as He cared for Jesus, He will care for you. His eyes will be upon you. But there was a reason why the Father was so committed to Christ.

Repentance, Faith, and Wholehearted Devotion

You see, it's very easy for Christians to go to the promises of Scripture and claim them without fulfilling the conditions. Can you be forgiven if you do not fulfill the conditions of repentance and faith in Christ?

Impossible. Christ died for the sins of the whole world. 1 John chapter 2 verse 2 says that clearly, not only for the sins of believers, like some Calvinists say. 1 John 2 .2 is very clear, He's the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.

But yet, I think more than 90 of people in the world are not converted. Why is that? Because they haven't fulfilled the condition, and the condition is very simple. Turn around from sin and believe.

Such a simple thing, they won't do it. Mostly they don't want to turn around from sin. There are many who want to believe. They don't get it. You don't get it if you don't repent. So in the same way here, there's a reason why the Father was so committed to Christ.

And that's written in the 10th verse of the same chapter, John 17 .10, where Jesus says, all things that are mine, Father, are thine. And therefore, all things that are thine are mine. I've discovered through the years that if your attitude to God is like your attitude to the IRS, what is the minimum I have to pay?

You'll find God is also like that towards you. What is the minimum I should give this person? But if your attitude is like your attitude to someone you love intensely, see how these men who are falling in love with a girl, how they're buying expensive diamond rings and very, very expensive things, because they love them so much, they don't go to a shop and say, well, what's the minimum cheapest thing I can buy?

That's your attitude. It's pretty clear you don't love that person very much. But if you examine your attitude towards God and you find that that is how it should, that's how you are, what's the minimum I have to do for God?

What's the minimum I have to give to him? What's the minimum number of meetings I should go to? You don't be surprised if God's attitude to you also is, what's the minimum I should give this guy? And that's called life.

And abundant life is quite a different thing where God finds other people who say, Lord, my one life, what's the maximum I can give to you? You find God looks at such a person and says, what's the maximum of heaven I can give to this person?

That's what he said. Jesus said, everything of mine is yours. I don't have any ambitions outside of your will. Every single thing in my life, Father, is yours. Father said, really? Well, everything that's mine is yours too.

That is what makes the difference between one Christian and another. And if you find one Christian triumphant, victorious, overcoming, who seems to be always at rest and you may think he's putting up a front and fooling you, he's not.

That is his real life, 24 hours every day and seven days a week. But that's because he's given everything to the Lord. He said to the Father, just like Jesus said, everything that's mine is yours, Father.

I don't claim anything as my own. And you think that he's pretending because you don't have that type of life because your attitude was the minimum I should give to God. And what regrets such people will have when they stand before the Lord in the final day and discover how much the Lord gave for them.

And they discover how they were so mean and stingy and miserly and selfish in their attitude towards God because that's how most of the Christians around them were. It's because most of the people in Israel wanted to stay in the wilderness.

The others said, yeah, we better stay with the crowd. But there were two people who were different, Joshua and Caleb, so we're going to go in. They went into that land where the Lord God had his eyes on them every single day from January 1st to December 31st.

That's the life I want to live in 2014. That's the life I've tried to live even in 2013 and 2012. I want it to be even more wonderful in the days to come. I want to say to you, my brothers, this is the real Christian life.

And just like we, our children go through a school year and they evaluate whether the person's learned everything that was taught in that year so that it can move on to the second grade or second to third grade and so on.

It's good for us also to evaluate at the end of a year, how is this year gone? Have I been living in that life where the eyes of the Lord are always upon me? Have I lived in the enjoyment of that knowing that my father is always watching over me that I can live without a fear and an anxiety in this world because my heavenly father cares for me?

It's wonderful, you know, it's like a little child who doesn't have a care in the world because he's got his mother or father watching over him all the time. Wherever he's playing, he's always watching over him.

This is how God wants to care for us. And I'm telling you honestly, most Christians do not live this life. Most Christians, 99 of born-again Christians do not live this life. They live a third-rate, miserable, defeated life, glorying in the fact that my theology is right, I've accepted Christ, I'm born again.

