Pathway to Permanence

I want to talk to you about the pathway to permanence.

Would you say those words with me?

The pathway to permanence.

Not talking about some stodgy, we've all arrived, and there we're at the top of our game, and we'll never get any better and become impressed with our accomplishments and just settle down, so to speak, permanence in that sense.

But I'm talking about permanence in the solidity of our footings, permanence in the clarity of our call and mission in life.

A satisfying sense of permanence and knowing I am the Lord's.

Not through any merit of my own, was already well established and sung about the grace of God today.

Pastor's been preaching about that for several weeks.

I'm aware of that.

So when I talk about permanence, it brings us to a place of confidence of our position in the Lord.

We know it's through no attainment of our ours or through some self-sufficiency we arrogate to ourselves.

But the permanence that comes of knowing I will never change.

I have set my heart on Jesus.

He will never change, and thereby the confidence I have of whatever I am facing can never overthrow me.

It may stun me.

It may shake me, but not shake my faith.

There's a world of difference between shaking you and shaking your faith.

And I want to talk about the pathway to that, and I want to talk about it on the basis of having just gone through the three most difficult years of my life.

Two of those years I was here with you for this occasion, the beginning of this week, which Robert so graciously I feel is lavish.

In fact, I've figured that any of you that uh have the boldness, if I were you, not only would I say something about don't call him a compare well, compare, say Apostle Paul and Pastor Jack in the same words, don't do that.

But also, you might want to raise question if you have any reserve about it, that he entrusts this platform to an 80-year-old man every year who kind of stumbles when he walks now.

In fact, one time I was here, it was we had some event during the week, I think it was when we were introducing the Kings, uh, moving to be based here in Dallas.

And on that occasion, uh I had just fallen down and broken my nose with a nose this size you couldn't miss.

And uh so I was uh all beat up in black and blue.

Not many of you would have been there.

It was just a, oh, there's probably what six, eight hundred people that come to that session and uh that were wanting to inquire into the kings.

Speaking of the kings, by the way, Robert leaned over to me a few minutes ago and said, Would you tell about what happened?

I think we were we were up there at one of those places in the balcony.

Uh the weekend that the church opened.

And uh the the it was this weekend, the church opened at the first services were, I think, like in November, but it was the first uh conference, and it was that first Sunday that we were standing up there talking, and he said, What did you tell about that?

And he said, But can you do it in a minute?

I said, Robert, I can't do anything in a minute.

I haven't even started the story, and I've been talking a minute about it.

Uh it's significant because I did want to mention the relationship that we have that uh is so gratifying now that the Kings is based here, and there's a there's a significantly longer story behind this, but the brief one is this.

That in November, what how many years ago would this be?

Two, three, three three years.

Three years ago in the month of November, I was with the Lord in my quiet time one day, and the Lord just engraved it on me.

He didn't speak to me, it was like an engraving came onto my soul that I just saw as though it were a kind of a brand that didn't burn, but it settled into you.

And it said in printing on my soul, that was uh you could just read with perfect clarity, said the King's University based Dallas Gateway Church.

And I thought that makes sense given the ever-spreading dimension of the Kings, the multiple campuses just across the United States that are rising to here in the center of the nation have the key, and at a church where there's a vibrant uh testimony and a reputation that gives reason and credence to there being a university to rise in that environment.

And so it made sense, uh, and I but it wasn't because it made sense, it's because I was so impressed with it, and I thought, you know, I'm I don't know how to tell this to Robert because we had founded the school in Van Nuys, though with the passing of time uh I was feeling that that was not necessarily always to be the base, but I didn't have any idea until that impression came profoundly.

It was when I was here just a few weeks later that Robert and I were standing up in the balcony, and remember this was when we were just getting into the sanctuary, only weeks in in the first first conference here.

And I said, I had said between the services in the morning service, I said, Robert, take me up so I can look down from up there where we stood when the building was in process, because we were way up there, and uh it was it was a mess.

And I there was right where I'm standing right now, I mean below here, the roof wasn't enclosed above, it had rained, there was a mud hole down here, there were no seats in, there were the concrete risers where the seats would go later upstairs.

And I said, take me up, and we went up, and while we were standing there, I said to him, Robert, while we were looking down here, I said, I'm gonna share something with you that the Lord put on my heart.

And I said, I think it was the Lord.

If it doesn't resonate with you, it's not the Lord.

