Faithfulness sets the stage

Because it's pre positioning you for an encounter with God that

is going to affect the church, It's going to affect the city

Ankeny. It's going to affect the greater

Des Moines area. It's going to affect the the

state of Iowa, and it's going to affect the heartlands of the

United States. And it's going to affect the

United States as a whole, and it's going to affect missions in

foreign countries. Holy Spirit, I thank you for

this time today. I thank you for the anointing

that's in the atmosphere in this room.

I asked for that fresh anointing upon these lips to speak and let

that same anointing be upon our hearts to hear.

And let your word be a medicine to us this morning.

And let in that word. Let there be released healing,

healing in the name of Jesus. Amen.

If you're struggling with some physical things, I just feel to

encourage you open your heart to the word.

We're told in Proverbs chapter 4, verses 20 through about 22,

Proverbs 4:20

if I remember correctly, that His word is a medicine.

It brings health to our flesh, our physical bodies, and so many

have been the time that we have Faye and I've sat had the

privilege of sitting under the word to wonderful, wonderful

teachers. I think we may have been

privileged to have the best teachers and growing up in the

Lord and many has been the time that the word just as the word

went forth, there was healing in it.

And so as this word goes forth this morning.

Don't be surprised if God doesn't touch you and and so

it's it's vitally important that we get that in in the book of

Jeremiah chapter 6. Jeremiah is speaking to in those

Jeremiah 6 · chapter mention

days, the nation of Israel was divided into two nations, Israel

and Judah. And Israel as a nation had gone

off deeply into idolatry and all kinds of vile expressions of of

rebellion and, and, and at this stage, Judah, who was the last

bastion of the people of his presence, they had begun to go

off. And so God sent a prophet with

with words of medicine, words to correct their their decline and

to and to turn things around and to bring them back into

alignment with his with his heart and with his with his

life. And he he says, Jeremiah release

this word in verse 16 and it says stand in the ways and see

and ask for the old paths for the good way is and walk in it.

And then you will find rest for your souls.

But they said we will not walk in it, we will not do this.

So they had, they had diminished in such a way that their hearts

were already hardened when the Lord brought his message to

them. And it's vitally important that

we not allow that to happen in our lives in any measure, in any

level, at any way, is that we keep our hearts open.

Because if you got your, if you got your heart closed, you can't

receive anything. You're, you're, you're kind of

like this and you're going to fight anything.

If your, if your heart's hardened, if your heart's

closed, you're going to be in a fight mode.

And, and I just want to give a testimony that I've never won a

battle with the Lord. Take that as a word of wisdom.

Don't fight him, but when your heart is open, you're ready to

receive anything. You're going to give everything

to him this way, and you're going to receive everything this

way. And it comes with an open heart.

This is vital, very simple principles, but vital.

And so the the instruction was to stand in the ways of God.

And one of the ways of God is, is faithfulness.

This is his character. He is the God of faithfulness.

He is the personification of faithfulness.

And and so there's these scriptures.

I want to just go right to this. This is the testimony of the

Lord. This is this is how he lives.

This is how he lives his life. He lives his life faithfully.

Listen to these scriptures. Psalms 119 verse 90, speaking to

Psalms 119:90

the Lord. Your faithfulness endures to all

generations. You establish the earth and it

abides. Psalms 36 verse 5.

Psalms 36:5

Your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens.

Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Psalms 89 verse one and two. I will sing of the mercies of

the Lord forever with my mouth. I will make known Your

faithfulness to all generations, for I have said mercy shall be

built up forever. Your faithfulness you shall

establish in the very heavens. And 1st Corinthians chapter one,

verse 9, God is faithful by whom you were called unto the

fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

And so his character, his nature is faithful.

He is never not faithful. There's a double negative for

you. He's never not faithful.

He's always faithful. I, I, I'm amazed and I'm so

thankful. I was just, we were worshiping

and, and the Lord reminded me of I was on the way to Papa Jack

Taylor's memorial service and I, I decided that the best way to

go would be on my motorcycle. And so I rode from Texas.

We did a a service in, in East Texas and, and then I got on my

bike and, and, and headed toward actually Tennessee and up above

Blountville, TN to visit a friend of mine.

And then we were going to drive over to Columbia, SC.

