YOUR REWARD HAS
COME
By Dan
Luehrs
"Behold, I am
coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to
what he has done.” Rev 22:12 (NASU)
I was out on our lawn one
day when I heard this verse in my spirit and began to ponder on it. How many
funerals have I gone to where the Pastor has used this verse and said the
deceased has gone on to their reward in heaven? I am not saying that there are
no rewards in heaven for the faithful when we die. Yet in this verse Jesus is
not speaking about us getting a reward in heaven, He is talking about the here
and now. For some reason I like the here and now a little better then always
having to wait to die and get to heaven to receive my inheritance. When we do
die and go to heaven I think we will be amazed at how much of His blessings we
could have had here on earth in our life-time, but because we did not have
faith for it we did not receive them.
What is wrong with
traditional Christianity? We always using terms like, “Do you want to go to
heaven when you die?” When the truth of the matter is, we sit in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus when we receive Him into our heart. I consider myself to
be one of the most blessed persons in all the earth because I have a
relationship with the living God. I sense His loving presence and joy most days
that I wake up. He comes now to reward us for our faith-fullness (being full of
faith) in seeking Him through all our daily trials and testing’s. God is
looking for a people to bless extravagantly with His grace and presence if they
will just take the time to be with Him each day.
“…That our God will
count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the
work of faith with power.” 2 Thess 1:11 (NASU)
If you are reading
this it is because you have not given up on your faith and you are still
following Jesus to the best of your ability. God now rewards this type of faith
because frankly, WE NEED IT to keep
going and not give up! Imagine having a job that never paid you one cent? You
would quit! What use is it of having a job that we do not get any payment for our
time? In the spirit and in the natural realm we are rewarded for our work of
faith, we follow the Lord in faith when we seek His face for His will to be
done in our lives.
Jesus said in
Revelation 3:18, “I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you
may become rich…” We cannot give money to the Lord for refined spiritual gold,
which is the nature of God’s character. But we can pay the price of following
the Lord through the obedience of faith and being changed into the likeness of
Christ through our tribulations. Works of faith are the very thing that change
us from day to day as we pay the price of following Him. God loves to reward the
faith filled believers with the closeness of His presence, for He has promised
to manifest Himself to all who draw close to Him.
THE REWARD
In the last 35 years I
have tried to follow the Lord and He has rewarded me more times than I can know
of in this lifetime, I am so thankful for His goodness unto me even when I
don’t deserve it. I am sure there are more ways that He rewards us then I could
even begin to think of, so here are a few ways of His blessing that comes to us.
1. We are rewarded when we choose to
spend time with Him.
"But you, when
you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who
is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”
Matt 6:6 (NASU)
God loves us so much
that He sent Jesus to die for us so that we could have fellowship with the
Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit daily. God is closer to us than our next
breath and all we have to do is to begin to fellowship with Him in our heart
wherever we are and He is right there in the closet of our heart. He rewards us
with joy, peace, love, and just feeling accepted into the heart of God. Again in
how many He rewards us is unfathomable, all I know is that when we fall in love
with Jesus He is there as our friend for life. Amazing!
2. We are rewarded with His manifest presence.
He who has My
commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be
loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." John
14:21 (NKJV)
He said that He would
reveal Himself to us individually, not just in a group of people. God’s
presence means more to me then the very air I breathe. It amazes me how He can
come to me just seemingly out of thin air with His manifest presence. I
remember when I was young in the Lord as His presence would fill the room and
my heart, I would say, “What is this?” Not understanding that God is everywhere
and it’s not Him that comes to us so much, but we come to Him when we open our
hearts to praise and thank Him for His goodness to us, and as we ask Him to
fill us with His Holy Spirit.
3. We are rewarded when we bless others
in the body of Christ.
"And whoever in
the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold
water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward." Matt
10:42 (NASU)
If we just encourage a
believer in Jesus we will be rewarded by the Father for blessing one of His
children. We must understand that God wants to work through our lives to be His
hand and heart to bless anyone of His chosen ones. Many blessing will come upon
our lives because of this one thing, go out and bless the family of God!