I would never try to exploit our relationship or to urge something.

It could seem arrogant to suggest, but if it's anything that resonates to you, then here's what it is.

And I described to him what I just did about the Lord saying, the central campus of Gateway, of the King's University being at Gateway Church.

And when I said that, feeling almost just with a bit of trepidation, not because I'm afraid of his persona, but I was afraid of seeming, would I be seemed to impose or attempt to impose something on him.

And he looked at me when I said that, I said, Robert, I believe that the future of the kings is to be based here.

And uh he looked at me and he said, just like this, Pastor Jack, three weeks ago I was with the Lord in my morning time with him.

And he said, Robert, if Pastor Jack asked you to have Gateway, to have Gateway be the host site, the central site of the King's University, would that be alright with you?

And Robert said to me, and I said to the Lord, Yes.

You know what most impressed me about that?

First, of course, was that it confirmed what I felt.

But I've never had God say to me, if it's all right with you.

I'm only apostle.

I think this is the fourth member of the Trinity.

I'm gonna tell you about something that happened to me four days ago.

But it relates very much to what's been going on for the last three and a half years, broaching four years now.

I've gone through, I think I said a few moments ago, the most difficult time of my life.

This is entirely a physiological thing.

You have trials through the years, you have growth pains all your life, of things God's doing in you and that he wants to call you to do and for you to believe for and see your way through.

And uh things of growing a family.

You know, there's a lot of things that challenge you in life, but this was something that was entirely physiological, and there was no fast way around it.

Takes too long to describe.

I made reference to it on another occasion that I was here.

I don't want the point, isn't about my problem.

The point is that it was so uh disarming, uh limiting, frustrating in so many ways, and coming at a time of my life where my vulnerability to slower recovery than you would I have otherwise, all of these things played into uh a great bit of frustration because I have been a pretty active person all my life, and uh it just was very debilitating.

And equilibrium problems, uh great difficulties with memory that were not because of being 80 years of age, though that would be a legitimate reason.

It was because of an explainable thing that was a response, my physiological response to an extended uh surgery between seven and eight hours and an anesthetic to cover that time when I was 77 years of age.

And those who know anything of such things know that there's an aftermath to that, to different ways that affects different people.

And in all of that, there's been a very slow comeback, and uh generally life has proceeded, and I can speak and do things that uh doesn't seem much to notice, but I notice it a lot, and it's very frustrating.

By and large, this is washed on by.

I've said to a few people, I said to uh Pastor Robert not long ago, I said, Robert, I seem to me like I'm me again.

But uh I said, I'm gonna ask you if I seem to you like me again, and if I don't, well, please break it to me casually because I'm hoping that maybe I'm about to get there.

And uh I don't uh he he was cautious in his response, I might say, which was not encouraging.

But he was reasonably affirming for me to believe I'd made headway, but with a lack of conviction that was sufficient for me to say, look out to you today, because who knows what I may say.

At any rate, uh four days ago as we stepped into the new year, stepping toward it, it was New Year's Eve.

I was uh up early in the morning as I usually am, my time with the Lord and is at the fireplace in our house.

It's one you can turn on right now, and I'll throw uh some wood on it and sit there and read the word, be with the Lord.

And I love it like that early in the morning hours, uh especially at this time of year that use the fireplace.

And I said, Lord, I would like you to uh give me uh a book to start reading at the beginning of the new year.

And just like just like that, Joshua.

It was as clear, clear and quick an answer as I could expect, read read Joshua.

And uh I felt particularly good about that because of what Joshua was doing when he was taking that leadership role at that time, and it was a breakthrough into a new time, moving into the land as they came to the Jordan River.

And that's how the book begins.

And the essence of the book is in really three central pieces you can say that put it together.

And I want to note those things because I knew so no sooner had felt this strong rise of joy in me than it lapsed over into my first reaction was, hey, don't just get excited because the Lord spoke to you so clearly, read Joshua, and now extend it further than is what he whereas he's extended it and speaking it to you.

But I felt, he said, and speak from that from Joshua to the people at Gateway, what I give you about you.

Well, I don't mind doing that, but I didn't want to just presume that that was a shortcut because I already had another message shaping up, and it wasn't a matter of feeling uh lazy about getting something else.

In fact, I felt really quickened about it.

In fact, I called Robert because I'd told him what I was gonna talk about, and I said, you know, I think that I'm gonna do this.

