Perhaps you are at such a point right now. You are pretty well situated in life as a middle-aged person, or a young person with a vision of what you intend to accomplish in life. Or you may be an older individual who thought your useful years were concluded.

But you feel a stirring in your soul. It might be the Lord. Do you dare inquire further? Do you dare to think of changing your "secure" position? Or will you withdraw because of fear of the unknown or because you do not want to leave your comforts?

Perhaps you are part of a church that is very vital, in which the Lord's Presence is felt Sunday after Sunday. You may not realize it but you may be warming your hands at someone else's fire just as Solomon was warming his hands at David's fire so to speak.

Someone paid the price, you can be sure, if you are sensing the Lord's Presence at every service. Wouldn't you like it to be true of you that you know the Lord for yourself? Suppose you were called to another place. Could you bring the holy fire with you? How would you like to make that sense of God's Presence your own so no matter where you went you could bring it with you?

Eliezer the servant of Abraham referred to the God of his master, Abraham. God was not Eliezer's God but the God of the one who was willing to obediently offer his cherished son as a burnt offering.

How would you like God to become your God and not just the pastor's God?

You can, you know. But, like Nehemiah, you may have to leave the familiar (only as God leads!) and go into another place (perhaps not geographically) that is unfamiliar and seemingly dangerous if you are to make the Glory of God your own.

Nehemiah had to spend a lot of his own money and he received little thanks for it. But the wall around Jerusalem finally was rebuilt.

In the first century the Glory of God and the fullness of the revelation of the new covenant rested on twelve men, including the Apostle Paul. We know from the Epistles that the churches themselves were about as carnal as we are today.

Then, in the wisdom of God, the Apostles were martyred and the spirit of wisdom and revelation was not transferred to the godly Christian religious leaders. Not having the same Spirit of revelation as the Apostles of the Lamb the Christian scholars began to make commentaries and translations.

The Bible was copied laboriously by hand by the monks for several hundred years. Then, when the Catholic traditions had grown far removed from the Bible, the Lord raised up the Reformers.

From the time of the Reformers to the present hour the work of restoration (the latter, or spring rain) has progressed an inch at a time. That which had been given so freely was now in the process of being restored, but at what a price as the established Christian organization fought fiercely to hold onto its traditions.

To be continued.