Speaker: Igor

Just as no one is hired in the world without a diploma, in the spiritual world God entrusts no authority to someone who hasn't gone through hardship. God brings us into the wilderness to speak to our heart (Hos 2:14), because otherwise we are deaf, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus: "Did not our heart burn within us?" (Luke 24:32). "Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day": let us not sleep as do others, but watch and be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation. Even when it seems God has appointed you to wrath, "God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation" (1 Thess 5:1–9): salvation from this untoward generation through Him who is the door (John 10:9).

Speaker: Mikhail

• At the altar Elijah said, "I have done all these things at thy word" (1 Kgs 18:36), and the fire fell. He was a man like us, but he knew what God required. We often ascribe our own ideas to God and think we are serving Him (John 16:2), while what is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God (Luke 16:15).

• David was a man after God's own heart, "which shall fulfil all my will" (Acts 13:21–22). God has many desires, but believers make their requests known and forget His. "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss" (Jas 4:3). Our righteousnesses are filthy rags (Isa 64:6), and you cannot please God with them.

• David was in bondage to sin (Rom 7:22–23; Gal 5:17), yet he fulfilled everything God wanted, because his spirit understood God's requirements. When God says, as He did to Solomon, "Ask what I shall give thee" (1 Kgs 3:5), an undeveloped spirit asks for health, money and good things for the children.

• Personal: in the Soviet Union he would come to a service and feel God at work, and the next time find emptiness and ask, "Why do You bless so sparingly?" If God anointed us with the goals we have now, we would start asserting our own and spoil every touch. One brother told how the whole church began all-night prayer for revival; there was no answer, people left, and in the end he was crying alone. That is "the cart before the horse": what is hidden inside is a time bomb, and people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hos 4:6).

• God's Spirit once rebuked him: God does not need defense lawyers. Explaining away the lack of blessing with "it's His will" is really an unwillingness to make way for Him.

• John the Baptist saw crowds repenting, but said: "Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matt 3:7). That was repentance out of fear, not love of the truth. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord; every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low" (Isa 40:3–4), so the King of glory may come in (Ps 24:7). The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence (Matt 11:12).

• One person cannot come to the fullness of truth: the pillar and ground of the truth is the church (1 Tim 3:15), and the promise "ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:31–32) is given to everyone together, like light shining from different sides on a large gem. If the ear tries to grow ears on the nose, the result is deformity (1 Cor 12:16–17). Christ brought not only grace but also truth (John 1:17).

• God formed man for almost 4,000 years, and Christ completes that creation by making in Himself one new man (Eph 2:15). The Old Testament saints are only an example. The teaching that Christ came only to forgive is fine for infants, but it hinders His mission: to reveal Himself in us, so that all men will know His disciples by their love (John 13:35).

• "Love not the world… If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15–17): those who love the world don't love God, because they have never seen His face. Only a fool falls in love with a relative he has never met. The test: how do I react when I'm offended? The lust of the flesh is stronger in men, the lust of the eyes in women (Gen 3:6). You cannot stop loving the world by effort; the only way is to ask "Who are You, Lord?" and see His beauty with your spirit.

• Our spirit is a heavenly being in which God "froze" the memory of heavenly values; the word of God thaws it, and the inner ears open.

• The center of God's heart is meekness and lowliness (Matt 11:29). The world wishes beauty for its daughters and wealth for its sons. "Let your moderation be known unto all men… let your requests be made known unto God" (Phil 4:5–6): right requests are born of meekness. Meekness is wanting nothing for yourself; humility is accepting pressure without resisting evil (Matt 5:39). The meek live in peace and laugh at the devil.

• Present our bodies to God (Rom 12:1) to solve Edik's and Viktor's problems. "Teacheth my hands to war" (Ps 144:1): at first you may wound yourself with the two-edged sword, but step by step you become accurate. A prayer that the church would be "terrible as an army with banners" (Song 6:4). A parting word: ask for the old paths (Jer 6:16).