And that's, that's where Dave and I spent some time together

and, and Christopher and it was wonderful time.

And but my wife called me mid trip to tell me to inform me

that she had come down with COVID at the time and that I

should get tested. Well, against, against my

desire, I got tested. And lo and behold, there it was.

And so we stepped, I was supposed to speak in Jack's

memorial service. And so I I told him I don't

think that it would be wise for me to be there.

I don't want to. I don't want to infect anybody

else just in case. And so we made the agreement

and, and he covered for me. I, I don't know who did what or,

or when or how, but I went back to Tennessee and by the time we

got back to Tennessee, it, it went really bad.

It, it just would really went sideways.

The whole thing went sideways and, and man, oh man, my, my

oxygen level went down in the low 80s.

And it got so bad that I remember a night that I

Facetimed Faye and I'm 900 miles away from home on a motorcycle.

And I Facetimed my wife and I, I said, honey, I, I don't know if

I'm going to, I don't know if I'm going to be here in the

morning. And so we said our, we said our

goodbyes not knowing. And that's a, that's a,

something just wrong about that, right?

And, and I woke up the next morning and opened my eyes

thinking that I was going to get to heaven, that that I'm going

to step in and see Jack unexpectedly.

And lo and behold, here I was still here.

And the Lord raised me up and gave me strength.

And I've said to my wife on numerous occasions, and she said

it to me on numerous occasions. Well, you're just not finished

yet. It's the faithfulness of God.

When everything else fails, He never, He never, ever fails in

our hearts and our lives. I can't tell you the amount of

times that we we have have come to the end of resources and had

a huge requirements that were standing in front of us and huge

responsibilities that were standing in front of us and the

resources were not there to be able to do what was given to us

to do only to find out that at the last moment and God loves

last moments. I don't like last moments, but

he loves them and he would come through with with amazing.

We could, we should probably, my wife is saying yes, write a book

on just the provisions that God has given to us and his

faithfulness down through the years and decades actually of of

all of these challenges that come in life, God is faithful.

He is faithful and how many want to have encounters with this

faithful God? Our lives have been encounters

with God, faith from 2 years old up.

I came in later, much later, and then between us as we were

coming up in the fast lane on 48 years of marriage this year.

And yeah, and so. But we have seen His

faithfulness time and time and time and time and time again,

and He has proved to us His character.

He is faithful. He is, He is, and the devil can

choke on it. And so as I was reading and,

and, and preparing my heart, the Lord began to speak to me about

the importance of us being faithful with Him.

And if we're going to have encounters with him, we're going

to, we're going to need to step into the place of faithfulness

because that's where the faithful God resides.

And when we step into the same ambient that he resides in

there, there there is going to be an encounter with him.

Yes or yes or yes or yes, sooner or later there's going to be a

divine appointment, a divine encounter waiting on you,

waiting on me, waiting on us as a collective body with the

faithful God. And when we do that, His, when

we're in an encounter with him, his faithfulness increases in US

and threw us into the world around us and we literally

become the doorway of the Holy Spirit to reach the World around

us by the faithfulness of God. I, I remember we had a, we had a

pastor many years ago when he was a young man.

He worked in a sawmill. He worked in a, a, a lumber mill

up in the north northwest, up in Oregon.

And, and he had, he had become a Christian and, and he was

working in this sawmill and his job was his job is going to

sound a little funny, but some guys will probably pick up on

this. But his job was to feed the hog.

You know what that means? The hog in the sawmill was a

wood chipper. And he would take these limbs as

they came down the, the, the conveyor belt and, and he would,

and he would make sure that they went into the hog and he fed the

hog and, and one day his, he, he was, he was feeding the hog and

there was a limb that got stuck on the conveyor belt.

And so against his better judgement, he, he got up on the

edge and he started kicking the log and his shoelaces, his boot

laces got hung up in the, in the conveyor belt and it jerked him

up on the conveyor belt. And he's headed for the hog.

And he can't, because there's, there's only so much room he

can't lean up to, to reach down there to get his shoe done.

