STILL WATERS
Translation Alert #52
Still Waters | Neal Frisby’s Sermon | CD #1179 | 10/14/1987 PM
Praise the Lord! Lord, we come here to worship you with all our hearts as the Great Creator and the Great Savior, the Lord Jesus. We thank you, Lord. Now, touch your children. Reach out and answer their prayers, Lord Jesus, and guide them. Help them in the things that are hard to understand and make a way for them. When there seems to be no way, Lord, you will make a way. Touch every one of them. Take all the pain out and all the stress of this life. You carried it away, Lord Jesus. Bless them all together. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Give the Lord a handclap! Praise the Lord!
Be with us in prayer. Pray for souls and for the Lord to move. What we find today is that people do not want to have a burden for praying for souls. Where the Holy Spirit is in now, in whatever church where He is, that burden for souls is going to be there. It would do them no good to jump up and run somewhere else where the burden for souls is not present. It won’t help them at all. But where the power of God is, as the age is closing out, He is putting it upon His people to pray to bring in the kingdom of God, to pray for the harvest and to pray for souls. That is the real church right there. Where people have a burden for souls and people like to pray, many people do not want to go there. They don’t want any kind of a burden at all. They just want to float in. I don’t even think they are going to get themselves saved. Do you know you get yourself saved by praying for others to be saved? That’s exactly right. You don’t ever want to lose your first love like the Ephesian church after Paul left. And the Lord gave a warning, a hard one. He said because you have forgotten your first love for souls, repent, lest I remove your whole candlestick from you, for the church age. Now at the end of the age, if those candlesticks were set in the church age of today; it will be the same thing. See; above all things, the heart should be set upon the souls that are entering into the kingdom. I have news for those that do not want the burden on them; God has got people that He will put it on, because the bible says it will be fulfilled. Keep, your heart always moving in the power and in the action of the Holy Spirit. That’s why we see so many miracles here–when they come from everywhere to be healed–it is because of that desire for souls, for souls to be delivered and the love of God mixed with faith; it is a tremendous source of energy.
Now, listen here tonight; Still Waters. You know, pressure, pressure, but the jewel of stillness is wonderful, isn’t it? Listen close tonight: the whole world seems to be under different kinds of pressure. Pressure is everywhere you look. The pressure of clamoring and of thez vexation of the mind in the city, on the streets, in the offices, in the neighborhoods, pressure is everywhere. But there is something good about pressure. When God applied pressure to the church, every time, it came forth as gold. How many of you believe that? Let’s get into this message. Somebody said you can actually profit from pressure if you know what you are doing. That was a statement from somebody that was well known. I don’t know if he was in the ministry or not. You know, in the days that we live in, the pressures come and go. They are in every person nearly, on planet earth here. Don’t argue with pressure. Don’t get mad at pressure. I am going to tell you how you can use pressure for your own benefit.
Did you know that the pressure on me as a young man drove me right into the ministry where I am today? So, it worked for me. It profited me. God brought eternal life in the power of it. So, there is pressure. You can’t get rid of it by arguing. You can’t get rid of it by getting mad at it, but you’ve got to rely on what God tells you to do. Pressure: how do you work with it and what happens? You know, the sun, pressure within the sun works with it and it explodes. It gives us heat and we have life all over the earth; our plants, our vegetables and the fruits that we eat, from the sun comes that energy. Enormous powerful pressure brings forth such life as we have. All of life comes from pressure, do you know that? When the birth of a child comes forth, there is travailing, there is pressure and life comes forth from the power of God. You know from the atom that they split, fire comes forth. But you’ve got to learn how to work with pressure. You’ve got to learn how to handle it. If you don’t know how to handle it, well, it will wreck you and it can tear you up.
