First Assembly of God

Last week Pastor Yoeli spoke to us about Jer. 29:13 if we seek the lord he will be found by us if we seek him with all our heart. How? With all our heart.

First of all what do we mean we say we have to seek God? Think about Him, allow him to lead us, pray, obey Him; let Him be the main thing that motivates our lives. But here’s another thought. Did you ever consider what happens to people who seek the lord? Let’s start with Abraham. Can you tell me what happened to Abraham as a direct result of seeking God? He was blessed. Now. I’m not suggesting it was all cinnamon buns and sweetness for everyone’s life who ever sought God first but by and large those who seek the Lord have always wound up blessed. In this life and eternally. Those who have not were not. Consider what God's word says about those who seek Him.

So the concept is that they that seek Him find Him and if you seek Him with all your heart, yield to Him, put Him first, believe and act upon His Word – He will reward you. Now here comes the kicker, that is not our motivation and I have seen people get manipulated by verses like this.

No, God doesn’t owe us anything, we owe Him everything. But when a heart is sold out to Jesus, one who has put Him first because he loves Him, one who believes the Word of God and acts as if it is true in every area of their lives, God says I will reward that kind of faith, that kind of life. In EVERY area of your life, now and eternally.

God's nature Is Healing, Provision – Jehovah Jireh, Lavish Love Blessings, that's my God.

Isaac was the blessing God gave Abraham for his faith in God and he was the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. He knew that. Isaac was the one laid out on the rock of Mt Moriah when the knife was about to come down to pierce his heart God, Jehovah Jireh provided a ram for his place of sacrifice.

So now God tells Isaac even though the land is in famine, even though there is recession, a depression in the land – you stay here and trust in my word. Don’t you go unless I tell you to go. Trust me God says, obey my word. God says I made an oath, a covenant with your father and Abraham trusted me and I blessed him. So Isaac obeyed.

As he stayed in obedience and faith to God's promise in Gerar – the land of famine – he sowed crops to feed his children, servants and flocks and God blessed him with 100 fold return, because God is a rewarder of them that have faith in Him, that seek Him.

This has absolutely nothing to do with my topic but as I read these verses this week God spoke to me about this. When you talk about wells of springing water it means living water. Water brings life, it revives things, grows things. Abraham dug these wells and his family and possessions grew. The Lord said that His church needs to dig again the wells of life that grew the church that revived the church originally. I am speaking on wed. nites now on prayer that God hears. We have taught and learned about worship god wants as well. We all want revival but how many are willing to pay the price to get it? God’s heartbeat is still souls. He wants men to be saved, He wants to be worshipped, He wants to pour out His lavish love on this generation. If you go back and investigate how a revival was birthed in a place the one answer you will always hear is that is began in prayer. Someone got a burden to seek God’s face. Someone got a burden to change the atmosphere of their community and as they sought the face of God, he showed up. Yoeli’s sermon. Why? Because he is a rewarder of them that seek Him. In the beginning of the last century, some young people sought god in prayer about the baptism in the Holy Spirit. God birthed the book of Acts and the power of the Holy Spirit and His Gifts including tongues and healing and miracles, once again came into this world as a reward for their seeking of Him. The wells of our forefathers in the faith were wells of prayer, wells of faith in God’s word, wells of expectation of the power of God, wells of joy and worship, wells that gave the Holy Spirit free reign in His church once again, wells that welcomed fresh fire from heaven and God showed up and rewarded their thirst with living water. The Holy Spirit is saying to us, his church, seek me again like that, redig the wells of your fathers, don’t push me away, don’t compromise my Word on the altar of cultural relevance but instead hold fast your confession of my Word, allow me to take you where you need to go and allow my power and my Word to permeate the environment you live in. It is time for the church to be the church and change the culture rather than the culture dictating to us what it will allow us to be. God is wanting us to stand upon our father’s faith and reestablish wells of healing, holy spirit baptism, miracles, signs and wonders and above all souls. This is how we were birthed in the first place – why are we trying to dig new wells which won’t satisfy us or God?

Isaac went to Beersheba. This was a holy place for Abraham. Abraham had encountered God there and built an altar and Isaac did so as well. And God rewarded Isaac's faith that night by reaffirming the covenant he had mad with his servant Abraham. Now he makes it with Isaac as well. As a reward for seeking God.

The final thought i have here is that Abraham and now Isaac were rewarded because of their faith in seeking God but even more, they left a legacy that still stands. They are the patriarchs, the fathers of our faith, the ones we look to as examples. Each one of us will leave a legacy to those that come after us. Children and families in the natural and in the faith. What will our legacy be? Were we people of faith? Or people who tried to do things our own ways. People that ran away from a famine or those who held their ground and stood upon the Word of God even when it didn’t seem reasonable.

Isaac sowed in the year of famine because God said stay here, trust me and he reaped a 100 fold return. God blessed him because he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. We don’t seek him for rewards but when we do as Matt 6:33 says – we put Him first – he takes care of the rest of it – lavishly, excessively.