Shabbat shalom kol, good morning from the north countries, and welcome back to this short session. There was no formal sabbath assembly last week owing to ill health though we did have a Q&A broadcast in the afternoon which is avaible on video only.

In my first attempt at preparing today's sermon, I wrote this down: "There are two types of preacher who really annoy me: the preacher who wears a perpetual smile and the preacher who looks perpetually miserable".. So you will get a mixture {grimmaces}. Seriously, I changed my mind about saying that so you can ignore it. Enough of witticisms.

Let's instead begin today with a prayer, and let our prayer be that of King David:

"I give you thanks, O Yahweh, with all my heart; I will sing your praises before the elohim (gods). I bow before your qadosh, holy, set-apart Temple as I worship. I will give thanks to Your Name for your unfailing love and faithfulness because Your promises are backed by all the honour of Your Name. When I pray, You answer me; You encourage me by giving me the strength I need" (Ps.138:1-3, NLT). In Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen.

Where am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be doing? If you have ever asked those questions, and I expect you have asked them often, especially when it seems as though nothing much is happening in your life and you're itching to 'get going', to do something useful, or maybe something different from what you're doing now, something that you believe will count more for the Kingdom than what you're currently doing and so give you a keener sense of purpose - if you ever think that, remember this: if you are sincere about serving Yahweh, He will, I guarantee it, order all that up for you. He promises, as David acknowledges:

"Yahweh will work our His plans for my life - for your faithful love, O Yahweh, endures forever" (v.8a, NLT).

The short answers to the questions I posed are these: remain where you are until He expressly tells you to move somewhere else, in which case He will open the doors - but be open to the possibility of moving every day without stressing over it; and continue doing what you are doing until He tells you to do something else, but be willing for a complete change. Stay open and willing to either remain or move on and be content either way, confessing that His will is undoubedly the best for you.

Now obviously, in order to know where Yahweh wants you to be or what to do, you have to be able to hear Him and be willing to respond without hesitation. If you have decided in advance what you want and what you don't want, you are already prejudicing your ability to hear Him right. You are already untuning yourself from the frequency of His Ruach (Spirit) and onto the frequency of something else, a foreign spiritual radio station, likely your flesh, or someone else's will who is pressuring you, or even that of the Enemy, or a combination. To ensure tuning into the correct spiritual frequency, only one positive decision has to be made, namely, to renounce everything that does not lead to Elohim (God). This is the only way to become accustumed to conversation with Him, and it is the only way to do so with simplicity and with freedom.

I dare say that you have found yourself in many situations in life which you did not want to be in, and perhaps you find yourself in one right now. It may well be that where you don't want to be is where you are supposed to be for reasons presently unknown or only dimly comprehended; or it may be that it really is time to move on and that the reason you haven't is either because you haven't been listening or because you don't want to move on. You can, if you're not careful, drive yourself crazy considering all the possibilities. You know, only too well the jumble of feelings that is the human heart at any one time, or the confusion of thoughts that is the mind not settled perfectly on the will of Elohim (God).

All we need to do is ask Yahweh to know His will each day and, often, at different moments of the day. Most of these are common duties that don't need to ask anyone about. We just get on with them because we know they need to be done, like you have to get up, wash, go to work, school, or whatever. The important thing is to be open enough to be able and willing to respond to a direction of the Ruach (Spirit) at a moment's notice. To be able to do that is itself conditional upon knowing or recognising Yahweh present within us at all times and in that way we will be able to follow the advice of Paul to the Thessalonians to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess.5:17, NKJV).

But that is not something that can be done profitably in isolation. Prayer can all too easily descend into vain repetition, a drone with no connection to heart or soul, a humm like the engine of a parked car idling away going nowhere and wasting fuel. Other ingredients must be present in the prayer equation to ensure the prayer becomes spiritually alive and is not simply a mechanical chant or mantra. So Paul said:

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of Elohim (God) in Messiah Yah'shua (Jesus) for you" (1 Thess.5:16-18, NKJV).

