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Wednesday night live is a weekly sharing of the word from the Father's Church in Dallas, Tx.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Wednesday Night Live. It's such a blessing to be able to meet this way, and I pray that wherever you may be participating in this broadcast, that the presence of the Lord will fill that location and also fill every part of your life. I'm coming to you from the Father's Church. My name is Ron Crawford and what a blessing it is to be serving the Lord together as Saints. As this day unfolds, we will be traveling to France for a gathering in Versailles of many different leaders from across Western Europe and a great number of folks from the Paris area.
Speaker 1:This year we will be expecting to to impart, some measures of solution and empowerment for all of these various locations that are around not only the beautiful country of France, but so many other nations that are upholding the calling of intercession and really believing for the visitation of the of the presence of the Lord as Saints. So this this time, we'll have a smaller team. It'll just be Monica Terrell and myself, but we know that there are so many wonderful leaders and so many strong parts of the team in Western Europe that's what our strategy has been over the years. We would initially go in with big teams, and then as people began to adapt and to welcome their calling, and they grew in the Lord to stand in their cities, that they would become the teams. That's what we have tried to do everywhere we've gone, and we're so blessed to have so many wonderful strong Saints in this area of the world.
Speaker 1:So when I say we have a small team, I'm really saying that from the Father's Church there's only two of us going, but we're not alone. And most importantly the presence of the Lord is guiding and empowering this. So I would ask that you would pray for us as we fly out today and make a connection in London and then go on to Paris, I I thank you for your willingness to invest yourselves in intercession. We'll be in ministry then for a number of days, and then we'll be coming back arriving here in Dallas on Tuesday. So, please remember us in prayer.
Speaker 1:You know, some would say, well, why do you why do you have more expanded prayer and fasting times for for instance going into South America as opposed to when you go into Europe? Well, first of all, God calls the fast. He's the one that's directing us. We have certainly fasted and prayed before many European journeys. But our objective there this time is to encourage, to impart to the Saints, to move with them on behalf of their calling.
Speaker 1:When we go into Brazil, we're still raising people up and we're invading areas where the demonic has ruled in an uncontested way for millennia. I just know that we try to follow the Lord in any kind of fast. We just don't throw it out there. Oh, hey, let's everybody fast. It's like getting going getting the Ark of the Covenant just because you you feel more secure having it around.
Speaker 1:You better be directed by the Lord for the taking of new territory. That's not my message for the day. But what I'm asking is for our Saints family to to be in prayer for us. And we're very grateful that, pastor Vicky at Port Saint John, who she and Larry hosted and welcomed the Horizon prayer times for any all of our journeys. They are sending out a commission for prayer as well, and I know that all of us are very grateful for Vicky carrying on that necessary, measure of of ministry to the Lord.
Speaker 1:So be in prayer. Now there will be a Friday devotional available for you. Pastor Fabian will be ministering on Sunday. First Saturday is this Saturday we'll be connecting there in France with Saints from around the world, and, I know that God is going to use this journey for his glory, and it's simply an honor to be able to be a part of that. I think that's all of the announcements.
Speaker 1:The directive for first Saturday should be going out soon, and, you know, this is we're entering into the tenth month. We have included this as part of the fast of feasting according to what Nehemiah was declaring, and we we also are believing that the tenth month has been turned from one of debauchery and murder and evil, and God has, over the past number of years, changed that, and it's a time of going forward in a powerful way. And it's also the time where we know we're forerunners into the spiritual New Year, and I'm expecting God to be doing a lot of new things. He's he's shaking up his people, and it's not in a terrorizing way. It's for the measure of evaluating where we are, that we're willing to stand, shaking off things that don't belong anymore that might have been a great blessing in the past.
Speaker 1:And so this tenth month is really an essential time in the calendar of the Saints as we follow the Lord. You remember when we did the studies about the fourth, fifth, seventh, and tenth month that God was saying that the people needed to stop mourning and to be willing to move forward into the new. The tenth month was symbolic that the people were mourning the siege of Jerusalem and the actual collapse of it when the people were taken into Babylonian captivity. Well, we believe that God is releasing the new Jerusalem. We believe that the bride of Christ is strongly involved in that.