And so he's laying there and, and he, he, he began wondering

what it's going to be like for the thing to start chewing him

up at his feet and come up his body because he's going to be,

he's going to be conscious of this for a long time before no

more consciousness. And so just before he gets to

the teeth of the hog, the whole meal shuts down right before he

gets there. The reason that the mill shut

down was he had a friend in another section of the of the

sawmill. And his friend knew that he was

faithful and his work started backing up.

And when he saw that his work was backing up, he hit the

button to shut the whole meal down.

Faithfulness is seriously important.

Being faithful will save your life countless times.

I think when we get to heaven, there's going to be a lot of

video that God's going to show us about the times where He was

faithful in our life that we didn't even know that He was

being faithful. He kept us from things that we

didn't even know about. And oh, how we're going to sing

and dance and praise and love Him and adore Him.

Even greater still, it's important.

God wants us to move into the place where we are faithful with

what He gives us to do. We are faithful in our

relationships. That goes to me.

That goes without saying. In our marriage relationships,

faithfulness is of the utmost importance, isn't it?

And so we need to be faithful. We're faithful in the ministry

that God gives to us. We're faithful in the jobs that

he gives to us, whether it's in the church or in, in what we

consider the secular world, which I, I no longer consider it

the secular world. I consider it all the Kingdom of

God. And it's all of our territory

and, and all of it belongs to us.

And and that and all of it is our pulpits.

And you've got pulpits that I don't have and I've got pulpits

that you don't have. But but when we're being

faithful and we work together and we walk together and we're

faithful and we stay in our lane that God gives to us and quit

wandering about wondering so well, what's going to be in that

field over there? No, no, no, no, stay in the lane

that God's given you because that's going to pre position you

for an encounter with him. I want to say that again,

staying in your faithfulness with what God's given you to do

is going to pre position you for encounters with Him, and those

encounters with Him is going to change history.

Even if you think that your life and your job or your occupation

or what you do every day is seemingly unimportant, it's not

true. That's a lie.

What God has given you to do, honestly, He's put you there as

a door for the Holy Spirit to bring the Kingdom into that

place. And so our faithfulness matters,

and it matters to the people around us, and it will matter to

our own physical well-being. It's very, very, very important.

I don't know how many stories I've gotten, and I'm not going

to go into it, but, well, here's one.

I was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and the pastor put us in a in in a

in a hotel. And the hotel was a former

Russian army barracks and, and it had the original beds with

the original mattresses, which were about an inch and a half

thick by this time in life. And you could, you had to be

careful the way you shifted in your bed because rough sawn

lumber was underneath it. And those things would come

right through the mattress. So you had to be careful.

And, and I remember that breakfast came with this, with

this wonderful room and, and I can recognize most things that

I'm eating, but there was part of the meal the next morning

that I did not recognize, nor did it taste edible.

My, my suspicion is, is that the cooks got word that there was an

Americansky in the hotel and that they had something special

for me. And I don't know what that thing

was. It was a black, I don't know

what it was. And it tasted as bad as it

looked. And so after breakfast, I said

to this, I had a young intern, Korean intern with me that they

wanted to send so that he could get some experience and

missions. And boy did he I, I looked at

him and I said, young, boom, let's, let's, let's go for a

walk. This, this, this meal was so

bad. Let's go for a walk.

And it was A and there's a morning much more snow.

There was about two feet of snow on the ground and the wind was

blowing. And, and so we decided that we

would just go outside the door and and walk around the building

and come back. And so we did.

We walked outside and it was cold, cold, cold like this

morning. And, and we walked around the

building and we can't. By the time we got back to the

front of the building, here was a Russian captain with two

privates waiting on us. And he's screaming at the top of

his lungs. You arrogant American who gave

you the right to take a walk. And so the Holy Spirit reminded

me agree with your adversary quickly.

And I said to him, and, and I mean, I know guns and those guns

were, I was hoping that they were not well oiled because

their, their safety was off and their, the, the private fingers

were, were, were shaking on the trigger.

And they had that they had a gun on my nose and a gun on young

Boom's nose. And and so I agreed with my

adversary quickly and I said, yes, yes, you're right.

I am an and I'm, I am an arrogant American.

Nobody gave me permission to take a walk.

Please forgive me. I didn't know that I needed

permission, but now I know. And he calmed down the next the,

the, the veins in his neck went down and he redness left his

face and calm down. And he let us go and.