Now, Jesus was in the garden and it was said that the pressure of the whole world came upon Him and He carried the pressure while His disciples were asleep. With that same pressure upon Him, He broke through to God. In the stillness of the night, He got a hold of Him. One time, He said to the sea, peace be still, be calm and it calmed down just like that. The same One that did that was letting His whole heart out to save the world. Such pressure came upon Him that drops of blood came out. If one were to look upon Him, they would wonder in great amazement. What was happening? But when He came through that and the cross, it brought eternal life and we would never die that believe in the Lord Jesus. How wonderful is that?
For many years, scientists wondered about the diamond and how it comes forth in such beauty of all the gems. They found out that it came forth out of tremendous pressure in the earth, and great heat, and fire. General Electric has spent a lot of money trying to prove this and they did. But with the pressure and the fire, the gem comes forth and it sparkles like that. All the pressures of this life all around us, no matter what satan puts upon you and no matter what satan throws at you, God is bringing you forth. You are going to be like the diamond that sun is going to shine on you. Let me read something here: “In every aspect of life, in nature and everywhere, it [pressure] holds the secret of power. Life itself depends on pressure. A butterfly can only gain strength to fly when it is allowed to push itself out of the walls of the cocoon. By pressure, it pushes itself out. It has wings and it pushes itself away.” And by pressure, whether it be by criticism that comes against the elect of God or the persecution that comes against the elect at the time of the end, it makes no difference, you are going to push yourself right out into that butterfly. Pressure will bring you right into the translation.
You watch and see; as nature itself is, so shall be the coming of the Lord. All nature is under pressure. It is travailing as it is said in Romans [8: 19 &22] at the coming of the Lord, and as the sons of thunder come forth. Pressure everywhere; pressure is what makes coal–the water that comes out of the faucet– and the little seed that falls on the ground, it is pressure that makes that little seed pop and makes it to come alive. It is all the pressure round about us; even the volcanoes under pressure spew fire and rocks out. The whole earth was made out of pressure. Strength is developed through pressure. It applies to spiritual strength too. How many of you believe that? It is the truth. When he was speaking, Paul said, we are pressed out of measure [2 Corinthians 1: 8]. Then he turned around and said, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling [Philippians 3: 14]. We are pressed out of measure and yet, Jesus, with the pressure upon Him in the wilderness, when He came out, He had power and He defeated the devil. There was pressure upon the Messiah; the pressure that came from the Pharisees, those that knew the law in the Old Testament, the rich and even some of the poor that did not believe Him, and the sinners, there was also pressure from demon powers and from satan, but He did not give in to that pressure. He allowed the pressure to build His character even stronger and more powerful. All that pressure around Him carried Him all through the cross. He was an example and He taught us how to carry this [pressure].
If you allow pressure to get out of hand though, and you don’t do anything about it, it can break you all to pieces. But when you learn to control whatever pressure is put your way, then, you are going to live a good Christian life. So, no matter what happens in your life; what pressure is on your job, what pressure is in your family, what pressure is at school, what pressure is in your neighborhood, it makes no difference, if you learn the secret of the Most High that pressure has to work for you. Jesus said, “…like a well of water springing up into everlasting life” [John 4: 14]. Like a well of water, you have to have pressure all the time. There is a pressure on that spring and that pressure pushes up like a spring of water. So, He is trying to tell us, you’ve got the Holy Spirit. Do you see that? The Holy Spirit is just springing up like wells of water of life in there. The pressures of life push against you and the waters of salvation are more and more yours every day. Oh, he [David] said, “Lead me beside the still waters because I have been under pressure, Lord. Every battle all around me; my enemies are at hand, lead me beside the still waters” and he will, He said.
The still waters: Amen. What a jewel of stillness! How can you work with pressure? Jesus said in the scriptures that the kingdom of God is preached and every man presseth into it. Some say, “Well, you get saved and God is just going to carry you along. You don’t have to pray or seek God.” You have to have faith; you read the word and you stand your ground with the devil. You are always alert, and you are confident that God will not fail you. There is a duty and there is a great effort or there is no faith. There is an expectation in there and every man or woman, or you might say, every child presseth toward the kingdom of God. That means there will be winds of satan and winds of this and that pushing against you, but at the same time, that [wind] will build you up. It is the pressures that draw the people that I know of to give their hearts to the Lord Jesus. Many things were happening in my life when I was very young as I came to the Lord Jesus. So, learn today, if you give up, enduring the pressure, and you just give up and ride with pressure without coming to the still waters, without coming to the Lord Jesus Christ; nerves, stress, and fear will come upon you. Like I said, the stress of this life, the pressure of this life, you can’t argue with it; it is there.
