Behold He Comes! - Gateway Worship Center

We’ve all seen it in the drama that unfolds on stages all around the world – Joseph and Mary wearily coming into Bethlehem, coming up to the Inn of Bethlehem, knocking on the door asking for a room. They are met with a flat statement – “it’s too crowded, there’s no room.” We feel sadness as Jesus’ mother and Joseph are pictured being turned away by the non-caring or overburdened inn keeper and being shown the stable at the last moment as a remedy for overcrowded lodging. “Here, Mary and Joseph, this is the best I can do under the circumstances.” It was not the inn keeper’s fault that Bethlehem was crowded – not totally, but the truth is – there was no room made because the inn keeper did not have a clue who had come knocking on his door.

There was “no room” for Jesus in Bethlehem. It was filled with the mob that pushed into Bethlehem that day. The inn was overflowing. The streets were people lined. The hearts of people were distracted.

Even though people knew the prophecies, no one was really expecting the day of fulfillment would come to pass right under their noses and they would all but miss it.

None of us would say, “Sorry, Jesus, there’s no room in my heart for really setting you up to stay in comfort, but I do have a nice little stable out back that you can fit into,” but…

How about us – His church, His people?

Our lives are crowded.
Our churches are crowded.
Our visions are crowded - With our stuff – Our ideas, our plans, our vision, our furniture, as it were.

The church is complicatedly full of her stuff. There really is “no room for Jesus to move.” Everywhere He turns He is met with “our stuff.”

It is time for us to have a spiritual housecleaning, collapse our tables piled high with our stuff and sweep them out the door, make room for the King and let Him into His house – the church and our lives!

Luke 2:7

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

If the inn keeper would have known that the Messiah, the King of Heaven, was going to be born in his establishment, don’t you think he would have rolled out the red carpet and laid out the best linens?

The thing about God and the first coming of Jesus to earth…

He did not send angels to blow trumpets and line the city streets to make way for Mary heavy with child and Joseph. Instead, they entered unnoticed with Joseph leading her on a donkey down dusty, ill-prepared streets.

He did not send a “John the Baptist Messenger” ahead of the baby king and have him “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

He did not bring in a choir of angels to everyone to announce that King Jesus was being born today in Bethlehem.

And, unlike our cute plays of today, there was no star over the stable where Jesus lay in the manger.

The day of His birth went mostly unnoticed…except for the release of the birth announcement to shepherds who were watching over their flocks, but…

Crowded Bethlehem missed the hour of their visitation.

II. Jesus came into a busy world.

Bethlehem was right in the middle of the census. Everyone had to come and take care of the business, much like we prepare for tax time at the end of the year. It was not only crowded with people of all walks of life and all levels of faith, but it was also so busy that the only thing on the agenda was to get in line and wait their turn. Impatience was probably the order of the day and maybe the tempers were even flaring a little as others cut lines or pushed into others space. People were probably tired from the travel, dusty, just wanting to get this over with so they could go home.

This time of year is always busy – but too busy for time to stop and worship Jesus, I mean, really stop, go and bow and worship at the place He is?

Our agendas are busy. Our plans are busy. Especially this time of year, when we are “celebrating the birth of Jesus,” churches and families get so busy that they miss the whole point of pausing to take in the whole picture of what this one event did to change the whole world. We can “program ourselves to death,” fill our calendars with appointments, “have to meet so and so,” rush off to “shop until we drop,” becoming so stressed and tired that we have no time to stop for worship, devotion and fellowship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The thing about it is – most of what we do in the name of the Lord is our works and reflect nothing of what is really important to the presence of the King.

What if Jesus is not where we are moving and doing the most but in a humble place, off the beaten path, in a small place of stillness and holiness?

We can mistake our nostalgia for the anointing – just because we feel good and warm all over, but miss the fact that we are carrying on our traditions and our stuff without Jesus.

Most of what we do this time of year is about us - but worship is not about us – it’s about the King! It’s about us bringing gifts to His altar and honoring Him.

Matt 2:11

11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

The wise men went to great lengths to lay aside their daily living and journeyed to the place where Jesus was to worship him.

People always like to stay right where they are and have Jesus come to them, but worship will always take us to the place where Jesus is.

What if those in Bethlehem, in spite of the busy schedule that they were keeping, took a little time to notice the little baby born there, to notice the shepherds making their way inside where they worshipped Him and to follow to that place?

What if we stop now and take time to worship?

Busy Bethlehem missed the hour of their visitation.

III. Jesus came into a religious world.

It is apparent that the shepherds came and then gave witness of what the angels of the Lord told them. They left the manger where Jesus was and went into the city streets where the people were going about their business and urged them to go and see what God had done in Bethlehem.

Luke 2:15-18

15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.

18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

Did the people who “wondered” do anything about it?

When someone comes and gives a witness of “their visitation,” are we not prone to suspect that all they say may not be totally accurate – after all, it did not happen to us, we did not see, could this really be as they say?

Don’t you just hate it when God gives angels to others and all you have is the word of those that saw the angels? Can you really believe the word of shepherds who have been with the Lord? Can you really trust the word of testimony of what God has done in others lives? Why didn’t God send the angels to me, confirm His Word of prophecy to me?

“Wondering” is not enough to propel us to a place where God is visiting earth with His glory.

Wondering might be another name for “questioning,” to some people who will not take that step of faith to believe that God has come in this way to mankind and is worthy of the time it takes to search it out.