And it was the faithfulness of God to remind me a simple, a

very simple scripture. Agree with your adversary

quickly. And when I did that, it disarmed

the entire situation. God's faithfulness will be with

you when you need it, as you need it.

And he will quicken your your thinking.

He'll quicken your mind. Now go with me in your mind.

Anyway, we don't have time to read it all, but but in Genesis

Genesis 24 · chapter mention

chapter 24, you've got the story of Abraham wanting a wife for

his son Isaac. And he says to his faithful

servant, go to my country, go to my people, go to my DNA, go to

my culture that I came from and find a wife for my son.

And so he gave, this is amazing because Abraham is was arguably

the richest man on the face of the earth at that time.

And Abraham gave all of his wealth, all of his riches to

this servant, put them on, they loaded everything on 10 camels.

And he takes a journey. It's a long journey, quite a,

quite a ways, months long journey to get to this, this

region where Abraham came from. And, and so as the servant

approached this region, he came to a well and he didn't know

what to do. So he prayed, Lord, if if a

woman comes to the well and, and she, and I asked of her a, a

drink of water, she'll give me a drink of water.

And then she will say to me, I will not only give you water,

I'm going to, I'm going to draw water for all your camels.

Well, he had 10 camels. A camel can drink 40 gallons at

one drink. They will drink 40 gallons of

water. And he had 10.

That's 400 gallons of water at 8.345, I think if I remember

correctly, pounds per gallon. And, and she says to him, you

drink and I'm going to give your camels to drink.

And she did it with such a joy, such a, such a, a heart of, of,

of of service, such a heart of faithfulness.

And he stood there and he watched her give drink to 10

camels. He never lifted a finger.

In fact, he just stood there and he watched her to see if she was

going to be faithful to her word.

And when, when she was, he said to her, Whose daughter are you?

And lo and behold, she was the daughter of a, of a relative of

Abraham. And when he heard that, he

rejoiced. And he said, God has been

faithful. God has led me, God has brought

me to the right DNA. He's brought me to the right

family. He's brought me to the right

one. And, and, and he put gold

bracelets on her and a gold ring in her nose.

Now she had no idea what was going to happen that day she

came the the tradition is that they would come morning and

evening, two times a day. A a job that is is full of

drudgery. A job that is, that is not

glamorous in any way, a job that nobody else wants.

And yet here is Rebecca. She comes, She's learned from

her father faithfulness. She's learned from her mother

faithfulness. She's learned from the

matriarchs in her, in her, in her village, faithfulness.

It's been, it's been modeled in front of her.

And she's gotten this wonderful, wonderful principle down in her

heart and down in her life, so much so that she was full of joy

and willing to go above and beyond anything that anybody

would ever ask. This is the joy of the Lord.

And, and she says to the servant, I'm going to, I'm going

to draw all water for your, your camels as well.

And then he says to her, now, now that was three.

I got it on, on my notes. It's 3338 lbs of water that this

girl drew and poured out, drew and poured out, drew and poured

out until they were finished drinking.

Well, let me tell you something. That's a that's a day's work,

isn't it? Hello.

You all awake? I mean, pulling out the back of

your arms is going to be screaming.

But this woman was practiced at what she had done and and she

did it with joy. She did it with joy.

This is this is speaking a word to us.

If you've got ears to hear, hear it because what God is giving to

you to do for God has placed you the position that he has placed

you in. He wants you and he wants me and

he wants us as a collective body to be faithful in such a way

that we're doing it out of the joy of the Lord.

She moved beyond the the idea of drudgery and just work, hard

labor. She moved beyond that to be able

to do that with a heart of joy and a heart of servitude that

reflected the faithfulness of her father, the faithfulness of

her mother, and the faithfulness of her God.

To hear this, what God has given each one of us to do is vitally,

vitally important. And as we are faithful in what

He has given us to do, until drudgery is turned to joy, then

something is is is is lined up properly, then you're ready for

encounters with the living God. In this story of Genesis 24, the

servant is is representative of the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit was going after a bride for the Son.

And the bride for the Son would have never, ever, ever been

there on that day had it not been established in her to be

faithful. Imagine if that morning she had

gotten up and said, I don't, I don't want to do this today.