When we come to church, we come here together, and we believe together, we see miracles and there is joy and happiness, but as an individual, when you are not in church and you are alone by yourself—ask any woman who has 3, 5 or 8 kids, ask any woman who is raising those kids, when they are all gone to school, how precious it is to have a moment of stillness and quietness! How sweet it is from the pressures of life to just get back into the stillness of God. What a treasure! How important it is! I tell you, it is a medicine. God dwells there and that is where every prophet, every warrior in the bible including David got alone with the Lord. Jesus, from the clamor, the name calling everyday as He worked miracles and preached the gospel, the great weight that came upon Him from the people, the bible says He would slip off for whole nights, they couldn’t find Him. He was alone, sitting alone. You will say, “He was God, He could just disappear.” They didn’t know where He went, but when they saw Him, He was praying. The thing is this: He could have done it any way He wanted, but what He wanted to do to His disciples was to say, “Watch me, see what I do, you are going to have to do all this later when I am taken. He was an example to every one of us today.
So, there is a great power of stillness, the quietness that is within the soul. A quietness and a confidence which is the source of all strength, a sweet peace which nothing can offend. There is a deep stillness in the believer’s soul, it is in the chamber of his heart. He can only find it when he gets away from people. He can only find it when he gets alone with God. Lead me to the still waters. Lead me to the quietness where God is [at]. Daniel used to pray three times a day in the stillness and quietness [of what he wanted to do]. Get away from the clamors of life; if you are constant and consecutive, and you have a time for it, a time to be alone with God, those pressures are going to vanish from there. There may be an emergency, or something may happen, but you have been alone, you have been in the stillness of the Almighty. Whatever it is that is bothering you, God is going to help you because He sees that you are going out of your way to find relief from Him.
You know, Elijah, there was a still small voice, and he had just come through a great uproar in Israel. He was left out in the wilderness. He had not eaten anything for many days. The Lord came to him in a still small voice to calm him down. A still small voice means that the sentences that He spoke were small, very short and brief. It was very quietening, and it was just like tranquility; a peace in God’s voice that no one in this world can understand unless they heard it from God like Elijah did. He calmed Elijah down. God calmed him down with a quiet, still voice because he was about to make the most important decision of his life. He was going to find the one to take the place of the great Elijah. Also, he was getting ready to leave this earth to be with God. Where we are today, let us put it this way–the tribulation saints, they are prepared; they will be out there somewhere–but this shows us that in the stillness of God, in the quietness of God like Elijah, we have got an important decision to make. We are getting ready to leave with the Lord. He is getting ready to carry us out and it won’t be too long. That is a very important decision.
At the end of the age, they will have any type of thing that you want to see. All these different things will come that people—in an hour you think not—will not be thinking straight. But in the stillness and in the quietness, it will not catch you off guard. The cares of this life will not take you from God, but quietness and stillness will lead you into a unity with the power of the Lord. This is to the individual. We are not talking about the church unless the stillness does come upon the church because of something that God has done. But in your own life, the quietness and the peace.