If you're not feeling particularly grateful for what you have, if you are unable to rejoice in, for example, your salvation, of having life down here on earth (preferably both), then your prayers will likely not spiritually ignite. It will be like constantly injecting fuel into the combustion chamber engine of your car but never sparking it off. And if you've ever seen fuel dripping out of the end of an exhaust pipe, uncombusted, you'll understand what I mean. Uncombusted prayer - prayer not ignited - isn't going to move the vehicle of your life anywhere. It will just be spraying words all over the place until their echo disappear.

If there are doubts in your life, know that Yahweh always supplies light in the midst of those doubts if what your soul desires is to please Him. If all you genuinely want is His will, and if you aren't just pretending to in order to convince yourself that you are being spiritual when you are not, you will not be long in the doledrums. You will emerge kindled and on the spiritual move.

I am sure Moses did not want to be trekking around in the Sinai wilderness for four decades listening to perpetual grumbling and complaining. The only reason he had shalom (peace) was because He desired to do the will of the One who had called him. And you can be sure Joseph did not want to be in a dark and dank Egyptian prison cell either, and that David did not want to be on the run from his enemies, as he was when he penned so many of his psalms.

There are plenty of things that happen in our lives that we don't want and about which we will never find satisfaction or happiness until we discover what Yahweh's will is, submit to it, and continue doing those things which before we were so miserable about. So long as we are in the will of the Father, even if the situation is not good, we can be assured that in most circumstances the situation will change for the better. The secret is finding peace and contentment in the midst of unfavourable circumstances. Paul told the Philippians that he had "learned to be content whatever the circumstances" (Phil.4:11, NIV). Contentedness has to be learned, it's not an ability necessarily handed to us on a platter. Life - experience with Elohim (God) and experience with other people of all sorts - teaches you all about that.

The time closest to the end of a long wait can indeed be the hardest. Some people snap just days or hours before the moment of their deliverance because they made the fateful choice to no longer want to do the Father's will any more. I have met so many people who did that and threw their lives and eternal destiny away. Many more will quit even earlier. Keep faithfully serving every day and avoid the tragedy of becoming a prodigal, remembering that although the prodigal son in the parable returned home, not all prodigals do. Some stubbornly and foolishly remain among the pigs and there they die, only to wake up on the other side expecting to find relief or paradise only to find they are in a parallel, disembodied world of 'pigs' like the one they just left. Not a good idea to take that route - I think of all those tempted by suicide. You still take the you in the state in which you died - you take all your unresolved issues with yourself when you die, saved or unsaved, sanctified or unsanctified. Fix things up here, now, and preferably sooner.

Joseph came out of his 'wilderness' experience in prison, Moses did not. It was his destiny to die in the desert without seeing the Promised Land. Joseph never saw the Promised Land again either, he was called to rule the remainder of his days in Egypt, but it ended far better than it had begun. Jonah didn't end well, did he? But others did. Jeremiah went off with a band of exiles and headed for Egypt. But Elijah was taken up in the clouds, Enoch was instantly transported to Heaven, John the apostle died in old age at home but all his fellow apostles died martyrs. We none of us know how it will all end but one thing we do know is that it doesn't actually 'end' here - it continues beyond the veil of mortality. There is no ending for the Children of the Kingdom. The only thing you have to be extremely careful about is to ensure, through right choosing, that you end up in the heavenly realm, and not the devil's realm.

It remains a truism that:

"Yahweh is faithful in all He says; He is gracious in all He does" (Ps.145:13b, NLT).

Now your circumstances may led you to think otherwise but who knows what trouble you would have got into had you got your own way in everything? Who knows! You can't judge whether you're in the right place according to what is pleasing or displeasing to your carnal senses because you will never be able to judge that way. Some people who live in palaces surrounded by opulence are hell-bound. There is no manual you can consult that will tell you that this or that situation means the metaphorical pearly gates await you because two people may be in exactly the same circumstances but are bound for entirely different spiritual destinations. And that goes for people in horrid circumstances too.

Just trust Yahweh, cultivate communing with Him, be wholly willing to submit to His will, and He will ensure everything is right for your life. That's all. Yahweh bless. See you at Rosh Chodesh in two days. Amen.

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