God has equipped us to work as one. We see what’s invisible and move to do His will. We show up and pray and do what the Lord calls us to do. Nehemiah 4:1-8

Speaker(s): Pastor Thomas Schaller, Testimonies from the congregation
Sermon # 11386
6:30 PM on 12/17/2017

P. Schaller

(1 Cor 14:26) One verse I want you to notice here. In the beginning we’ll take the microphone. I’ll draw a short picture. This morning we had a message on three births. And we said that using the diagram here if this is the birth of a child and how exceptional and remarkable it is. In the world of science they may study it and know it well but come short of saying Glory to God. Not everybody has faith. When a child is born and we go beyond and we say wow. God did it. God brought a child into the world. This is amazing. When Christ came into the world and, Gabriel came from God to Mary with the message. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the holy thing formed in you shall be called the Son of God. That’s the second birth we talked about. The third one is when you believe in Christ and are regenerated. We are born again and this birth is greater than our first birth. Our first birth being natural and born again and now we live by faith in God and we are fed and grow.

1 Cor 14:26, when a message speaks to me and becomes part of my orientation in life, when I build my life on something I hear and walk by faith in something God says to me, then I’m able to fit it in my lips, Prov. 22:18. Let all things for building up.

vs. 26. These are words that come to us and we are able to speak about more than the things we see, 2 Cor 4:18. Much of our life is living both in this natural life we have, our new birth which is including more and we are receiving from God words of faith and we are looking at what is not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, transient, but the things not seen are eternal. Halleluiah!

We want to take a little bit of time and share with each other from our heart what God is doing. Maybe an answer to prayer, a testimony from Federal Hill, maybe a deliverance, maybe something from P. Ray who does the homeless outreach. Maybe something in my family or a prayer request or burden in my heart. I’m saying would you pray for me. I have a heavy heart. I need God to do something in this area. I believe in our services sometimes we should have an opportunity to interact with each other on that level. I want to have you stand up just now (We formed groups).

When we go before God in prayer, I want to think that I am going before the living God. It affects me to think I’m going before God. Then as I think of his attributes and worship him, the H.S. fills me. I start to enjoy the relationship with God. I enjoy it. I’m free and in the presence of God. We all have these things and they can gradually accumulate and those prayers become mechanical. You know what I man. I prayed. Is it prayer in the Spirit? I prayed. Nothing happened. Okay. Calm down and think about this. If I’m going to come before someone I want to get ready and meet somebody and when we come before God, let’s get real respectful in the fact that we’re coming before God. Empty ourselves by way of our things. Maybe we need God to help us get rid of the baggage but have an attitude that help me get rid of it because I’d like to be before you on holy ground. It stirred me in prayer yesterday morning. I met a couple guys and we had prayer and had this as a devotional the Lord gave us. I can go to my office or room. I did it today after the services and the rap in the café. I was tired and I was internally excited and I fell asleep and took a nap and woke up excited about how I can come before God and keep my heart and mind on the nature of God. Then I take those things in that category of the impossible. I’m talking to God and God can touch it and deal with it. All through the years in the ministry the amazing numbers of prayers that can be answered. I’d say millions many ways and many times by this church and the believers and I am excited about it.

(More testimonies).

Neh 4. After the service, we have our fellowship with the cookies in the Family Center. Before cookies, meat. Here comes the meat.

Neh 4:1 New Year’s is coming. Anyone know the time? My mother says to me you don’t even know when it’s raining outside. Two weeks from today we will be going into the New Year, 2018. We are building a wall and Sanballat is the enemy of the Jews and was greatly enraged and he jeered at the Jews. Christ is born in us. We have a treasure in us. We are building a wall. We have been doing it for decades in one sense. The minority maybe, not that we are anything but all believers in the world we don’t know the percentage but some are building the wall. Meeting together and assembling. Stopping by faith when skateboarding and telling a young man a message and it turns into something awesome. We have our Bible college, our day school, our affiliation. We are building a wall. P. Paul Poe had a beautiful Christmas banquet. Federal Hill opened this morning in our property. The Midnight Express is our vision, to get a van and deck it all out. On it is underwear and blankets and water and sandwiches and Panera bread bagels and Royal Farms fried chicken. That Midnight Express will go up the road and P. Ray will fill it up and bring people to church. There is something we are doing. At least we are doing something. In one way we don’t really know. We believe we are looking at the invisible and we are doing something. These people are angry about it and mocking us.

