Post by Michael James Stone on Jul 16, 2012 13:33:49 GMT -8
The Chosen of the Lord
The Bible clearly states, “Many are called but few are chosen.”(Matthew 22:14) When our Father has a big plan or desires to manifest Himself in some great revival or reformation, His first act is to seek the chosen for partnership. “We are laborers together with God.” (1Corinthians 3:9)
God has no plan in earth that does not include His chosen saints. Our Father heard the cry out of Egypt’s bondage and prepared a Moses to be His chosen vessel of deliverance. When Israel had finished seventy years in Babylonian captivity, God filled the heart of Daniel with fasting and prayer until God’s voice could speak and prepare their return to Jerusalem. As I write, God is searching for the perfect hearts to once again “come down” in Divine visitation.
Every community in our world needs chosen vessels to partner with God in revival. If you are totally surrendered to His Lordship and the Holy Scripture or you are willing to be, He will certainly put His burden in your heart to be His laborer in the Harvest. Ezra, an Old Testament Prophet writing from Babylon, stated powerfully, “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.” (II Chronicles 16:9) No prophet of God had the privilege of knowing this truth more than Ezra. He lived in exile most of his life but was greatly used to see the return of Israel from that exile to rebuild the temple and walls of Jerusalem. He came back to his homeland as the teacher of the laws.
You must hear Ezra speak of this covenant God makes with His chosen to reveal Himself. As they prepared to leave Babylon much concern was required because of danger in traveling the wasteland between Babylon and Jerusalem; Ezra stated, “Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God,and to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance. For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him. So we fasted and besought our God for this: he was intreated of us.” (Ezra 8:21-23) “Then we departed from the river of Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month, to go unto Jerusalem: and the hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from of the enemy, and of such as lay in wait by the way. And we came to Jerusalem, and abode there three days.” (Ezra 8:31-32)
The dangers of our world are vastly different but certainly no less challenging. I am hungry for a sovereign move of God that lays bare the pure visitation of the Holy Ghost separate from the schemes of religion. As I read of the Wales revival, the Hebrides IslandsÂ’ revival, and the revivals connected to John Wesley, Dwight Moody, Jonathan Edwards and many others, my soul pants for the same. In every testimony of those great visitations, God had prepared and chosen certain saints to intercede in great travail. God had chosen one man to remain out of sight in prayer for Charles Finney. Two women were chosen of God to pray for Dwight Moody. Two widows that lived in prayer were used of God to prepare and call Duncan Campbell to the outbreak of a great visitation.
I’m convinced that a similar call from God is going forth presently. The purists of the saints are reserved as prayer warriors. It is not the great voices that stand in the pulpits that we owe our highest honors; it is the prayer-closet saints that pave the way to God’s visitation. Please, I do not speak of loud or noisy prayers but persistent soul-rending communion with God. We need unbending saints that have identified all they are with all He is. I shall never forget hearing a great man of God, Rev. R. P. Johnson, a Church of God pioneer, speaking by the Holy Ghost. He said as he spoke by the Spirit, “If you will make all you are available to me, I will make all ‘I am’ available to you.” These words have clung to my heart for approximately forty years, because they are so Biblical.
Are you near enough to Him to hear His call to be one of the chosen? Forget the labor that only serves to call attention to yourself. Be willing to be hidden with Him on the backside of the desert. He may well meet you at His burning bush and thrust you into the battle, or He may choose to use you greatly behind the scenes. Let that be His choice and just be willing to be chosen. What more could anyone choose than to be chosen of Him? I can promise you that to be lost in Him is more glory than manÂ’s greatest acclaim.
The Book of Revelation records the highest honor to ever be given to the saints “And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.” (Revelation 8:3-5)
It is not the great sermons, the songs or the acts of great religious events that ascend to God and become the source of great activities of final redemption in the earth, but the prayers of the saints. Again I speak to say, God reserves the purest of His saints to do battle in prayer for His Kingdom. When the great orators and singers have faded into the night, the light of the chosen prayer warrior will serve to fill heaven with their aroma and earth with GodÂ’s final acts.
Let Him choose you to be His partner in His grandest acts of redemption.