The Badminton Set Under the Tree

The Badminton Set Under the Tree

by Barbara Ann Chase

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

In order to break bread with one another, we really have to be blessed and broken, and then multiplied. And we have to be willing to give a particle of love according to a person’s capacity, and maybe a bit more, in a way that they recognize. With my mother, a particle of love, a piece of that bread of Jesus, is sitting close beside her and watching a soap opera with her. A particle of love for my father is to go to a new plant where there are three tiny furnaces, and in those three little furnaces, and in the beauty of a white powder, which is a zinc product. It’s so pure. And to know that in that product is a dream and is a vision for my father. And to know how much it is worth in his eyes. Small beginnings.

And the courage for a man in his fifties to start over again. These are particles of the communion that we took today. Not to give love in a way that we would want to be given. Not according to our likes. How many of you buy Christmas presents knowing that you’ll end up with them? Because they’re really for you. You buy a badminton set for your son, and you say, “I’ve wanted to play for so many years.”

And we buy for others the gifts that we would like without any heart or feelings for what they truly want to receive or are able to receive. I was at one of the camps with a small boy this summer. And he was in a home situation where he very much needed the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. And he said to me, “Barbara Ann, whenever I want to pray, I feel this strange feeling in my mouth like different words want to come.” And my eyes lit up and I said, “Oh, Jesus, let me give him the bread of his prayer language. Let me encourage him in this.”

And the little boy said, “And whenever I’m around you or around those who are talking about Jesus, I start to cry. There is such a love that comes over me.” And I sat down with him and asked Jesus to give him the power and the strength that he needed for his home situation. And Jesus took all the sad out of him, all the nightmares out of him, and gave him a sparkling joy that allowed this little one to set the camp alive for Jesus. I had desired in my heart that he have the gift of his prayer language and the way he was going at it, Jesus wouldn’t keep it back for very long. But at the time I was with him, the gift that he needed, the breaking of bread that he would need in his home life, was a joy that could not be contained, a joy that would not be destroyed by sarcasm or by being put down or by severity or by inconsistency. But it was the joy of the Lord. And this was the breaking of bread. Jesus breaking it with this little one through me. And the joy of the through me that Jesus allows each of us to have the bread. He takes it and He blesses it and He gives it to us to give to others.

And there is always enough. We don’t have to worry that if we love one more person, we’ll be out of love. That we’re ministering from such a low level that we’ll be empty if we give of ourselves one more time. But as we come to know that the wellspring is within us, rising up within us, there is no end. The more we give, the more that channel is free for springs, absolutely mountain springs of living water to pour forth from us to those who need, those who need. And Jesus will always supply enough bread, enough wine, enough water, enough of everything that we need to minister to one another.

When Kevin said, “I had a word in the night and I didn’t know what it was,” I thought back to many times when I have not knowingly had a word in the night. But I have awakened in the morning changed. I have been awakened in the morning with a hymn of praise and a new tenderness in my heart, a new willingness to let go of a sin, a new willingness to allow Jesus to be Lord of my life. And I wonder sometimes what goes on when we’re sleeping in the Lord, when we’re resting in Him, when we aren’t fighting, when we aren’t calculating, when we aren’t determining, when we’re just resting in Him. He’d like this to go on in the depths of us all day as well as at night, that our rest would be continual in Him, that it would be abiding.

There is a scripture that has come to me, very much to me. And if I could share with you what I would like to be in Jesus more than anyone else, more than anything else, it would be a scripture in Malachi. And I’d like you to turn there. I think the King James Version is the most beautiful, and I don’t have it here. It’s in Malachi chapter 2, verse 6.

And I think it’s talking about Levi. I haven’t looked it up enough to know. It says, “True instruction was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many back from iniquity.” And with real fear of the Lord and joy, I can say, in… Some of you are still looking for it. It’s Malachi 2, verse 6. That true instruction is in my mouth, and unrighteousness is not found on my lips. I walk with You, Lord, in peace and in uprightness, and by Your grace I will turn many back from iniquity.

