Don’t Give Up, You’re Right At The End!
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
by Lonnie Mackley

MT 19:27 Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”

I just want to encourage many of you today who are at the end of your wilderness time but who feel spent, wrecked, swindled, and just generally like giving up. Many of you have sacrificed all to follow God’s call and you have lost everything in order to live a life of faith that has left you less than exhilarated at the end. You want to hang on and keep trusting God, but there is another part of you that feels like you need to just think realistically and to not get your hopes up because you will just be disappointed in the end once again.

First of all I want to tell you something, if God told you long ago that He was going to do something big in your life, then guess what? He’s going to do it, and you should not let go of this just because there is little grace right now and you don’t know what to do next. Now obviously this whole wilderness thing was not about us getting some big prize at the end, but God gives us promises in order to help us to keep our faith and to hope for something while we go through the tougher stuff of growing up and being fully purified and prepared.

Many of you have wondered whether or not you are just crazy for believing these things and for spending your life doing this. Some of you even feel now that you have wasted your life and that you just made a big mistake. But in your heart you have felt a burning to walk in God’s power in order to help people so they can know God and be saved, and you have seen a destiny where like Joseph you will help many people to know God and survive some tough times ahead. Like John the Baptist, you have been in the wilderness all of your life.

You see, this whole place is likely to go into the tribulation and a very anti-Christian world government soon, so God needs to flow through people that He can trust here and who will represent Him as He really is. The day of the hypocrite is over. God is the biggest realist there is, and if there are things that need to change in our lives then He will keep at it until we are truly ready. How many times did you think you were ready to come out of the wilderness only to see a year later just how much you really needed what God did that previous year? You see, just like a regular father God doesn’t throw His car keys to kids.

ISA 49:8 This is what the LORD says: “In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, 9 to say to the captives, `Come out,’ and to those in darkness, `Be free!’

God is about to move on your life with a series of miracles and finances to restore you, and you will go from just sitting in your tent all day, to being very busy getting everything ready to go into this last conquest fully restored. I guess the main thing that I feel that God wants to say to you is that what He has told you is true, so don’t let go of it! And whatever areas that you have gone as far as you can, but have not overcome in, He is about to give you that extra help that you need in order to fully overcome all the way. So don’t give up!

This whole wilderness thing isn’t really about us that much anyway, it’s about all of the unsaved people you see walking by outside of your house or at the mall. God’s mind is on them 24/7. We were once just as unsaved as them and don’t you think God wants to help them? They are His creation and children just like we are. If you were still unsaved wouldn’t you want God to do everything possible to save you? Well you are God’s answer to their need. We are all about to go forth and preach the gospel in power, love, and true holiness.

So try to hang in there for this last part of your wilderness, avoid grumbling, and pick your promises from God back up and know that the same God that led you into this has already planned from the beginning how to lead you back out of it. Take things as slowly and carefully as you can as the miracles come and don’t get ahead of God. You learned to live by faith and by God’s moment by moment direction in the wilderness so that you could do it effectively in your promised land life and ministry. Know this, your restoration and vindication is right in front of you, so stand up and look up because your redemption is drawing very near now.

LK 21:28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

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