Speaker 1:And, so we we have a time of celebration, and I am really looking forward to sharing that with all of you, and it begins this week. So don't forget to be praying for us, please, and the success of this mission. Don't forget to be involved with First Saturday, and please be faithful to the house of the Lord this weekend. You know, I was talking earlier today with a pastor in Brazil and then was in contact with another pastor, And our Saints are committed there, but there has been an awful lot of shaking and challenging oppositions. We need to continue to pray for those dear folks who have said yes to the Lord.
Speaker 1:But this is a unique time, and we need to position ourselves to be used of the Lord in it. And I know we just came off a very successful seminar here. It was it was a blessing in celebrating 50 of these here in Dallas, but you're probably, those of you who traveled here or were laboring here, you're probably somewhat still tired, but gird up and let's not time out. We need to be ready for what God is asking of us. Speaking of Nehemiah, I felt directed to go into a scripture that is very powerful.
Speaker 1:It's found in the book of Ezra. And in Ezra eight twenty one, we're familiar with the fact that Ezra was going to be leading the second group of people back to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity. And this time they weren't just preparing. Ezra and Nehemiah moved together with so many others, taking temple artifacts back. And, he was really committed to the restoration that God wanted to accomplish after that seventy year period.
Speaker 1:But he was shaken, and it it says that three times he convened the people by the River Ahava, and, we're only going to read one of them, and it's found in Ezra eight twenty one. Then I proclaimed a fast there at the River Of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God to seek of him a right way for us, for our little ones, and for all of our substance. And I see some amazing parallels here for us. Because first of all, we've not been in Babylonian captivity, but we've been doing battle with the mystery Babylon, which the scripture speaks of for our day. And we are supposed to be as an army of of saints and the bride of Christ welcoming the new Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:And we have been blessed by God over the many years, but where we're going now is based upon what God has done. But in so many ways, it's a prophesied time, but it is an unfamiliar time. God knows what he requires, and we have to submit ourselves accordingly. This River Of Ahava, H A H A V A, is really archaeologically unknown. Many of the textual scholars believe this was canal of sorts, an irrigatory canal, which is really what Egypt did Egypt did.
Speaker 1:And I know we're talking about Babylon, but Egypt did this with the River Nile, and I am supposing that the Babylonian civilization also did this off of the Tigris and Euphrates. And they would produce these canals for transport, for irrigation, and it's a really amazing fact of civilization. We had a lot of canals in the early days of The United States. The Erie Canal is one of the most famous, in fact they had a I won't say famous, it was a well known song about the Erie Canal. There was also a canal that was built that went through my birth city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1:And of course now it is covered over and a roadway is on top of it, but it's just something that in ancient times, and even in our initial history, that people would do to, again, encourage transport, encourage commercial enterprises, and to make property that was able to be sown with various crops to make that feasible through an irrigation supply. So here Ezra has his main meetings for the going back to Jerusalem at basically a canal. Now this is the name of this river. You're also not going to find a very clear answer for it, but when you delve deeper, the closest you can come was that it was it meant to subsist or a subsistence. So it was something that was done and identified for preservation and for, and perhaps the people that built around it would gain their subsistence from this.
Speaker 1:But that's what Ahava meant in the most stringent of scholarly interpretations. But this is where the Holy Spirit directed. Not may have been an area that was secluded. It it may have been more, accessible to people who had been there against their own will, and maybe they were serving the Babylonian empire in this expanded community. I don't know.
Speaker 1:But I think it it's significant because whatever God has done for our expansion, the expansion of our message and our calling has been a supernatural supply. We've not had some foundation download a pile of dough on us. You know? We don't have some big ministry that is divesting a significant outflow. Everything that you and I and the saints have been privileged to do for the Lord has been by his appointment, and it's been by miraculous supply.
