David Berg

By David Berg

The Lord returns and rewards and compensates any sacrifices you make for others in trying to help them. If we are willing to obey and willing to do His will and carry on His work, He never fails. He has never failed, as Martin Luther said when somebody complained that he was taking too many people in to his home--and he had about 25 people living with him then. He said, "Never fear, with every additional mouth, God will supply." He not only supplies, but He abundantly supplies, and He lavishes many blessings and good grace on us as we follow His example in living simply and sharing what we have with others.

The Lord has blessed and increased it as our bread was broken. It has increased, and God has been with us and kept us and protected us and supplied every need. He once commanded us in a prophecy to "enlarge our tents and to lengthen our cords and to strengthen the stakes, for He was going to increase us and cause us to be spread abroad throughout the land." Surely He has fulfilled that prophecy!

It has been by starting out with being kind to a few; the Lord has been kind to us in return and caused many others to be kind to us and to care for us in our needs as we have endeavored to bring happiness to others.

I want you to remember that you can never outgive God. When the great David Livingstone, the pioneer missionary to Africa, was asked by a newspaper man, "Hasn't it been a terrible sacrifice for you to leave England to come to this land amongst strangers, enduring hardships and privations and malaria and all of these things?" David Livingstone said, "I have enjoyed life. I have been happy. I have been healthy. I have done a great work for the Lord, and I have never made a sacrifice!" What he was saying was that he couldn't possibly sacrifice for the Lord. It was impossible to outgive God! The more you give, the more He gives back in return.

Who would have even dreamed that this soon, the dreams which we have had in the past would be so marvelously and abundantly fulfilled, both in our household of faith and our missionaries spread abroad throughout the land. But now here we are, and sometimes we can hardly believe it. We've turned to each other and we've said, "Are we dreaming or are we really here in these strange lands of Europe surveying the need, talking to the young people, seeing the tremendous opportunities? It's all like a dream!" And knowing that God is going to do the same here that He has done throughout North America!

It has been your prayers and your faith and your sacrifice, if you want to call it that. But you're giving to God, and you'll never be able to outgive Him, because the Lord has given back abundantly in return.

God's Entrance Exams

I've found that the Lord almost always allows us the most severe test at the very beginning. He usually allows the Enemy to tempt and test me the worst just as I'm considering or about to begin a new task or a new project for Him. We have the most difficult times and the most difficult trials and the most severe tests because God wants you to find out if you're really going to go through with it, live or die, sink or swim, whether you really mean business, whether you're really going to trust Him and whether you have what it takes to see it through. Usually if you pass those first severe hard tests, the Lord stamps your passport with His stamp of approval.

After that, it's not usually as hard as we were afraid it was going to be. As Mark Twain said, "I'm an old man and I've had many troubles, most of which never happened!" Most of the things which we fear, most of the things which we worry about, most of the problems that we thought we were going to encounter never even happened. God didn't let them happen. But the Lord allowed us to think they might happen and to even worry about them a little bit, to see if we were willing to go at any cost, pay any price, make any sacrifice, in order to obey Him.

"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one," and I'm afraid most of us are cowards, because most of us seem to have to die a thousand deaths before the one real one. We go through all the hell and the agony of dying them before they even happen. Worry can kill you. "Fear hath torment," His Word says, and lack of faith is a terrible, frightening thing (1 John 4:18).

You see, if the Devil can just scare you out before you begin, then you'll never get started and you'll never accomplish what God wants you to do. So for God's sake and the sake of others and your own sake, don't let the Devil frighten you or bluff you out of what the Lord wants you to do before you even get started. That's when he attacks you the worst. That's when the Lord allows him to, because the Lord is testing you to see if you really mean business and to see if you're willing to even die trying.

If you get over the hump of getting started, then you can usually make the rest of the journey! None of the other trials ever seem as great as those in the beginning. Isn't that what you've usually found? Haven't you had greater strength or greater victory as you went along, even though perhaps the later trials in some ways might have actually been more severe and bigger problems, bigger trials, greater tests? You were much stronger to meet them and they were not nearly as difficult to overcome as those trials in the beginning. How true that is. Praise the Lord!

I'll never forget one night I ran with the suitcases a long distance because I thought the train was about to pull out, and I'd prayed that the Lord would stop the train until I got on it. My faith apparently wasn't as strong as it should have been that God was going to do it, but He did. He stopped the train and it didn't leave, and we sat there on the train huffing and puffing and gasping for breath.

We sat there waiting and waiting and waiting for the train to leave. I wondered why in the world the train wouldn't go after it was already way late, and here I'd been afraid it was going to pull out without me. All of a sudden it came to me, "You prayed for Me to stop the train, and you haven't prayed that it would go again!" I said, "OK, Lord. I'm on it. Forgive me. Lord, let it go now." And right away the train started. You tell me God can't do miracles? Some of you may think it was just an accident, but I know it was the Lord. God has done so many little miracles like that for us, besides the big ones.

It's the little things God does that are wonderful! Of course, God also takes care of the big things that have to be done, but the little tiny thoughtfulnesses of the Lord--a market that's open, finding a bathroom scale, finding that your bags weigh just the right weight when you're traveling, is so wonderful. There's nothing too small for the Lord or too hard for Him!

Why do you worry? Why do you fret? God's going to take care of every little detail. Each time I thought, "Maybe this is it. Maybe we just can't make it, because surely this is going to be the door that's going to be closed; this is going to be the impossible situation. Lord, You brought us this far, but here's where we can't make it any further; it's impossible."

We have seen one miracle after another, one fleece after another that the Lord honored. Time and again, the Lord did the miracle. I wonder how many times you've put out a condition to the Lord for something, kind of hoping that maybe He wouldn't do it so you wouldn't have to do it. Then the Lord just knocked the props out from under you and jerked the rug out from under you and took away all your excuses and did all the miracles, so that the decision still had to be up to you and you had no excuses for not going on with the Lord because He'd opened the door, He'd provided the way, and made everything possible! That's exactly what the Lord did for us. In every little thing, it was just miracle after miracle after miracle.

Lift up holy hands unto the Lord (Psalm 134:2). Clap your hands unto the Lord, all ye people (Psalm 47:1)! Lift up your hands unto the Lord. Lift up your voices unto the Lord, all ye lands. For the Lord, He is good. He is God and it is He that has made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture (Psalm 100:3). Hallelujah! We're nothing, but God has increased us and strengthened us and prospered us and given us many souls. Nothing is impossible with God, and all things are possible to him that believeth (Luke 1:37; Mark 9:23). God is a God of miracles, so let's thank Him for it!