— Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise the Lord! This is one of those occasions when I have wrestled more than usual. But I appreciate the things Joel shared and I believe, in a sense, that they are a foundation for what I’m about to share, because it’s not gonna sound like it’s about prayer, but it is, because that’s where all of this, the thoughts that I’ve had on my heart, lead.
And I think…I doubt I’m gonna say anything new and revolutionary. But, many times when the Lord is giving out a truth, He’s putting it layer on layer on layer and He’s building…many times we’re looking at the same thing from slightly different points of view so we get a bigger three-dimensional picture, if you will.
And I’m gonna go ahead and mostly use very familiar scriptures. I’m gonna use one as a jumping-off point that we’re very familiar with in Philippians chapter 1. And this is Paul, of course, writing from prison to the church in Philippi.
Verse 3: “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you…” (NIV). So, Paul was a praying man, wasn’t he? He didn’t just write, he prayed. “…I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Thank God, that’s an awesome scripture we often quote, and it’s sort of like...the sense that I think we typically get is, man, life is tough, it’s confusing, I don’t know…a lot of times I don’t know what’s going on, but I know how it’s gonna turn out! And I know God’s over all and He’s gonna make it all happen.
And that’s certainly true, but there’s another dimension to this, because this work had begun prior to when Paul was talking about and it was going to continue, but in the meantime, He was working! There was something He was actually seeking to do and to accomplish. So, it wasn’t just about the future.
You know, I remember something from the group that Sue and I both grew up in, different churches, different areas, but it was a missionary-oriented group. And it was very common for us to have missionary conferences in which a foreign missionary would come and hold some meetings, youth conferences or youth rallies, summer camps with special speakers.
And one of the common emphases that we would have would be a service directed at the young people. And I see, of all Sundays, a lot of them are gone. But nonetheless, a service directed at young people and the thrust of it was, are you willing to dedicate your life to seeking God’s will? And the thought was pretty much, are you willing to go to a foreign mission field if He calls you? Are you willing to be a minister, whatever? Are you willing just to surrender your life and do God’s will?
And I’ll guarantee that if I had asked somebody, did that only apply to people who were going into full-time Christian service they would have said, of course not! Everybody needs to know God’s will. Somehow, it came across that way. That’s the way we sort of looked at it because the whole emphasis was on, do you…are you willing, if God calls you to be a missionary, are you willing to do that? And so, it’s almost like seeking the will of God in a very particular way is for the ‘special ones.’ That’s for…that’s for full-time Christian service, being a missionary and a pastor and all that kind of thing.
But I believe with all my heart, God wants to bring us to a place where we realize that God has a purpose for every single life. God has a purpose for your life. If you’re His, He has a path for you to run. He has things for you to do. It’s not just about what we are, the kind of person we are. Jesus didn’t come to earth to be a nice guy and show us how wonderful God was. He came to do the will of His Father. There were works that God gave Him to do and He did them. There were all kinds of things in which people saw God in action.
And that’s what God wants from every one of us, to see that people will be able to experience God in action. Now certainly that has everything to do with the relationship in the Body of Christ, but even outside. God is looking for a people in whom He can live and not just simply, I’m gonna be a nice guy because Christ lives in me. There’s stuff He has for me to do.
And I think it’s something we need to be a lot more conscious of. And I thank God for the degree that we are, but this is part of deeper life. That I’m not just here to mark time and to kind of learn to be a better person and say no to bad stuff and yes to good stuff and smile more often and be freer. All that’s true, but it is for a reason. We’re here, not just to conquer the old nature and obtain the new one. God has stuff for us to do.
And let’s look at just some very familiar scriptures that mention this, in particular, because I want us to see it in this context. And of course, Ephesians 2 is certainly one where Paul is laying out the Gospel and the fact that it’s God reaching out to us. We didn’t reach for Him. He reached for us when we were lost and dead in sin and all of that.
But he says in verse 8, the familiar scripture, “For it is by grace you have been saved…” God intervening, in other words, “…through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…” See, even that comes from Him. And it’s, “…not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Okay, that’s very plain. But, it’s awfully easy to forget verse 10. “For we are God’s handiwork…” Okay, what’s that about? “…Created in Christ Jesus to…” be good people. Wait a minute! “…Created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
You see where the emphasis needs to be there? God has actually stuff that He knew about before the foundation of the world that He meant for you, if you’re a member of the Body of Christ, to do! Do we think that way? Or do we fall into the trap of, well, doing God’s work is for people who preach, they may hold Bible studies, they might sing, they might lead a prayer meeting, they might do this, they might start a program. And the rest of us, well, we just are church members. We just come and we participate and yeah, we might sweep the church or do something else in a practical sense, but we’re just basically God’s people.
You know, the church has fallen into, over the millennia now, a terrible trap in which we have divided up the Kingdom of God into the clergy and the laity. And, in our own past, it was the ministry and the people, like it was almost an Old Testament order where you had these special people that heard from God and the rest of us were just supposed to sit there and listen.