Speaker 1:So perhaps at this time of moving into the new, we're gathered in a place where God has seen to offer subsistence to us. I I know that. I've been I've been basically a supervisor of this, and I marvel at what God has done. It has it been frustrating at times as a person? Well, of course, it has.
Speaker 1:I don't like as a person dwelling on the edge. I just don't. But God has always been faithful, and that's what faith is, isn't it? I would like I would like to say, of course, it probably would have been the end of us. You know, we've got $50,000,000, foundational well of supply here.
Speaker 1:So we're just gonna tap into it whenever we need it. God saved us from that because it would have probably destroyed us, and it would have also attracted all kinds of people who wanted to sip from that well. And we would have had scrutiny. It it just has been more of a blessing to walk with the Lord in obedience and see him provide. And you all have been so faithful to trust that and to hear the calling of the Lord when there has been an appeal for offering, and that has generated blessing for you.
Speaker 1:And I know. I know. Just think about this. I know in so many of your lives, you face challenging circumstances. Some of the circumstances you face are not due to anything you did.
Speaker 1:It's a family member or someone that has made wrong choices, and subsequently you have been drawn into that fray from an emotional, and in so many other ways, a draining scenario. Well you can't blame that on God. You know I've said before God has no grandchildren. You know, I sometimes wonder at that process. We've we've looked at that, and it it's just a fact that each of us has to make our own way with God.
Speaker 1:No matter what you do, no matter how you provide, no matter how you teach, what about the word that says train up a child in a way he should go? Sound like W. C. Fields. Well, I understand that.
Speaker 1:When he's old he will not depart from it. That training never goes away, But they still have to make their own decisions. It doesn't say train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old he'll just keep following it, and he won't, or she, won't abandon what God's wanting to do. It doesn't say that. Every person has to make a commitment with God for themselves, and you can't force that.
Speaker 1:And I know you grieve some of you over these things. I I have read in the scripture, and you have too, about Samuel's sons, David's sons, even others who you would think, how could this great person of God have to deal with scandalous behaviors in their own children. I can't explain that other than to say what I've already said. God can get ahold of them, but just have to trust God. But for you for you, you've been blessed.
Speaker 1:You really have. Do we have everything we want? No. Do we wish and think and hope and dream that we'd have this scenario better than what what it is? Well, of course, that's just humanity.
Speaker 1:That's part of our creative ability. Hopefully, we're not complaining to God or adapting some rich quick scam that is available in the natural and in religious circles. But God is giving you things to make you happy. You can see them. You know, I was thinking about this the other day and I look at my own family, and I see the blessing of the Lord in ways that you cannot put a monetary value to.
Speaker 1:Oh, is everything the way I as a father and as a grandfather want them to be? Well, I don't think anybody has that nor should we expect it. But my family has been blessed. My family has seen the favor of the Lord, and that's his kindness. And I can only pray that every one of us follow after him and take full advantage of the spiritual heritage that God has given and that it will not be lost.
Speaker 1:But I recognize, especially as I'm getting older, of course we're all getting older, aren't we? I don't think anybody's getting younger. That would be a miracle. Come to this seminar, we'll show you how to be younger. I recognize that a lot of things are really out of my hands now.
Speaker 1:And God has blessed my household. And he's blessed me. And so we've known the goodness of God, but not in a way that some monstrosity megachurch has. God has given us the walk of faith. You know, this past Sunday, I played a cassette, just a brief snippet of it that I had actually kept because there was a a prophecy that was given for well, one that I remember that was given to Katie.
Speaker 1:Kelly was referenced as well, but Katie was there, and, you know, you you don't just go on down the line and give a prophecy to everybody just because in in a meeting setting, just because you did one for somebody, well, then you better just do it for everybody because you know the way people are. But I I gave that to her, and she listened to it. And there were some other prophecies that our brother Ray Hughes gave back in 1998. This was a year, a little over a year after we had been changed. We had not written any books yet, and I consulted the the great wall of timetable in our hallway there, so I can say that this was prior to writing.