I have written of this
event in my life often because it was so pivotal When I was fourteen I was a
cook in a local restaurant close to my home. One day I was in the men’s
restroom and there were paper towels on the floor and I picked them up and
threw them into the waste basket. When for the very first time in my life I
heard the voice of God say to me, “I will bless your life if you continue to do
that.” I knew even at the age I knew what He meant. That if I serve people
without them seeing my servanthood He will reward me openly. I am now 54 years
old and I still do this in the men’s restrooms. God has truly blessed me and
has kept His word to me even though I have come through many storms of life
where people have forsaken me and counted me out. Never, never give up on God
or yourself, never! Even as I tell my wife, “If I died today I could say I have
lived a most blessed life because of God’s goodness to me.”
4. There are rewards in heaven.
"Be glad in that
day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For in the
same way their fathers used to treat the prophets.” Luke 6:23 (NASU)
Again this does not
mean when we die. Heaven is another word for the spirit world that we all live
in every day, but very few Christians even acknowledge it. When we spend time
in God’s presence we are truly in heavenly or spiritual places with Christ Jesus
and He is rewarding us with the revelation of Himself through the word of God and
the Holy Spirit.
5. Rewarded for loving others.
"But love your
enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward
will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to
ungrateful and evil men. Luke 6:35 (NASU)
This is probably the
biggest reward from the Father, to become the sons of God. The word [Son] means
to be like the Father. This is one reward we can never comprehend in the
natural mind, but I sure like the sound of it! Don’t you?
6. Here’s one reward that will spiritually
stretch you. We are rewarded with our seemingly failure at times because God’s
ways are not ours. Let me explain what I mean.
“…Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of
life.” Rev 2:10 (NASU)
The reward of the
crown of life sounds great, again, beyond our comprehension, but we do not like
the dying to self part to get it! It seems like it would be a great failure to
die and not accomplish a whole lot in this life, but He who has our times in
His hand knows what is best for us.
What is failure
anyway? Is dying on the cross a failure? The people of Jesus day sure thought
it was including all the disciples that watched Him die. How about the Apostle
Paul who got his head cut off in prison while the churches he gave his life to
build are falling into apostasy. How about all the disciples dying for their
faith? Our thoughts of failure are sure different then God’s are. We must have
faith that He is the rewarder of those who seek and follow Him in faith,
because that is what God is right now rewarding in our life. Our faith that is
tried by fire! There comes a point in life where we must view our failures as
success in the eyes of faith. Knowing that we have served God with our whole
heart yet seemingly coming up short in our own eyes and the eyes of others. Failure
is truly God’s back door to success.
7. Our great reward is to be the eternal
city of God, the New Jerusalem now, not just some time in the future. There are
only two spiritual cities that people live their lives in, the New Jerusalem or
Great Babylon (confusion). We either identify with the word of God as our
constitution, with our world view of Jesus being King over our lives and
country. Or we constitute the ways of the world which is governed by the evil
prince of darkness.
Behold, the Lord has
proclaimed to the end of the earth, say to the daughter of Zion, "Lo, your
salvation comes; behold His reward is with Him, and His recompense before
Him." And they will call them, "The holy people, the redeemed of the
Lord"; and you will be called, "Sought out, a city not
forsaken." Isa 62:11-12 (NASU)
The Kingdom
of God will stand
A few of us were in prayer as the Lord
began to speak prophetically through me. The Lord began speaking about the
times that we are living in that is so exciting that we can be alive in this
day.
The word went on to say that the world
system we are living in is like a sand castle that is about to collapse all
around us like a house of cards. In my vision I saw another city arise from the
dust, in fact it never fell! What I saw next was awesome.
As the people of the kingdom of God
remained standing all the other people that were of the kingdoms of this world
rushed into the kingdom of God and the city of God grew upward rapidly in size
and numbers.
The Lord quickly confirmed what I saw in
the spirit this morning that I was seeing correctly. As the spirit of prophecy
was upon me I had visions for the people that where there. I told one man that
I saw the Lord giving him ice cleats because he needed to climb a mountain that
was standing before him in the spirit covered with ice and that God would send
down a rope to help him come up higher into the realms of God. He told me that
God had given him the same dream two nights ago. Only God could have known this
and revealed it to me. All praise and honor goes to Him!