And, you know, there are definitely gifts that we need to listen to and respect, but my God has made every single one of us a member—a vital member of the Body of Christ. Okay? I’m jumping ahead in a way, but let me look at, very quickly, at scriptures here.
1st Corinthians 12, where Paul is going into the gifts of the Spirit and the ones he mentions there, in particular, are supernatural ones. In a sense they’re…the reality is they’re all supernatural. If you’re the kind of a person that people can see Christ in, it’s supernatural, even if you’re doing something that somebody might regard as ordinary.
( congregational amens ).
I mean, how about the lady…I think Dorcas was in some of the translations? Her name was Dorcas, in Joppa. She was a sister in the church and Peter was residing there at the particular time, and she died, and everybody from the village of Joppa was there weeping and showing him all the clothes that she had made, the things that she had done that were…you could call them charitable works.
But there was something very different about what she did, because it wasn’t simply, oh, this is a charitable person, we need to honor all the things…this was not a ‘do-gooder.’ This was not just a human thing. This was Christ, in her, reaching out and when people received the things that she made for them, they were…Christ was in action. They actually experienced Christ, in a very particular way, and it drew them to Him. Not just, oh, thanks for this wonderful piece of clothing. Do you see how, even an ordinary thing, infused with the life of Christ becomes extraordinary, becomes supernatural?
Now, yes, it could be performing a miracle. But anyway, let me get back to this. This passage is about the spiritual gifts and how every one’s necessary. Let me see where I was trying to get. Verse 27…this was something that Brother Thomas used to read in the King James. “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” (KJV). I think is the reading there…that each one of you is a part of it.
But just out of curiosity, this is one thing I did look up. And the underlying meaning of the word is everyone has an allotment, a share, a division. And my mind went to how the Lord arranged things in Israel. How many of you remember how He allotted the land to everybody and the idea was every single Israelite had an inheritance that belonged to them? They had the freedom to use it, to raise crops, to raise herds, to live, to be charitable, to…anyway, this is my place.
And what a picture that is of what God has done…wants to do for us! If you’re a member of the Body of Christ, you have a place that is uniquely yours! No one else can fill it!
( congregational amens ).
No one else can fill it! How many of you know that the whole concept, the modern concept we have of private property comes from the Law of Moses that God established in Israel? That every person had an inviolable…don’t you dare move the boundary markers. This belongs to so-and-so, generation after generation. This is theirs.
Well, folks, you have a place if you’re part of the Body of Christ, that is yours. And so, the question is, what do we do with it, and how do we discover that?
So anyway, another scripture we have used many times in Ephesians chapter 4, and again, this is talking about how Christ, “…ascended up on high…and gave gifts…” (NIV). He gives supernatural ability so that we can be what God has called us to be. And, yes, there are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. But the purpose of God giving those particular gifts is not just to do everything so we can sit here like little birds with our mouths open, but rather, it’s to equip, equip, equip the Body of Christ so they can do the work that God has called them to do. These works that God has foreordained, that He mentions back in chapter 2. Okay?
And so, the whole order of things…okay, I don’t want to read it all because we’ve read this so many times. But what He’s given is so that we can, “…reach unity in the faith…” verse 13, and, “…become mature…” and enter the, “…whole measure of, the fullness of Christ.”
But now, he says we can avoid the bad stuff but, in verse 15, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him…” From whom? From Christ. Where do I get…where are we supposed to get what we do? From Him, right?
“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love…” How? “…As each part does its work.” Do you see that concept is just built in to God’s vision of how the Kingdom of God works? God’s purpose for this church involves every single person discovering and walking in the will of God for you! Okay?
In Romans 12, we’ve read this many times. I think I can just refer to this, but this is where we…that we take many bodies and we present them as a single sacrifice. We are many…we’re individual people, but yet we collectively come and say, Lord, we belong to You. We offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, come and live in us, change the way we think, and as a result of that, now we’re gonna live out the reality of the Body of Christ.
Each one is going to receive something from Christ, but it’s not so we can just say, wow, isn’t that wonderful? It is because…it’s something that enables us to share with others and to express Christ’s life!
( congregational amens ).
You think about our human body. How many of our parts—the parts of our human body just exist for themselves? You know, I made the point before. You call that cancer, something that just takes and doesn’t give. But I’ll tell you, every single part is energized by the life that lives in this body, and it’s meant to contribute to the welfare and the function of the whole. That’s why my sore joints this morning need to do their part a little better.
( laughter ).
But anyway, that’s part of living in these bodies. But you know, I wonder how many times we’ve got sore joints in the Body of Christ that the Lord wants to heal? He wants us to become more…stronger with more of a sense of purpose.
And you know, it goes back to what Joel said. How do we discover that? That’s that relationship where we’re looking to God. But anyway, the basic thought of all of this, that God has a purpose for our lives is, again, it’s not just the special ones. It’s not just about heaven. But it’s about life here.