And if God has raised up new covenant Christian fellowship, the purpose is that people will come into the new covenant, which is this. See Hebrews in chapter 8, what it says about this new covenant. Hebrews chapter 8, it says, verse 6, Jesus has obtained a more excellent ministry by as much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, that's the new covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

What is the distinctive feature of the new covenant? Better promises, far better than anything you can read in the Old Testament. And there are some amazing promises in the New Testament, that God will never allow us to be tested beyond our ability.

Isn't that a wonderful promise? That in all the 365 days of the coming year, there will not be a single day or a single hour when I will face something that will be too much for me to handle. Which person in the world can say that?

How many believers can say that? Most believers come to some Christians and say, oh, this is becoming too much for me. It's not how they're supposed to live. They come out of Egypt, but they're wandering in the wilderness.

New covenant has been established on better promises. 1 Corinthians 10, 13, God is faithful who will never allow you to be tested beyond your ability. But in that trial, He will make a way of escape that I'll be able to overcome.

That way of escape is that He gives us grace sufficient for that particular need. My grace is sufficient for your need. There'll never be a situation that I can face in the future, 2014 or until Christ comes, where the situation will demand from me more than the grace God gives me.

That is impossible. And when I say impossible, I mean impossible. And the only way that can happen if Almighty God is a liar. If He's a liar, then of course, we're wasting our time meeting here in any case.

But He's not a liar. I proved it in 54 years of my Christian life since I'm born again. God's not a liar. People ask me why I believe the Bible is God's word. I said because I've studied it for 54 years and never found anything, any promise that has failed me till today.

I didn't fulfill a condition. Sure, I failed, but where I fulfilled a condition, I found every single promise works. And dear brothers and sisters, why am I saying all this? So that you will not be satisfied with the type of life you have lived up to this day in your life.

Say, Lord, I want to enter into that abundant life that you have promised. I want to be like that 2 out of 600 ,000 who enter the promised land. The land where the eyes of the Lord are always upon me from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

God’s Love, Our Inheritance, and Family Faithfulness

I remember when this truth first hit me that God loved me like He loved Jesus. I realized a couple of things. One, that what God did for Jesus, He would do for me. See, if I love all my children equally, or if you as a father love all your children equally, wouldn't you do for your youngest son what you did for your oldest son?

Or your youngest daughter what you do for your oldest daughter? There wouldn't be any partiality. Jesus is the eldest brother, and I'm a younger brother. And if God loves me as much as He loved Jesus, He'll do for me everything He did for Him.

I don't know whether you've noticed that before Jesus came to the earth, He was called the only begotten Son. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. But the day Jesus rose from the dead, He's never called the only begotten Son after that.

He's called the firstborn. What's the difference between an only son and a firstborn? You know the answer. When a man's got only one son, he says, my only son. When he's got other sons, he says, he's my firstborn.

That's what happened on the day Jesus rose from the dead. He told Mary Magdalene in John chapter 20, Go and tell my brothers, as the first time in history, that Almighty God came in human form and called human beings His brothers.

See the wonder of that? Go and tell my brothers that I ascend to my Father and your Father. It's the same Father we have now. Little, little things in Scripture which we read carelessly. I find most Christians would read legal documents more carefully than they read the Bible.

If your billionaire father had written a will for you, would you read it carefully? To see which all banks his account is kept in? Where all does he have property? Oh boy, you'd read it ten times and get a lawyer to look through it.

Because we love money. And if you're careless, some crooked lawyer could cheat you of it. That's exactly how I feel. The devil's like a crooked lawyer who's cheated believers of their inheritance. And they live poverty stricken lives when they could be spiritually wealthy.

Believe that. Don't let the devil rob you of your inheritance anymore in this coming year. And that applies to your family. So many believers, I find, they've come to the Lord, but they're not serious about bringing their family, every one of their family members, into that life.

They're sort of casual and laid back and say, yeah, it'll happen. Nothing will happen. He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Jeremiah 29 .13 says, You will seek Me and find Me only when you search for Me with all your heart.

We must teach our children to seek God with all their heart. My seeking God with all my heart is not going to help my children to find God. I have to urge them. Seek God with all your heart, you'll find Him.