Speaker 1:And brother Ray mentioned that he had been with us for a number of days, but God gave him a dream about our church. And then the dream continued the next day. And one of the facets of that dream was that he said he was coming down the aisles of the church, and God was giving computers to everybody. And and he went on for like fifteen minutes talking about God saying that he was going to give an understanding of the scriptures and that a lot of things that had been doctrinal, traditional were gonna be deleted. The programs were gonna be deleted, but that he was gonna give a focus on the living word and the true word, and it was going to be shown through computers.
Speaker 1:And I thought, well, that's interesting. We hadn't even gone into word search at that point, I don't think. Maybe we had. I don't think we had. And the the way that God was gonna use us as saints to not only be a communication center, to be teaching the deeper things of the word, to be processing and sending out.
Speaker 1:We even sent out laptops to India and to Africa with Bible programs and our teachings on them. That was years ago. Now we're on the Internet. We're on the livestream, have a hagios platform where we're teaching, the new Deep Waters app is out, and this was a prophecy that really struck me because we didn't do these things because of Ray's prophecy, but looking back on it you can see how dynamic that was. Well, someone said, why why doesn't God just give us all the details?
Speaker 1:You can look back and see it now, but it would have been helpful to have some advice. Well, see, we all want advice that keeps us out of discovery. We all want advice that keeps us out of having to take steps of faith. We all want God to just tell us point by point what to do, and his prophetic words just don't give advice that way. They'll always be true, but they never will eliminate your willingness to step out of the boat.
Speaker 1:And we have tried to be faithful to that. And I think this fiftieth celebration, we didn't even include all the numb the numbers of seminars and gatherings that God has arranged throughout the world. I was gonna do that. May maybe I'll work on that. Not now, of course.
Speaker 1:I'm going to France today. But I think that it would be good to recognize that, how many actual meetings we did. You could probably tabulate off that board. When we were in Africa this many times. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm not committing to something. But what I'm saying is that God has been faithful, and so we see that we're at a crossroads here. We really are. As we enter into this new year, there are some dramatic changes that we're going to have to say yes to the Lord in, not by coercion, but by submission in order for God to really begin to initiate the new Jerusalem through the bride of Christ. And there there's there's gonna have to be some adjustments that we make so that we can be most effective.
Speaker 1:And I've known this was coming. You know, God has been speaking to us about transition, and he has been doing that. He's been equipping us, and, he's been mourning us. But but now a fuller scope of what transition really means is gonna be clarified. This is not a bad thing.
Speaker 1:It's a good thing. And so we come back to this passage in Ezra about Ahava, and we see here that this was a place where they had, where they had really been positioned to serve, but it was in this river, this canal called subsistence. And three times the scripture mentions this. The first time, and you can look this up for yourself, you're you're not nomadic dummies. In Ezra eight fifteen, they discovered that there weren't any sons of Levi.
Speaker 1:Now you can think that maybe God's been doing that. He's trying to restore those that would actually move on behalf of representing the holy place. I think that's been happening. And then the second one here was they declared, which we read, a fast, a submission before the Lord that we might learn how to become what God wants. Look at what that afflict word means.
Speaker 1:It's not terrible, but it's more being ready to submit in order to find God's victory. And then in 08:31, they were actually departing. So you have one, two, three. It's interesting that at 08:15, Ezra eight fifteen, was almost like a tabernacles type of thing because they were dwelling in their tents for three days. Remember when we studied about the times where three days happened in scripture?
Speaker 1:Joshua, before he crossed the Jordan, had them wait there. They had a three day episode. Of course, Christ in the the in the tomb for three days, well he really wasn't there. His body was there, but he was going into Abram's bosom, and then he was leading captivity captive, and then, you know, he he you know, he his spirit was active before the Lord, before the father, but his body was there for those three days. His actual physical body was there, fully man.
Speaker 1:But that was a three day period. And, you know, you can study three days for yourself, but this was really a measure of commitment, and it was there that they recognized we've got to have people that are gonna covenant in the the holy of holies and are going to who are going to be functioning in that place. And I I think this is really a threefold. We committed to what God was saying. There we were.