If, by having faith in the fidelity of God, we could make this verse personal, to know that it is possible. There are some disillusioned people in this room. We have been disillusioned by the world, and we say, “That’s not what matters.” It was when my own Christian brothers and sisters forsook me. We are hurt and wounded by Christians more than by anybody else. But in the very midst of that, in the midst of our despair and our wanting to give up and to reject the call in our life, to be able to say in Jesus that true instruction is in my mouth and unrighteousness is not found even near my lips. I walk with You, Lord, in peace and uprightness and I turn many back from iniquity, from sin.

And I believe many are turned back from iniquity simply because the instruction is in our mouth, because unrighteousness is not found on our lips and because we walk with Jesus and Father and Holy Spirit in peace and uprightness.

Not our own righteousness, not our own self-righteousness, but with the righteousness that Jesus gave to us by dying on the cross and by rising triumphant from the grave. Many of us know that we are dead in Christ. Some of us know that we are buried in Him. But few of us actually live like we have risen triumphant in new life. And the cross is of no value without the resurrection. And resurrection is impossible without death.

And we are resurrected. And our true place is in the heavens with Jesus. And this is the vantage point from which we can shout joyfully to the Lord, from which we can be in silent awe before Him. This is, I believe, the only vantage point from which we can successfully love our neighbor as ourselves, is from the throne of God where we are dwelling in His holiness, in His mercy. The mercy seat covered the law, the ark. And remember the man who tried to touch the ark and touch God according to the law and in his own righteousness. When he touched that ark as it was moving through the desert, he fell down dead.

I always thought that was unfair. But I realized that none of us can touch God through the law. We touch Him at the mercy seat, the covering over the law where His glory is. And none will be turned away from the mercy seat. None will be in fear of approaching Jesus there. No one will be slain if they reach out and touch the mercy seat.

Because Jesus has provided that for us. That this is how we are to meet Him and abide with Him. What I would like to share with you today are things I’ve gone over with you before because they are close to me. One is that Jesus would be our all in all, that we would not take away from the Scriptures, and that we would not add to the Scriptures.

That we would not see the Scriptures as a book, but since we have the author of the Word living within us, ask Him to reveal the life that is in the book. And no matter what we face, what kind of disillusionment, what kind of turmoil, what kind of confusion, is that Jesus really is the answer. If you’re upset about people who aren’t trying to force you into being who you are not, if they need this gift and you need that gift, you need the other thing, have you had the latest experience yet, instead of denying all those experiences or determining within yourself that you will never be slain in the Spirit, you will never speak in tongues, you will never go dancing around an auditorium because you have seen these things of you. Rather, say, “Jesus, be the Lord of the dance in my life, and when You call, I’ll answer. Jesus, You speak mysteries unto Father. You have given me the time to do the same, to be edified. You want me to know, Father. As You will, I am totally open to giving You my mouth.”

“Let me know, and I will speak, and I will sing, and I will not be closed off because of the hurt I have feared.” There are many ministries today where people are being slain in the Spirit, and this is not a scriptural term, but there are instances of things that appear like this in the Scriptures, and they are always associated with the power of God.

When those men came to get Jesus, to take Him to be judged, to be put on trial, when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, they fell back because Jesus said, “I am,” and they recognized God. Many of the prophets were, could not stand before the presence of God. In Revelation, it said, in the ministry before God, the elders fell down as dead.

In the ministry throughout history of great men of God, there are reports of how, as they spoke throughout the audience, people went down under the power of God, and some of them stayed 18, 20 hours. And when they got up, the glory of the Lord was upon them. No one touched them, no one pushed them over. And I don’t mean to be critical when I say this, maybe I am, but I am upset when I see people standing behind to catch somebody in case they fall, and when they’re standing there with little cloths to cover them. We give God so much help that if we were up there being prayed for and we didn’t fall down, we’d feel like we’d be in a great disappointment.

And I think it would take away from much of the abuse of being slain in the Spirit if no one caught you. That way, if it were the Lord, it would be like landing on soft feathers. And if it wasn’t the Lord, you’d have a broken head and you’d deserve it.

And there is a true experience, a wondrous true experience of just falling before the presence of a sovereign God, and when that happens to me, I would prefer to be left alone with Him and to let Him do His work in me and to tell the mysteries unto me and to love me and to heal me. I’d like it to be a time of communion with Him that would not be interfered with by well-intentioned people. And the abusers would just leave if we would let God do His work.