And you'll find He's more wonderful than you ever thought. You'll find He's far more wonderful than what the average Christian knows about God. That's the reason. When I realize that God loves me just like He loved Jesus, then I realize, hey, there's no partiality with God.

What He did for Jesus, He'll do for me. The eyes of the Lord was upon Jesus from the first day of the year to the end of the year, every year. His eyes will be upon me, first day of the year to the end of the year.

Every year. I'm going to be a very privileged person. Jesus was the most privileged person to walk on the earth. He may not have been the richest, He was not. He didn't live in a palace, He lived in a very simple house.

But He was the most privileged person walking on earth when He was on earth because the eyes of the Father were upon Him all the time. Nothing could happen to Him without the Father knowing. And if someone was scheming or planning something, the Father would deal with it.

I want to live like that. I want to live like that. If people are scheming and things against me, I'm not worried. My Father will take care of it. Why? Because He loves me like He loved Jesus. And as He cared for Jesus, He will care for me.

It's wonderful to know that. If you care for your oldest child, you'll care equally for your youngest child. It's a wonderful thing to know that. And when God is on your side, who can stand against you?

No demon in hell. The eyes of God, your Father, are upon you from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. There will be no need for you to be anxious, afraid, wondering how things will turn out.

God’s Presence in Every Circumstance

May God allow us to go through some very tight circumstances. He certainly allowed me. Difficult circumstances with people opposing me and all that. But that's fine, Lord. If your eyes are upon me, I don't mind a tight circumstance.

It'll be a wonderful opportunity to know what miracle is God going to do for me over here. In this extremely difficult circumstance, where it doesn't look as if there's a human way of escape, there must be some miracle God wants to do for me and show me His power.

You know, when I look at the miracles like this, that Jesus stilled a storm to teach His disciples, there's no storm I cannot still. It's good to know that. There's no storm He cannot still. When they ran short of food, He could handle that.

There was no situation that Jesus could not handle. To me, the message in the miracles, I took a series of studies in the miracles once. And the overall title I gave for that study was, God can solve every problem.

That is the message of the miracles. There was never a single situation where somebody came to Jesus with a problem and He had to scratch His head and say, boy, that's a tough one. Never. Not even one.

He always had a solution. It wasn't what the disciples thought. There was a solution. Now God may not do miracles in exactly the same way that He did then, but He still has a solution for every problem.

That's the main message I get out of it. I'm not asking that He takes five loaves today and feeds 5 ,000 people. That's not. No. What I get from the miracles is one message, God can solve every problem.

The way He solves it may not be the way I think He should, but He does solve it in a far better way than I think. Because His eyes are going to be on me from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

Take that promise. Say, Lord, I want it to be true in my life in this coming year. There's another aspect to it which I want to show you and that is in Proverbs. In chapter 15 and verse 3. The eyes of the Lord are in every place watching the evil and the good.

The first verse we saw is the eyes of the Lord upon you from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. This verse says the eyes of the Lord are in every place watching the evil and the good. That's the second thing I need to realize in terms of the eyes of the Lord being upon me throughout the year.

That I'm now free from living before the eyes of men. Because the eyes of men can't be in every place watching me. And if you look at your own life as a Christian, perhaps you'll discover that you're more careful when the eyes of men are watching you.

And not so careful when the eyes of men are not watching you. You're not so careful in the way you speak to your wife at home as you're careful when you're speaking to your wife in a church meeting like this.

After a church service or in a public place, you need to be very careful how you speak because the eyes of men are watching you. What about when you're at home and only the eyes of the Lord are watching you?

That is the place I've discovered. Whether I fear God or fear men more. Just face up to it. If you're more careful before the eyes of men in how you behave, how you conduct yourself, and less careful when men are not around and only God is there, whatever type of Christianity you may claim to have, I will tell you to your face, my brother, my sister, let me tell you lovingly, you don't fear God at all.

You fear men, sure. You value the opinion of men tremendously. You don't care much what God thinks about you. The eyes of the Lord are in every place. Just like we saw it is going to be upon us every day.

Deuteronomy 11. The eyes of the Lord are in every place. Watching the good and the evil. He doesn't manifest himself in his glory to frighten us. God could have appeared in glory in the Garden of Eden just as Eve was about to reach for that forbidden tree, for that forbidden fruit.