Now, what is the secret of working with pressure on every side? It is getting alone in the stillness like Elijah, no matter where you are; it is an antidote to that pressure. Then the pressure has worked for you. Then the pressure has built your character. It has caused you to stand strong in the Lord, and in that stillness, you are the overcomer. God will bless your heart and you can help somebody else. O, lead me to the still waters. The bible says in the quietness and in the stillness, comes your confidence and your strength, saith the Lord. But He said, they would not listen. Did you read the rest of it (Isaiah 30 15)? Now, get alone, be still. The Lord said in another place, “Be still, and know that I am God (Psalm 46: 10). Today, the very sermon I am preaching right here is, get alone; in the quietness and the stillness is thy confidence and strength. Yet, they will not listen. The stillness of the soul is a treasure from God. Amen. How many of you believe that? People have to go through so much today with the young people that we have, rebellion on everyside and what is happening on the job, and what is happening everywhere; you need that [stillness]. Let the pressure work for you. As someone said, you can profit from pressure. But I say, you must get alone with God. Stillness is power. There is no power like the stillness of the Lord. The bible says that the peace of God that passeth all understanding… (Philippians 4: 7). The 91st psalm as it reads in the bible mentions the secret place of the Most High.
Look at the pressure from the butterfly in that cocoon; it changes from a worm to a great flight. As I said before, the church is going to come out of that cocoon and when it comes out of that cocoon-like [state], it is going to get the wings of flight through that pressure and they (elect) are going up. You talk about pressure; this is coming from the Most High, He will never forget Job. Satan said, “Let me put the pressure on him and he will turn on you. He will quit your law, the bible and the word of God. He will quit everything you have told him, no matter how much you have done for him, how rich he is, and how you have been good to him; he will forget about you.” But the thing was, everybody but Job did. Amen. And the Lord said, “Well, you have come up here to challenge me, eh? Alright, go. Satan tried everything; he took his family, he took everything, turned his friends on him and almost caused him to become negative. It almost got a hold on him, but it didn’t. The bible says satan turned on him through the strife of his friends. But do you know what? The stillness and the power of stillness will break up the strife that’s been around you, the anger that’s been around you and the gossip that’s been around you. The power of stillness is great, saith the Lord.
The pressure was on Job; sores and boils, sickness unto death, you know the story. Such suffering where it is better to die than to continue to live. The pressure came from every direction for him to give up, but Oh, it made a powerful man out of him. Job said, though God slay me, yet I will trust Him (Job 13:15), and when He has pressured me, I shall come forth as gold out of the fire (Job 23: 10). There it is! That is why God turned and went to Job, to bring that out. When He pressures me, when the pressure comes and when He has tried and pressured me, I shall come forth as gold in the stillness and the quietness of God. And when Job was alone and got away from his friends—he got away from everybody that was around him and he was alone with God—He appeared in the whirlwind and Job’s hair stood up as God came. He quaked, and he quivered as the Lord appeared. He got alone and searched his soul, and he came to the point of saying, “if God slay me, yet, I am sticking it out. I am staying right there. When He has tried me, I am coming forth as pure gold.”
The church will be tried. The church of the Lord will be persecuted toward the end of the age. Toward the end of the age, friends will turn against you, but there is no friend like Jesus. You will be like it is said in the book of Revelation chapter 3 about verses 15 and 17, you will come forth as gold in the fire. He will try you. The tests and the trials of this life, and all the temptations of this life will work for your benefit; every test will work for your benefit. Do you hear that young people? You say, “I am in such pressure. Oh, I can’t do this, or this is troubling me.” There is what we call troubled waters, but tell God to lead you beside the still waters. Pray every time that pressure comes up. Stay alone. Spend time with the Living God with a few words, and He is going to bless you. So, this life, life itself, God shows us comes through pressure when you were born, when God created us in His vision, in His mind and when He created us first, as a tiny seed of light, get back to that. Get alone with God as it was in the stillness before you were conceived, before you came forth through pressure. Return to the Most High in the stillness when He first thought of you. His first thought was upon each individual that would come from 6,000 years ago to where we are now. Get back to that before the seed was brought forth through pressure and you would find the God of eternity, the Eternal God. So as nature’s seeds push themselves to life, we push and press to the kingdom of God. Isn’t that wonderful?