And it’s not just about being, it’s about doing. See, that’s God’s purpose for every single one of us. All right? Well, you know I think we understand that a lot of things in us that hinder us. It’s not just the impatience, which we all share, Brother Joel, but many things in us…a lot of it is just the idea that we become so comfort-oriented. We have what we call the comfort zone. We all know the expression. We get used to life being a certain way. We think ease and peace and all those things in the natural sense is the goal of life. I want to just find a place where I can feel…
( deep sigh ).
I’m comfortable, I’m at ease. Well, what if the Lord wants to lift you up and take you someplace and do something that’s uncomfortable? He certainly did that with Paul. You think Paul’s the only one? No, he’s not, is he?
And a lot of it I alluded to before. Unbelief is a biggie! We get to the point where we can say, yay God, I heard about somebody being raised from the dead! Isn’t that awesome? But that could never happen here.
That’s what we…you know, that’s kind of the underlying lie that takes over. I could never be that way. God could never do anything through me. Look at me. I’m this. And the devil has got us wound up with so many lies that are contrary to the Word of God.
It has nothing to do with human qualification! There’s not one of us here that’s qualified to do anything of eternal value. You know, religion values people who are charismatic in the sense that their personalities just naturally draw attention. They have a power with words. They can speak and people come. And so, religious works are built around personalities that people come and oh, this man has so much to give and I just soak it all in and then I go and I live my life.
God, what a perversion of the Kingdom of God that is! You know, we’ve heard the expression many times, ‘God does not call the qualified, He qualifies the called.’ How many times does God take the most unlikely person and use them in an amazing way?
And I think I have referred to this example before, seems like we keep coming up with stuff that happened in A. B. Simpson’s day, but this was one. There was a woman, I believe in his congregation, named, Sophie the washerwoman. Now, you could not have found a more unlikely person to have an influence in the Kingdom of God than Sophie the washerwoman. She was uneducated, poor as whatever…Job’s turkey or whoever, made a subsistence living, barely, just doing laundry.
But that isn’t what her life was about. She didn’t sit there saying, oh, my God, why doesn’t He do better by me? I’m so poor. I’m nobody. She just gave herself to the Lord, and there was a quality in her spirit that just reached out and touched people, and she led more people to the Lord just by the Lord being in her, in her simplicity, than somebody who went to seminary and doesn’t have what Joel was talking about, this relationship with the Lord. She had the reality, and God did amazing works and people are still talking about her over a hundred years later!
Isn’t that amazing? I’ll tell you, it’s going to be interesting on the Day of Judgment, when we find out who really did something that mattered from eternity’s standpoint. I’ll tell you, God knows, doesn’t He? Praise the Lord!
But anyway, I think one of the hindrances is we don’t realize the depth of our need. We think, I’m okay, I’m a good person. I don’t do bad stuff. And I go…I participate in church. I lift my hands when we are supposed to lift our hands. I praise the Lord. I’m okay, as though that’s, again…does God have a purpose in your life beyond that?
( congregational amens ).
The correct answer is, yes. Praise God! And I talked about how the devil has got so many lies that bottle people up. We’ve talked about this so many times. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. But, if you have allowed the devil to define who you think you are, you need to be delivered, because God says you’re His child.
( congregational amens ).
You’re not somebody way down here, worthless. You are worth Jesus Christ shedding His blood on the Cross, and sitting on a throne and lifting you up to that place. You are His child! I don’t care who you are in the eyes of people, or even in your own eyes! We are His! He has purchased us at the price of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Oh, don’t ever let the world or the devil define you. We need to realize who we are and the fact that if we can do anything, it’s not based upon who we are. He raised us from the dead, for crying out loud! He is the One who knows. He’s the One who’s prepared works for us to do. My job is to seek Him and discover that and do them!
Isn’t that how Jesus lived His life? He spent time with His Father. He said, Father, tell me what to do. And He did it. And His life was not lived out just in being…like I said, in being a good person. It meant taking a detour through Samaria, because there was a woman there who needed Him. It meant getting in a boat, braving a bad storm so He could go across the Sea of Galilee to rescue a demon-possessed man, maniac, and deliver him as a testimony to everybody.
God set aside all the other agenda of heaven to send His Son to that man! You think about the awesome God that we have and the things that He sent His Son to do. It wasn’t just the kind of person He was, it was the deeds that God sent Him to do. And, of course, ultimately, it was the Cross itself! Thank God!
But you know, one of the other hindrances is, when we do rely on our natural abilities. And we think, I know why God called me. I got all this natural ability. Man, I’m gonna really give it all I got. Peter was kind of like that, wasn’t he? He had to learn some things. He was one that…some people are just reticent. They’re gonna hold back and not put themselves out. Peter was halfway down the road before you could finish telling him what to do.
But I’ll tell you, we need to have a lack of pride, a humility. We need to realize that we need the Lord. And we need to realize that natural ability is not what we need. We need supernatural clothing by the Spirit of God to make us a different person.