AT THIS
CURRENT TIME
Right now we are seeing some nations in
total financial and moral upheaval where the people are starving and are
killing Zoo animals to stay alive, like in Venezuela. Brazil and other
countries in Europe are not far behind this economic collapse, if we look
closely at the United States we would see huge cracks in the foundation of this
country with 20 trillion dollars of debt. Not to mention our current moral
failure as a people, church and all. When we lose our moral fabric we lose our
structure and fortification for society to remain strong for the next
generations to come. Like in Europe there is a near negative birth rate because
people are so selfish that they want to live unto themselves rather than
sacrifice for the next generations. Now non-Christian people are taking over
there because they have lost their heritage and faith of their fathers.
This is what the prophet Daniel saw of our
day.
"…You continued looking until a stone
(Jesus) was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue (the world system
of Babylon, meaning confusion) on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them.
…and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried
them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the
statue became a great mountain (the kingdom of God) and filled the whole
earth.” Dan 2:34-35 (NASU)
Fear not my friends! Just as Daniel saw the
kingdom of God grow and fill the earth so will Christian people prosper as
never before. It is the people of the
city that makes up the city, we might think that buildings and structures do,
but without the people buildings are nothing, but empty. When the sand castles
fell in my vision it was because of the great shaking that had taken place
there, it was the kingdom of God (God’s people) that remained standing when
everything else fell around them.
“And His voice shook the earth then, but
now He has promised, saying, "YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE
EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN." This expression, "Yet once more,"
denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things,
so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we
receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we
may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a
consuming fire.” Heb 12:26-29 (NASU)
In my vision I saw clearly the people of
God remain standing upright while those around them fell because they had no
spiritual life on the inside of them. It was like if a human body that did not
have any bone structure in their body, so they would collapse into a blob of
nothing, but because of our bones we have form. So is the spiritual life inside
each of us, it is the structure of who we are, our moral character that causes
us not to collapse when we are tried with great trials in this life. This is
why our trials are great blessings in disguise because they only make us
stronger under pressure.
I also received Isaiah 6:7.
“Of the
increase of His government and peace
there will
be no end,
upon the
throne of David and over His kingdom,
to order it
and establish it with judgment and justice
from that
time forward, even forever.
The zeal of
the Lord of hosts will perform this.”
What does this all mean for us who are already
in the Kingdom of God? Get ready, because the nations are about to come to us
in great numbers and get saved and filled with the Holy Spirit’s life and joy
in the midst of chaos!
“For seven women will take hold of one man
in that day, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes,
only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach!" In that day
the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the
earth will be the pride and the adornment of the survivors of Israel. It will
come about that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called
holy — everyone who is recorded for life in Jerusalem. When the Lord has washed
away the filth of the daughters of Zion and purged the bloodshed of Jerusalem from
her midst, by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning, then the Lord
will create over the whole area of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud
by day, even smoke, and the brightness of a flaming fire by night; for over all
the glory will be a canopy. There will be a shelter to give shade from the heat
by day, and refuge and protection from the storm and the rain.” Isa 4 (NASU)
This is our heritage, and this is our
future to see the King of kings be glorified in the earth through His people.
The day is at hand, fear not the shaking of the world, but stand in faith for
it has been for told us! “And he cried out with a mighty voice, saying,
"Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!” Rev 18:2 (NASU)
Get ready for a wild and exciting ride my
friends!
BUILDING OUR
LIVES ON THE ROCK
"Therefore everyone who hears these words
of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on
the rock. "And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and
slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on
the rock. "Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on
them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. "The
rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that
house; and it fell — and great was its fall Matt 7:24-27 (NASU)
The only way that we
are going to make it and prosper through what is coming is for us to build our
lives on a personal relationship with the living God. He has given us His word
to keep us from falling with the world. But if we have and continue to build
with the sand of the world we will fall with it.
We have been given our
inheritance now because Jesus died and rose again that we would not have to
wait until we die to get it. Heaven is our reward, and the closeness of His
presence is for us now while we walk on the earth. Why not take advantage of
His reward and forget none of His benefits.
PO Box 341
Intercession City, FL 33848
www.churchinhispresence.org