I mean, I remember my wife tells a story that her older brother

would pay her a quarter to haul the firewood in just so that he

wouldn't have to do it because it was a, it was a work of

drudgery. And she would gladly take his

quarter and she would gladly do it.

And somewhere along the line in her heart, it's just, there's a

faithfulness in faith. It's just there, period.

She's going to be doing those kind of things.

She, Rebecca didn't do that. Rebecca was faithful with what

was given to her to do, not knowing that it was pre

positioning her for an encounter with the living God and it was

going to change her life, her family's life, and it was going

to literally change the entire history of planet earth hinged

on this faithful girl. She was faithful with what was

given to her to do. Lord, give us your faithfulness.

Birth it in US develop it now the development of the of the

wonderful fruit of the character of God called faithfulness is

not necessarily going to be pleasant.

You're going to have to get up in the morning when you don't

want to get up in the morning. You're going to have to engage

when you don't want to engage. You're going to have to do

things that you don't want to do.

I can't tell you and I'm I'm well, no, Pastor Dave, I'm sure

he has never said this, but I have.

I've said to the Lord on numerous occasions facing

challenges in the ministry. Really.

I did not sign up for this. To which he quickly reminds me,

Oh yes, you did. And he would take me back to

this experience that I had with the Lord one time where in a

vision, open vision, he took me and he put a, he took me to a

desk and there was a piece of paper, a blank piece of paper

there and an ink pen there. And, and he said to me, sign it.

What am I signing? He says, no, don't worry about

it, I'll fill it in later. Sign it.

When we sign up to walk with God, we're signing up for

faithfulness regardless of circumstances, regardless of

situations. And so I want to say to every

individual in the room, staff members that are here,

volunteers that are here, just just those of you that are that

are coming on on Sundays and Wednesdays and and prayer times

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays. Be faithful with what God has

given you to do because it's pre positioning you for an encounter

with God. That is going to affect the

church. It's going to affect the city

Ankeny. It's going to affect the greater

Des Moines area. It's going to affect the the

state of Iowa, and it's going to affect the heartlands of the

United States, and it's going to affect the United States as a

whole, and it's going to affect missions in foreign countries.

And as we are faithful, the faithful God is going to step

into our hand. He's going to put his hands

inside of our hands. He's going to put his feet

inside of our feet. He's going to put his eyes, his

vision inside of our vision, and he's going to put his words in

our mouth. And the faithful God will be

faithful to the people who need this, but we also have to be

faithful with what he's given us to do, otherwise we're going to

miss it and otherwise other people are going to hurt.

For that. It's vitally important.

My pastor, when he was a young man, thank God he had a friend

that recognized his faithfulness.

Otherwise he would have never been our pastor.

He'd have been chewed up, period.

And so God's calling each and every one of us to his

faithfulness. He's calling each and every one

of us to His wonderful, wonderful anointing to to change

the earth. Rebecca's faithfulness prepared

her heart to joyfully give herself above and beyond what

others would be willing to do. Rebecca's faithfulness

positioned her to receive an opportunity from God Himself

that blessed her in untold riches both naturally and

spiritually. Rebecca was faithful in the

least responsibility and that positioned her to be in the

lineage of Messiah by getting up, going and getting the water,

carrying it back to her family morning and evening, morning and

evening, morning and evening. We don't know how old she was.

We don't know how many times she had done this in her life, but

the girl was faithful. She was faithful with what was

given her to do. And God is saying to Heartland

Church, he's saying to me, saying to faith, He's saying to

all of us as individuals and as a collective body of Christ, be

faithful in the least. And I'm going to make you ruler

over much. Be faithful in what seems to be

a drudgery today because there's going to come joy in your heart

as you're doing this sooner or later.

If, if, if you yield your heart for the disciplines and the

maturing process that the Holy Spirit brings into our lives.

This is vitally important. Don't be casting your vision out

somewhere else. Just stay in your lane.

Do what God's given you to do and you're you're destined for

an encounter with the living God that will open up untold riches

naturally and spiritually. Hey, thanks for watching.

At Heartland Church, we love to worship the Lord and we love His

Word. In fact, if you could jump on

and subscribe to our YouTube channel, you could make sure

that you don't miss any of the services.

We'd love to have you join us live or in person every week.

See you next time.