We must realize that God is God.
We speak about the sovereignty of God, but even that is not understood. I’ll tell you what the sovereignty of God is. It means that He is El Elyon, He is the Most High God. And if He has decided to place His Seed within you, if He has decided to make you a son of His glory, if He has decided that there will come a day when you will manifest to the world His glory—guess what? It’s going to happen. Say no to God all you want. He will fulfill His promise to the seed. I know a Father who loves me so greatly that I could turn my back on Him, I could swear at Him in the heavens, I could even walk away and say, "Never again do I want anything to do with that God," but He is El Elyon! And He would say to me, "Gary, I have a covenant, and you have nothing to do with the covenant of My Seed that I have placed within you. And I say unto you that judgment will come. I will continue to baptize you with fire. I am your Father, and I love you with an everlasting love. And because I have the heart of a Father, and because I love you so dearly, I know how to make you submit." We have to let God be God! It’s not just a theory. God is God! You can’t get away. I’ve tried. You know, if you really want to get away from God, and if it’s really in your heart to go back into the world and to give up on God, you should do that, and then you’ll find out that what I’m telling you is the truth. He is El Elyon. He has called you. What do we do with this verse: "He is the author and He is the finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12:2)? It took me years to find that out. I had nobody who would tell me, "Gary, be at ease. God will work it out." We don’t even like to hear that. But if the responsibility for the Christian life is on Gary Sigler, I’m in a whole lot of trouble, and so are you. The reason we have so many problems in the Church is that we have not understood the Father’s heart. We have thought, and we have been taught, "He loves us unconditionally," but yet there has been that undermining concept that if you get into disobedience, if you don’t do exactly what He says, then even though He still loves you, He can’t help you anymore, because your will will nullify His ability to help you. If that is the truth, I wouldn’t be here today. You have to realize that Jesus is your Redeemer! Do you want to know what the penalty for sin is? Read it in the Bible. Do you know who paid the penalty for sin? He bore the iniquity of us all, and with His stripes, we were healed. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world! He took it, He took your judgment!
Why the Church Is In Darkness
I can’t tell you how many years I sought after God with wrong concepts. Because I have always been very honest and open, I would go to pastor after pastor and I would confess, "I do this, and I do that." But all I was told was, "You know, you have a free will. It’s your choice, Gary, so if you are going to continue to do this, then I can’t help you and neither can God." And that’s why this country is in such a mess. There are a lot of people out there in the world who have tried religion and found that it doesn’t work. We don’t all have strong characters and strong wills. We’re not all able to whip our flesh into line and be righteous and good Christians, but that is the requirement you have out there. You have the survival of the fittest. The honest heart, the heart admitting its inability to transform itself, cannot make it in religion. I’ll never forget when I first experienced the Lord and wanted to join an Assembly of God church. The pastor gave me a card (I’m sure many of you have seen it) and on the back of the card it said, "I promise I won’t dance, I don’t smoke, I won’t drink, I won’t go to movies." But I often tell people, "Do you know what Jesus would do today, if He came on the scene? (I can see this so plainly, and all you religious devils can just go ahead and scream.) I can see Jesus going down to the corner pub. I can see Him pulling up a bar stool and ordering a cold beer.
Because I have always been
very honest and open,
I would go to pastor after pastor
and I would confess, "I do this, and I do that."
But all I was told was,
"You know, you have a free will.
It’s your choice, Gary,
so if you are going
to continue to do this,
then I can’t help you and neither can God."
I can see Him taking a sip of that beer and turning to the fellow next to Him and saying, ‘You know what? This is good, but I’ve got something that is so much better!’" You say He wouldn’t do that? Well, I do that, and I never lose His presence—in fact His presence becomes sweeter. Now, if you want to misinterpret that and imagine that I am saying that drinking is okay (I know what the flesh does) that is all right. You see, you cannot withhold the truth because of being afraid of what God’s people will do with it. That’s why the Church is in darkness. I know pastors who know the truth that I preach, but they will not preach it, because they say, "If I taught that to my church, I’d have chaos on my hands." That is because these pastors don’t know how to build their people up, and they don’t know how to minister by the Spirit. They have to keep them in darkness in order to keep them.
Walking In the Love of God
I recently participated in a week of wonderful worship and fellowship in the Lord. We can easily get the concept that these are special times, and they are; that this was a special visitation, and it was. But then we have to go back to our jobs. In fact, somebody asked me the other day, "Can we keep this wonderful presence? This is wonderful, but what happens next week?" I used to ask that same question. I’ve been going to these kinds of things for about thirty years. I used to go to two or three weeks of meetings at a time and be in the glory, and then go back to work and immediately fall into depression. "My God! I’ve got to face the world again!" But there comes a day in your life when there are no more highs and lows, when you just begin to walk in the love of God, come what may. The last job I had I was a night manager at a retirement facility.When Carol and I walked into the dining room, people just loved us. We did not preach to them although I did hold meetings there on Sunday evenings, and many of them came and listened. But if I was typically religious, they wouldn’t even like us. I can guarantee that, because I heard them talk about religious people. It cannot be what you say, it has to be what you are! We have a message, but it is not a message of mere words. You know, God gives you a message, and then you go out, and it’s just like the Abraham and Ishmael process—you go out to give the message, and all you do is create chaos. When God gives you a message, it can take years, because you have to become the message. And if you don’t, the message that you give will not help anyone.