He says, Pastor, whatever you you feel, I trust you, and uh that didn't surprise me, but I wanted at least prepare him for the shock because uh I wasn't gonna have a lot of time to prepare this, which is probably for your sake a good thing.

Now, I want to give you the gist of two things about this.

The first thing has to do with uh as I discuss the pathway to permanence, which I've already mentioned, I want to uh talk about the issues of this book as Joshua experienced it.

But my passion in addressing you, I have a passion to invite each of you, and they're gonna put these three uh pairs of words up on the overhead right on the uh uh PowerPoint right now.

I have a passion to invite each of you to a new season of faith that would bring a deeper attitudinal health.

Attitudinal health, of course, has to do with abandoning doubt, of not being affected by fears, of coming to a place where there is a confrontation with yourself in places that you would be tempted to entertain unforgiveness, feeling justified and being ticked off at somebody.

That's not attitudinal health.

We would come to a place of uh also personal growth.

Personal growth, never taking growth for granted.

At 80 years, I began my life with Jesus at a decision I made when I was 10 years old.

I was raised in a household where I was raised in the way of the Lord, but I received Jesus when I was 10.

When I was 16, I answered a call to the ministry.

I answered it.

I knew all my life I knew I was supposed to be a pastor.

I didn't nobody ever told me that.

I just knew it.

I didn't want to tell anybody.

If you tell a kid, when they say, What do you want to be when you grow up?

And you say, I want to be a pastor, well, they'll raz you to the wall.

But uh at any rate, I uh but I had never really made a commitment to that till I was 16.

And then entered the ministry uh six years after that, graduated from high school, then went through Bible college, and later did graduate studies while we were already out in the ministry.

But there was a uh all those years of walking with the Lord, if there's anything that I don't feel is is highly knowledgeable, I don't feel profoundly experienced.

I don't feel that I ever am beyond the need to hear something of a correction from the Lord or from somebody else even younger than me in the Lord, which is not difficult to find, uh, to yield to a sensitive heart, a correctable, a correctability.

This is something that is really an issue of personal growth for us, because we tend to think that growth is at some point of arrival, so that when I speak in the theme of a pathway to permanence, it's a place where we come, well, now I've sort of got there.

You know, but the fact is that as soon as my thumbs go in my pocket for that, you know, I'm starting to pull myself backwards, or I've stunted my growth that the Lord has for me.

This matter of a pathway to permanence is a permanence of an attitudinal health and a personal attitude toward growth, and all these things lead to a practical fruitfulness.

Because fruitfulness is intended to continue for a lifetime, and those things come to times of regular renewal.

And the beauty of the first conference is that brings us to the reminder that there is always the need for a renewal.

When you say first, we can only do first so many times.

I don't know how many years since the first conference here at Gateway Church, but uh many of you have been through a number of them, and you know full well this is done because there's a full awareness and sensitivity to the a fundamental need of our lives, are to re-establish, not that we're saved, not that we love Jesus, not, but re-establish that I am a son or a daughter of the living God who am committed to keeping everything first, and that's going to take a regular renewal of that.

Not because I walked away from it at any point, but there is such a thing as constantly freshness to it.

You know, Anna and I, just about a year and a half ago were uh eating at an Italian restaurant that we visit quite often, and while we were there, uh they, if you ordered this particular thing, uh place on the menu, you got a free dessert.

And at the end, I asked what flavors of uh of ice cream they had, and uh they had a cappuccino ice cream.

Well, I'm not really a coffee drinker, but I did know I like the taste of coffee, coffee, candy, and cappuccino.

I thought I'd try it.

This is the greatest ice cream in human history.

And I love this.

I love this.

I I would if I I I was hoping it's never happened yet.

And in fact, I've never outright said it, I don't think.

Honey, I would love some year for Christmas, one of those, you know those things this big and this deep that ice cream is in, you know.

Enough said.

But uh, she probably would never do it because it'd be gone in a week.

Uh anyway, this uh ice cream.

Every time I taste that, it is new to me again.

It's it's a brand new taste.

And I believe the first conference is to bring us to that place of freshness in the first month.

I will, I've never joined you in the month or however long that it is you propose that there be fasting after whatever fashion people can pursue a fast.

But this year I I felt like uh this today that I needed to make up my mind I was gonna do that and say it out loud because otherwise it's easy to back out, you know, if you don't.