God didn't do it. Why didn't he do it? Because he wanted to see how will Adam and Eve behave when they think I'm not around. God is in every place. He was right there in Eden when Eve was reaching out for the fruit.

It was not as manifest a presence as it was on the Sabbath day when they were with God. But if he can recognize this is something which I've sought to live by. The eyes of the Lord are in every place.

Watching the good and the evil. When you handle money, a lot of people don't know how you're handling it. But the eyes of the Lord are there. Watching you write your accounts and watching you every little thing.

Do you think you can get more by cheating and telling lies? That would be an act of unbelief. That would be like saying, God, if I honor you, I'm going to suffer financially. Really? He said, if you see God's kingdom and his righteousness in money matters, everything that you need on earth will be supplied to you.

You may not become a millionaire, but that's not the point. That's up to God to decide how much he gives. He gives more to one and less to another. That's his choice. He draws different sizes of financial circles around different people for his own sovereign reason and purpose.

And through it all, he's testing us. I've been through times where the circle around me was extremely small and I knew he was testing me. Then he made it bigger. He was testing me there. But the eyes of the Lord were always there.

You know, it's one thing to say, Lord, I want your eyes to be upon me throughout the year. I don't want to recognize that his eyes are in every place, in every situation. It's a blessing. I want the eyes of the Lord to be upon me all the time because it's not only a protection, it's my salvation.

And if I live in the light of that, it'll change my life. There was this Roman Catholic monk called Brother Lawrence who wrote a book called The Practice of the Presence of God. He wasn't an educated person, so they didn't give him jobs in the church.

He was a cook, working in the kitchen most of the time. But he was a God-fearing man and he said, when I wash the dishes in the sink, I can worship God there. I feel his presence when washing the dishes in the sink in my kitchen as much as when I'm kneeling down and taking part in the Lord's table.

Call him Roman Catholic or whatever you like, he knew God better than a lot of Protestants. That's for sure. God is no respecter of persons or denominations. If a man seeks him with all his heart, he will find him.

Don't glory in accuracy of your understanding doctrine. The Pharisees were the most accurate in doctrine in Jesus' time and they killed Jesus. Pilate, who did not know head or tail about the Bible, wanted to free Jesus.

It's not accuracy of doctrine that really makes us more acceptable to God. It's a humble heart. It's a heart that's sensitive, that wants to please God in every situation, that recognizes the eyes of the Lord are in every place.

Righteous Speech and Effective Prayer

Connected with that, I want to read 1 Peter in chapter 3. 1 Peter chapter 3, it says, verse 10. It is actually a quotation from Psalm 34, verse 12 to 16. Peter is quoting from Psalm 34 and he says, 1 Peter 3 .10.

Let the one who means to love life and see good days. Which of us doesn't want to see good days in 2014? You want to see good days? I want to see good days every day of this year. Let him, first of all, take care of his tongue.

That's a good area to where we can ask God to help us to be not so careless in the use of our tongue in 2014 as we have been in past years. Refrain his tongue from evil speaking. We all understand what evil speaking is.

It's mostly about other people. And his lips from speaking guile. That means telling lies. And let him turn away from evil and do good. Even to those who do evil to us, let's turn away and do good. And let him seek peace.

When people want to come and fight with me, let me pursue peace and pursue it. Why? Listen to this. Then the eyes of the Lord will be upon you. These are the righteous on whom the eyes of the Lord are always there from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

And when such a person offers a weak prayer, the ears of the Lord are open to listen to that prayer. We live in a Christendom where a lot of emphasis is placed on long hours of prayer. Such and such a man of God used to spend two hours in prayer.

Somebody else used to spend four hours in prayer. I don't know how they found out. He was supposed to keep everything secret. I don't know how long he prayed. But I've discovered that the important thing is whether the Lord has heard that prayer.

A lot of prayer is like speaking on a telephone and God hasn't even picked up the receiver at the other end. I'm going away talking, talking, talking, talking. For example, it says if I read a God iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

If I haven't forgiven somebody, God will not hear me. You can pray hours if you like. He won't hear you. If you've got a grudge against somebody, God won't hear you. There are many things that break the connection between us and God.