People tell me all the time, "You speak with such boldness!" Why? It is because I know what I am saying; I’ve heard God speak these things to me. The things that I’m teaching today, God revealed to me over twenty years ago, but I never taught them. Then, about 14 years ago, the Lord released me to start teaching some of these things. I had pastored a church for 3½ years, and if you go back and listen to my messages, you’ll hear in seed form that which I’m teaching today, but I didn’t have the liberty to bring it out fully then. I can remember that when I was saved, I wanted to be a pastor with all my heart.
You know, God gives you a message,
and then you go out, and it’s just like
the Abraham and Ishmael process—
you go out to give the message,
and all you do is create chaos.
When God gives you a message,
it can take years, because you have to
become the message.
When I was eleven years old, I told my mom that I wanted to be a pastor. And in time, I applied to the Lutheran seminary, because that is what we were. I wanted so much to be a pastor, because I already had told my mom that when I grew up, I would not be going to church. You see, my concept was that if I became a pastor, then I could maybe bring some change to the Lutheran church. But my family had no money to support me in that field, and the seminary would not accept me without finances (bless God), so I couldn’t go. But I wanted all my life to work for God. And when God finally called me into the ministry full time, it was to a church in Springfield, Oregon. After years and years of prayer and seeking God, and knowing that I had been called to go into the ministry, I knew that this was it.
I’ll never forget the first time that I walked on the church property and God spoke to me. I knew I was coming there! I had a vision burned within me of what God wanted to do in that place. But when I went there, you cannot believe the hell that my wife and I went through! I had thought pastoring was going to be just the greatest thing in the world, but we had folks tell us, "We don’t like your music; we don’t like what you teach." They went just a little bit short of saying, "We don’t like you, either." But my wife can tell you, I never got angry. Honest to God, I never got angry; I didn’t get upset in the presence of people. You know what I did? I went into my room, and I fell on my face, and I wept, and I said, "God! Help me! I know what You have placed within me, God. Help me. Give me the expression, because I know these people. If I can have the expression, and if I can give them the understanding that you have given me, they’re going to love the Word."
Rejecting False Concepts of God
People react against you because they don’t understand. People rail against the Gospel because they are in darkness. It’s not because they are mean and hateful (although some are) but because they are in darkness. But if the rest of the people of the world could have the vision and experience the love of God as I have experienced it, there is no way that they would reject Him! People today are rejecting the concept of God that America has given them. I don’t want that God either. I don’t want a God I have to be in fear of all the time, thinking that I might serve Him for twenty years, and then I might hit a weak point, I might backslide and get into sin, never come out, die, and then have to face an eternal torment. I don’t want that kind of a God! I want a God I know is my Father. Yes, He may throw me into a fiery hell of His indignation, but no matter what it takes, it is going to be for correction, it is going to be for reproof, and it is going to be for my good. That’s the only kind of God I know.
I don’t know the God of so-called "Christianity" that is a false image.
I know we all get our concepts from the Bible. But Jesus Himself said, "I know what your law says [Lev. 24:19-20]—if somebody kills your brother, you just take him out and kill him," but Jesus said, "Listen! Something is wrong with that concept" (Mt. 5:38-42). Am I saying that the Word was wrong? I will tell you this: Some of the concepts that we thought we saw in the Word were not godly concepts. I know what your word says, and I know there are Christians who even delight to think that there are people who are going to suffer eternally in agony and torment—because "they deserve it". There are Christians like that, and there are people like that, because they think God is like that! And whatever you think God is like, you will feel justified in being. You need a much bigger God than that. You need a God who is able to save you to the uttermost. You need a God who is able to reach down into the depths of your despair and your disobedience. You need a God whose arm is not shortened that He cannot save, who will reach down and lift you up—yes, a God who will correct you in His righteous indignation and wrath, but only because He loves you, not because He is angry. If we get an understanding of the heart and the love of our Father God, we will turn this world upside-down. And you who think that you are on the verge of being manifested as a son of God should know that you will never be a manifested son of God until you understand these concepts and get to know the heart of God—until you realize that He is not one who is vengefully angry, but who seeks only to do you good.
Don’t you need that kind of a God? I do! As much as I have sought after God, there are still things in my life that pop up occasionally that I haven’t been able to deal with fully. I need a Savior. I need to know that what God desires more than anything else, what He desires even more than our obedience, is a heart that seeks Him! That’s why I used to go out in the desert, and say, "God . . . God! I don’t have the will to serve You." (I both did, and I didn’t. You know what I mean.) My flesh simply could not help me. I needed Him! Today God is permitting this message to come forth. The Church is coming out of the wilderness, but when we come out of the wilderness, we cannot come out with those old concepts that have kept us in there. We have to have another Gospel than what we have had in the past. In fact, there is even a verse in The Revelation which speaks of an angel flying and having the everlasting Gospel to preach to the world (Rev. 14:6). Believe it or not, that is the Gospel that is beginning to be declared to you in these days. And not only by me—there is a whole group of men and women on the earth today whom you need to hear.
To be continued
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