Speaker 1:We recognized we needed his presence and those who would go into his presence. Secondly, how's this gonna happen? Well, we proclaimed a fast because in the Sila we don't know our own way. We don't want to rely on man's strength or physical force. And the third, here's the fulfillment.
Speaker 1:We're going and God is faithful. But the river of substance, the river of subsisting, how God provides miraculously. We've lived at that, and he's he is faithful. But now we're ready to see a culmination of a lot of prophetic words in our lives and in these end times. And we have to take this seriously.
Speaker 1:God is not finished. It might look as if something is ending. Well, you know, we've had a good run. Look at the we're all, you know, we're all getting older, pastor. We're not the people we were.
Speaker 1:Thank God we're not the people we were. How are we gonna do it? We're just so few in number. How's it gonna happen? You know, that may be something you need to fast in this fast of feasting.
Speaker 1:Those kinds of thoughts don't damn your purpose. Oh, it's easy. Well, you said, that's just common sense. Well, sometimes acknowledging a common sense viewpoint is damning the spiritual. Don't agree with what it looks like in the natural.
Speaker 1:Call those things that be not as though they are. And don't try to give God advice. Being by that canal of of subsistence should have shown all of them that God's hand is the provision. And they were asking God to give direction and to extend that provision through the journey that was ahead of them. It's amazing, isn't it?
Speaker 1:So here as we enter into this tenth month, we're welcoming the spiritual new year. We are not finished. We're really beginning. I've even been asking the Lord for his direction about things that ways we have done things, and, I won't go too much further because that's all you're gonna listen to, and then you're gonna hold me to it. If I say, well, we're not gonna do this in the early part of next year, we're gonna do something different.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm praying about, but I'm not gonna say what it is because you'll get you you'll get your your bonnet in a flutter, and I don't wanna do that because I'm the one that have to secure it, that it doesn't blow off. Oh my goodness. God is good. So this is a shorter broadcast travel day, but I think I've said whatever I need to say. What is the significance to this reference to Ezra?
Speaker 1:Why are they going at this tenth month where we're saying we're we're rejecting that measure of mourning that happened for decades about the fall of Jerusalem, and we're going to embrace the rebuild. But the the glorious coming of the new Jerusalem, which is the bride of Christ, which is the work of the saints with the Lord. We're embracing that. We're we've gotta go through. We've gotta keep going with the Lord and be willing to let him do a new thing in us.
Speaker 1:What he's taught us is not departing. In fact, it's expanding. But God is really going to expect some incredible prophetic points of obedience from us, and he's counting on us. And so we are here at the River Ahava, our own river. We're thanking God for the subsistence that he has given us, and we're submitting ourselves now for what is going to be required in these days, these parts of what is the beginning of the end, the end times.
Speaker 1:We're we're going forward, and we have to, don't we? It's what we were made to do. It's why God created us. So on the one hand, we are we are here giving thanks to the Lord for his faithfulness over the years. And now we're positioning ourselves to function out of the midst of the holy place with the Lord to go forth into terrain that will lead to the reestablishment of what he's ordained from from the very beginning.
Speaker 1:And we're relying on him for protection. We're relying on him for continued sustenance, and we're relying on him that we will be successful in what he's asking us to do. If we will, God will. Here we are. Send us.
Speaker 1:So please be in prayer for Monica and myself as we go. Be in prayer through this beginning of this tenth month. Be faithful. First Saturday prayer. Be faithful to the house of the Lord wherever you may be gathering.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, our Father's Church people will be this, and watch carefully with us for what God wants to do in the the, European Saints, and, may God watch over us, health, safety, strength, and his presence above all things. We're praying for you. Thanks for being willing to say yes to the Lord. And, to all of our Saints family, may God's richest blessing be upon all of you, and may he guide you, and may you wait upon him for that guidance. God bless you all.
Speaker 1:Don't forget this Friday's power devotion. Till then. Goodbye.