vs. 2. Yep, we’re coming at you. We are building a wall. We are doing something. We can go through the room and say thank you to so many people. (He’s naming people). A small church dying out and they sent us a message do we have a pastor. We don’t know how it will all work but we can pray and God will say to someone I will go, or I will believe God. I will build the wall. Whatever others are doing as long as I can be part of building the wall. I’m going to do it because God says it. I will follow him. Where he leads me, I will follow. Though none go with me, still I will follow. I think it was written in Bangladesh many years ago.

vs. 2. It sure will happen. We’ll make it out of the garbage pile. Even will they use the burned stones?

vs. 3. Years ago, we went to Finland in 1975 as missionaries. We had 40,000 tracts. I had to dump my clothes out and put the tracts in my suitcase so I got to Finland without any clothes. Then I got married and my wife packs my bags with zip lock bags. Sometimes it may look humiliating or weak. Sometimes it looks shameful or funny. Sometimes our singing is squeaky or our instruments are out of tune. Sometimes our main office is in a cellar with a lightbulb from the ceiling and kind of cold in there. Sometimes it looks kind of crazy and not so professional but it’s in our hearts and we are showing up doing something. We can be on his side and it makes all the difference. When we are born again, we became part of him. We can feel it when we are in his will and walking in faith. We can sense the peace of God and the ways of God. Maybe things get better on the outside but that’s not the basis of our motivation. It doesn’t have to be perfect. We want God in it. We want God in our conversation, our prayer, and our decisions. We want God in our life. When we start building the wall, we can be sure the enemy is saying what are these feeble Jews doing? Their stones have been through the fire. They will crumble. Their little plans are nothing. We don’t care about your opinion Nehemiah is saying.

vs. 6. Harold Harbor, joined to Federal Hill, to Havre de Grace, Philadelphia, Wilmington. One brother who was here a week ago from Wilmington he has a TV program there. He said a stray bullet hit him in the left eye. It went through his left eye and lodged in the back of his right eye. This eye is prosthetic eye and the other one he is legally blind. He took up rowing as rehab and got a bronze medal in the Olympics. He said Christ is the basis of his life. This might be the way life happens for anyone of us. So we built the wall.

vs. 6. That’s amazing. When we have our conventions we are so blessed to be together. When we meet in Warsaw in March by God’s grace, one part is saying really are we going to Warsaw. Yes, so we built the wall. Others not going but so we built the wall. All the wall was joined together to half its height. Get into God’s work. Have a mind to work. Live in faith. Show up. There is a time in your life you might want to back off but have a mind to work. Let’s pray and see what God will do and have a mind to work. Sanballat and Tobiah it blows their mind. How could these people do this? It’s being done. The City of Baltimore and P. Hadley on the police force…We are making an impact. If you are a policeman on duty you can come on Monday and get a free lunch. We appreciate what you are doing in our community. They come in little by little. We are on the same team and we care about you. We are building the wall and we have a mind to work. Have a mind and heart to work because God is in it.

This pastor up in Maine 50 years ago or whatever, it was he studied this book and memorized it and he was a bread truck driver. He had a mind to work. He had a vision and it got ahold of him and he said I want to have a church and we want to have teams and send them out into all the world. Sanballat and Tobiah you can be sure they were saying it’s not going to happen. Who are you? Disabled or bitter or disgruntled or empty. You sit in your corner and behave. Be what I want you to be. Wow. God thank you.

We’re fifty years down the road and we like it. We are enjoying it. It’s coming together. It takes faith and we got it. Word of faith. We got the Spirit of God and each other. Thank you so much for all the things said here. The way we are thinking and loving each other and caring about what is happening. We are not buying into anything else but that narrow way where we are hearing from our heavenly Father and he’s helping us.

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