Now I'm I'm on the on the docket here and said it's not to impress anybody, by the way, but it's just a point of accountability.

And if you get several thousand people you're accountable to, uh well, I'm not gonna finish the sentence I was going to say.

Uh you can ask me another time.

Uh in the book of Joshua, when I opened it the other day, immediately stood out these words, arise, go over this Jordan.

Verse 2 of chapter 1.

Arise, go over this Jordan.

Verse 3.

Every step that you take I've put it here in my notes, every step you advance, because it says that your f that your foot sh every step your foot shall take, every step of advance I will secure is yours.

That's the essence of the translation of that on any terms.

God says, when you take a step, I will make it a step that won't go backwards again.

You'll make progress that keeps making steadfast progress.

That that expression is huge because the Lord says He will do that for you.

That is a matter of not a matter of revisiting, it's a matter of taking steps that are steady gains in the course.

The race that is set before us, you're not going back, but going forward and securing the ground each step.

Then the verse 5, the Lord said, I will not leave you or forsake you.

That's sustaining, strengthening establishment of His care.

This, these three things in that opening versus, when I read them on New Year's Eve morning, leapt in my heart, and I thought, I just want to reflect on those with you.

Because as we come to this point of the launching of a new year, the Lord, I believe, would say to every one of us in some respect the implications of each of those statements.

I want to talk about those implications, and I want to note them very quickly.

I'm going to stop here and check that clock.

Where is that thing anyway?

There it is, 412.

You've got to be kidding me.

This is a conspiracy.

You know what they do?

They know I don't look at the clock very even, so they just cut off 10 minutes to start with.

The implications, the implications of those words are resolved by taking the three primary lessons, I believe, within the book of Joshua.

And there are these the crossing of the Jordan, the principle inherent in that, the conquest of Jericho, and the principle inherent in that, and the continuation of the journey.

Most of the journey.

When you read the book of Joshua.

As a matter of fact, many of you will read through the Bible every year, and you'll come to those places where you've got these lists of names over and over.

There's about seven chapters in Joshua that they're describing the boundaries of the tribes as they stake them out.

And it is among the, it's a as boring a reading as you can find.

It is reading to go to sleep by.

And God won't mind me saying that because he knows our humanness, but he also knows why he put that in the word.

He put those boundaries in there because he wanted those people to know that the Almighty God who was making the boundaries of their inheritance was the God who never changes his word.

That these were the boundaries of their property holdings.

David says, Lord, you are my lot.

He's saying, Lord, you're the one that sets the boundaries for my life just as surely as a piece of real estate we call a lot.

That's the idea.

God makes the boundaries of our lives, and they're boundaries a blessing.

Say that, please.

Boundaries of blessing.

You step across a boundary of blessing and get outside of it, it becomes the boundary of what is an incipient curse or a problem, not because God is watching at the gate there for it, so somebody can beat you with a stick, or he can pronounce some kind of a rareback and do a judgment at you.

It's not anything like that.

It's that he's built boundaries against the things that become a diminishing of our life and eventually can become a curse to it, or a trap, or a trapdoor, or something you step over and discover you're in tall thorns that you don't want to get in and can't find the way back beyond the line.

The boundaries of blessing.

Those verses that you read was the journey of those that went out and were appointed to go, and the Lord directed them as they laid the boundaries of the land.

It was a survey project, is what it was, and every tribe had its boundaries, and within those boundaries, then there was a prescription of the elders of the tribe of where each family would get their lot.

And it was done equitably and graciously and with care for the people.

These are people that being slaves in their heritage before that, two generations before, that the slaves, slaves had nothing.

They had nothing but to get up to a whiplash or a job, whatever it was.

No real remuneration for what they were doing, and they didn't own anything, the destruction of any sense of worth and expectation for a future.

Now they were given a future and a hope.

They were given a land.

They were given a place within the land, and every family had their own lot.

And as they would say, their vine and fig tree, which meant there was fruitfulness that you would have there.

It was a promise to them and was vouchsafed by God, putting this in his word, so when you read that, this becomes a statement on God's part of saying, I have appointed the boundaries of your habitation.

And when we look at these three things, first the crossing of Jericho, of the Jordan, where the Lord said to them, Step in the water first, and it'll open later.

Step in the water and it'll open.

There's a life principle there that the Lord calls us to, and the principle is you need to step into a miracle or an expectation, not in the sense of presumption.