The wise men could have ‘wondered,” but their “wondering” turned to “wonder” when they beheld the King.

There are still people trying to make up their mind today about whether what God is doing is really Him or not. Religious minds that are encumbered with years of tradition and man’s doctrines do no easily believe anything that moves outside the box of man’s mind.

The people in Bethlehem were very religious, believed with all their hearts that “Messiah” was coming, but they had a mindset of how He would come. Bethlehem, though specifically in prophecy that they had studied, did not match the “way God would do things.”

Micah 5:2

2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

What kind of God would send His son into a little place to be born and laid in a manger?

It was the kind of God who was fulfilling prophecy – just as He had spoken it. The angels announced to the shepherds what God had just done.

Luke 2:4;12

4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

God is moving today and many people have been greatly impacted by what God has done in their lives but unfortunately a lot of what they testify to is falling on the deaf ears of the church.

What kind of God would move like that?

What kind of God would go there?

What kind of God would use them?

One thing about religion – it’s stuck in a rut.

It moves not one inch out of the familiar.
It makes no room for any manifestation that it personally does not rubber stamp.

Religion is a trap that entangles us in the doctrines and ways of man but leaves little room for Jesus to really come the way He would like to come.

Religion loves patterns, style, form and liturgy.
It loves pomp and circumstance.
It loves the robes and the platforms.
It loves the “way it does things, the way it sings, the way it prays, the way it gives, the way it is.”

Religion does not change for anyone because “its way is right.”

Jesus came into such a world on that day, born in Bethlehem, surrounded by religious folks who did their duty to God and man.

Today, Jesus still finds a religious people that miss their “Bethlehem,” their “manger experience,” “their time to worship the true King,” “their hour of visitation.”

Religious Bethlehem missed their hour of visitation.

How very much like today – a time when Jesus is knocking on the door of the church – asking for our fellowship – asking us to let Him in and many are still missing the hour of their visitation.

We will allow “our image of Jesus” to enter our lives because He is what we want, how we want Him and in the time that we want Him…

But the real King comes

At an inconvenient time

To an inconvenient place!

There are people today that have not got up and gone to the places where Jesus is manifesting His presence in powerful ways, in our season of visitation but try to destroy that which they have not personally experienced.

They do this because they fear they may be unseated by what is going on in “Bethlehem.”
They do this because they are jealous of the manifestation of God’s Glory that takes place in “Bethlehem.”

We all have our “Bethlehem,” and know prophetically that God is manifesting in our time, moving powerfully in many places, doing some unusual things in places that leave the church scrambling for answers to why it is not happening “here, in our place.” Everyone has to decide their position in relationship to what God is doing today, just as those who were a part of this powerful Biblical account of prophetic fulfillment of Jesus coming to earth had to decide.

For many of them, their time came and went and they not only “missed their time of visitation,” but they disappeared into eternity as following generations filled the earth with their lives and decisions.

Within the vision on December 5^th…

[The Lord on a white horse with His Sword held high in His hand, bursting through the clouds, as in the art work we all have seen and the infant Jesus in the typical manger scene displayed at Christmas time.]

…came an understanding of what the Holy Spirit was saying to me about these two pictures and the declaration.

I felt instantly the words…

“The beginning and the end,”

…in regards to the Lord’s interaction with humanity on earth – in a literal, physical sense – as a part of prophetic fulfillment, meaning how He came and how He comes and how He will come.

Rev 1:8

8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

The line of events involving Jesus and His life and ministry and death and resurrection and that particular generation involved with Him filled a prophetic time-line on earth.

Multitudes of people missed the whole picture of what Jesus did in each and every instance and even battled Him to the end of His time here.

Multitudes did not believe He was the Son of God.
Multitudes did not embrace any part of His movement on earth.
Multitudes did not hesitate to put to death the movement of Jesus, to stop the insanity that He brought with Him into their religious world.
Multitudes did not bend their knees in acknowledgement or worship of Jesus.

It is still thus today as the history of mankind unfolds in regards to Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God!

Eyes are still shut and ears still deafened to the truth of who This Christ is.

Though down through the ages mankind has had opportunity to express “their opinion” about Jesus, a day is coming when there will be no opinion but His.

For those who have already gone to their “Bethlehem” to worship the King and have been following Him, they will be honored to bow their knees and say that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” It will flow off their lips like the “honey Jesus has been to them.”

But there are a people that will be declaring words that have been foreign to them, but they will declare them just the same and they will bow their knees in acknowledgement of this King.

Phil 2:9-11

9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;

11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The Manger was “then,” and this may be “now,” as in “who was and is”…but there is still the part of “who is to come.”

Rev 19:11-16

11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.

13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

Meanwhile, until then…

Our part in the story is up to us now because the plan of the ages continues to unfold – right before our eyes – as clearly as the shepherd’s saw the angel’s and heard them and as clearly as the wise men saw the star and knew of its significance and followed it to the house where Jesus was.

Just as surely as Jesus came as a little baby boy in Bethlehem in direct fulfillment of the Word of God, rest assured that the end of the story will be in exact detail – to a word – just as He has spoken it!

“Even so, Come Lord Jesus, come!”

God Bless the Faithful Watchman on the Walls of the Church!

This newsletter is dedicated and written as an instruction and encouragement to a powerful and focused group of people who have devoted their life to a life of prayer for the Church. It is written to incite them to move forward with decisiveness and purity. It is written to stabilize and align the errant things that are occurring in intercessory and church circles. It is written to break new ground in understanding our own hearts.

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