In the power of stillness—be still, and know that I am God. Peace to the storm, Jesus said. All through the bible there are many scriptures about peace and quietness. Then the Lord has this one, in thy stillness and in thy quietness, is your confidence, but ye would not. Listen, that is the bible in Isaiah as I gave you a while ago (30: 15); read it yourself. So, here we are at the end of the age; when the pressures of this life come, things may come left, and they may come right all around you, just remember, they will work for you. You can profit from them. They will drive you closer to God. How many of you believe that right now? The reason this is being preached right now is because as we turn the corner in time, the pressures of this life are going to change. They will come at you in many types and from different directions. As the age closes out, you would want to be in the stillness and in the quietness of God. Then, when satan pushes you like Job, when he comes at you from every direction, you don’t know friend from foe and you don’t know what to do, this message is going to mean something.
This message is really for the church at the end of the age. In the travailing of the sun-clothed woman, in that great travail, that man child came forth, and he was caught up to the throne of God under the pressure. And as a diamond in the earth, under great pressure of fire that produces the gem, we, as the diamond of God—the jewels in His Crown, that is what He called us—as we come forth under the fire and the power of the Holy Spirit—the pressure of the world working at the same time and the power of the Holy Spirit working with us—we are going to sparkle like diamonds with God. How many of you believe that? I really believe that tonight. Amen. God’s troop is marching. Remember; at the end of the age, “When you come into your closet in the quietness, in the stillness of God, I will reward thee openly.” How many of you believe that?
Today, there is too much clamoring, even among the churches and everywhere. There is so much going on, talking this and that, almost every church has some kind of cookout or something going on. It’s alright for them to do that. But, Oh, if they would just get alone with God! Amen? Today, it seems like the devil has a way to take their minds away from the Lord. Then you know if you have your time with the Lord in the power of stillness, that the pressure on the earth is working to bring us into a closer relationship with the Lord. Then when you come to church, a sermon will mean something to you and the anointing will mean something to you. Every time I walk around that corner, [to come to the pulpit] that power, I feel it all the time, but it’s just the freshness because I know God has got something for His people. It won’t come from me; I know that God is going to give it. I just yield to Him, whatever you say, let it come out of here like a spring, and it will help you.
Behold, it is anointed tonight, saith the Lord. I have anointed the message to deliver, to lead thee beside the still waters of peace. It is the Lord and His anointing. My grace and power will be with thee and I will bless thee and give thee a quietness, not in the head or the body, but in the soul, saith the Lord. That is a treasure from the Most High. If you ever get that stillness inside of you, that still small voice that quietened the great prophet, pulled him together, and got him ready for the translation, that’s what is coming to the church. Amen? When we come out here together, sure, we unite, and we have a great time with the Lord, but what about later when you are an individual in your home or in your family with the cares of the world that would like to drag you down, strangle and choke you? Yet, you have binding and loosing power from the Most High. Oh, the title of this is still waters. The jewel of stillness, how wonderful it is with pressure on every side! He is with you and the anointing of the Lord is with you tonight.
On this cassette, Lord, let your anointing take out all of the fear, all the anxieties and the worries. Let the revelation of this message ring in their hearts, an unforgettable message to them, Lord, that would stay in their souls and take them out of this world as it should, giving them confidence and power over all pains and all sickness, and driving out any kind of depression. Go, any kind of oppression! Set they people free. Blessed be the name of the Lord. We praise thee forever. Give the Lord a good handclap! There are so many good scriptures, but we have got the truth and the scriptures together here toning. So, remember, let pressure work for you and let the stillness of God bring you into a deeper life. The Lord bless you. Just ask the Lord to guide you in this message when it comes out because things are coming upon this world. You are going to need this later on. Everyone of you is going to need this message here. It is a bit different from all the other messages. There is something in there that is revelative and very mysterious, and it is going to help you in your soul. Rejoice in the Lord. Ask the Lord to lead you beside the still waters. Ask the Lord to reveal to you His will in your life and then, let’s just shout the victory, and ask the Lord to bless everything that we touch for Him.
Still Waters | Neal Frisby’s Sermon | CD #1179 | 10/14/1987 PM