The Lord didn't say dive in.

He said step in and then stand there.

Stand until you see the it's time to go across.

And this, by the way, is when uh Jordan would have been at its highest season of the year.

He didn't go barging in there just uh in any glib way, but they were to put their feet in the water and then watch, and the the remarkable nature of what was done uh probably had to do I don't want to digress into what is the logical and I think biblical explanation since it says the water's piled up all the way back to a city called Adam or Adam, you read it what spelled the same as Adam, and that's about 14 miles north of where they were crossing the river.

Probably took place with some mammoth slide.

Uh this was not the same as crossing the Red Sea.

You say, well, then you're saying it wasn't supernatural?

It was supernatural because the Lord said this will happen three days from now.

And uh you don't prognose, you don't give a prediction of that unless you're God and now it's there and they can go across in three days.

So the miracle was God's declaration of the time, but he said, While the waters are there, I want you to be mindful that you come and you wait for me.

That a step of faith.

There's a great, great truth there and understanding the achievement the victory of the miracle crossing the Jordan of a life principle, to not presume on a miracle, but to come and step into it, a place where you say, I'm taking my stance in what it is I'm expecting God to open up.

And then let Him open it up.

Because boy, we can get in there and pry like crazy and get ourselves in trouble trying to open up on our own.

Can you hear me?

Another thing that's fundamental to the principles that are life principles in this book is the conquest of Jericho.

And I want to just put it in a quick phrase because my time is gone, and I've got two of three points left.

Oh, good boy, Jack.

Say these words after me with you.

Do not wilt before a wall.

Do not wilt before a wall.

Circle it with praise.

Do not wilt before a wall, circle it with praise.

Do not wilt be worth with.

Oh, come on.

Do not wilt before, but circle it with praise.

There is the message of the conquest of Jericho.

When you face a blockage in your life, a blockage in a relationship, a challenge of anything that would get in the way of what you're to be and become in Christ, don't wilt in the face of that and cower in the face of obstacles, but circle them with praise.

That's the message of Jericho.

Turn somebody next to you if you get it.

Say, I think I got that one.

Go ahead.

And he said, we're already past the second point.

It's coming home free, the continuation of the journey.

Actually, I talked mostly about that and everything I was saying when I was talking about the inheritance, because the continuation of their journey was involved in taking over the land.

As you know, the story of Israel's taking of the land, it involved extensive conflict.

And there's an element in that in all of our lives, an element of sometimes doing battle with ourselves and our selfishness.

Our fears are our pride, our uh the the different things that would cause us to back away.

It's the also the uh realities of satanic assault.

It is real.

And uh I never like to give a whole lot of credit for the devil because he has uh enough people to just get gullible and anything gets blamed on him when a lot of times we need to shape up ourselves.

But he is vicious and he's heartless and he is relentless.

And standing against him, the Bible says, take the shield of faith and hold your ground, and then the Lord will do the battle for you.

But we do the battle by taking the word and with it in hand, and the shield of faith, nourished by the word, we're positioned and postured then to move forward, stand firm.

And it's that firmness of position that is anchored in faith against the works of darkness in the warfare, because there was warfare for them to possess what God had for them.

In this first conference, the time to renew these things, the stancing of yourself in firmness of faith, renewal, refreshing in that, coming to the place of saying, Lord, anything that would stand as a wall, I would take this as a posture in which I live, moving into this whole new season of a new year and a season of our life.

I feel like I'm stepping into a brand new season of my life, really, at 80 years of age.

I don't know how many years the Lord will give me, but there's every evidence that I may have a few.

And in that, I've I've I feel that I've come out of a very, very difficult season of my life, and that I've believe God gave me this, said, share it with them.

What did he give me?

He said, I have prescribed the boundaries of my purpose in you, and I want you to continue pursuing them because it's not over yet.

He also said, I want you against any wall to circle it with praise and don't yield to what would intimidate and cause you to cower.

And I also want you to remember this.

I want you to remember that when you come to the need for a miracle, step into it, but don't run ahead of it.

Otherwise, you get washed away in the rush.

God bless you.

I want you to bow your head with me.

Take somebody's hand and let's say this aloud before the Lord.

Shall we lift your head and join your hands with somebody else in agreement?

Father God, in the name of Jesus, I receive your word this day.

I commit to following according to the truth that has been declared this day.

I give myself to you as you give this year to me.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

God bless you.