I did not know the joy of being totally submitted to the power of God even as far as my body went just before Him for years because two people tried to push me over and I was stubborn enough to resist. Everyone was falling down under the power and these hard hands came at me. I was going like this and they were going like this. We were having a little tug of war and God was far away. But then instead of fighting an abuse and saying, I’m going to be an example to the world that someone can be absolutely holy, wonderful, fulfilled Christian and never speak in tongues. I’m going to be the example to the world that someone can be a tremendous Christian and never do this or always do that or be content in this or the other thing. And God doesn’t need examples like that. He needs people who are submitted to Him in whatever He chooses, whatever is His will. And to get away from the turmoil and the crowd of voices pulling and pushing and saying you need this and no you don’t need that and yes you have the baptism, it doesn’t matter that you don’t feel any joy, take it by faith. There’s no power in your life, there’s no fruit in your life, but believe you’ve got the baptism.

And we hear all these voices back and forth. And we’ve got to say, “Jesus, I belong to You and You can speak to my heart. Do it now. I don’t want to hear all this other junk. I want to hear You and know what You want for me at this point in my history and in the history of Your body.” And all this other will fade away. I remember being in a church where there was a pastor who said, “Now I want everybody to raise your hands.” And I thought, well, what if I don’t want to raise my hands? What if this is not a real expression right now of my praise to God? What if I want to kneel? And he said, “Every one of you raise your hands right now.” And I used to resist that. And I said, “Jesus, take from me the clutter of right and wrong, of my will versus His will, and tell me what You would like me to do. What would please You?” He said, “I’d love for you to raise your hands.” And not to do things because we are manipulated, but because of what Jesus wants. What He likes, what pleases Him, not because something makes us feel good, or it doesn’t make us feel good, not to prove a point to somebody, not to show that we’re different, or that any number of things, not because we know someone’s wrong in standing up and saying, “You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that,” and putting us under the law again.

No one can put us under the law except ourselves. No one can touch our spirit. No one can make that decision except us. Everyone around us might be being put under the law, following rules, following the latest thing. But it is our responsibility. We can live in grace because Jesus said so. And we can do the same things other people do. We can comply with authority. Or if, in those rare cases where we have to put God ahead of man, where it’s a matter of sin, with love and submission, we can say, “No, I must follow Jesus.” The majority of time we say, “Yes, I want to follow Jesus.”

And we do not have to live in fear, only in love. It is possible because Jesus said it’s possible. And if I’d love for the word to be planted in you that it is possible, that you can hear Jesus’ voice and you do not have to waver. And if sometimes you make a mistake and you say, “Jesus, what would please my husband to have for supper tonight?” And the other nine times it has been the perfect meal. It’s been colorful, flavorful, exactly what he was thinking about all day at the office. And then the tenth time you say, “Jesus, what would You like me to prepare tonight?” And you hear another voice and you don’t really know you’ve heard another voice until your husband comes home and that was not what he wanted. And you say, “Jesus, was that You I heard this morning?” He’ll say, “No.” Then you’re back in business again. If you make a mistake, don’t go away and say, “I’m never going to listen to Jesus’ voice again because I can’t trust Him. Can’t trust if that’s Him speaking or not.” Well, there will be times that we’ll make mistakes. But all we have to do is say, “Jesus, this voice I heard doesn’t sound like who You are. Was that You speaking?”

And He’ll say, “No, it was not. This is not according to My nature. This is not according to My character. No, I did not tell you you could divorce your wife and marry your secretary. It is not according to who I am.” And then we just come back and continue in this conversation with Him. And the closer we draw to Him, the less chance of making a mistake. If we’re walking a long ways from the Shepherd and He says, “Come,” we don’t hear Him. We keep munching grass. But the closer we stay to Him, the easier it will be to hear Him and to distinguish His voice. If we’re staying on the outskirts, just over the line so we’ll know our salvation is not endangered, we’re going to hear the wolves in the background, we’re going to hear a lot of other sheep baying, we’re going to hear all kinds of things in our masters over here. And the closer we stay to Jesus, the more clearly we’ll be able to recognize His voice. If you’re worried about balance, don’t try to be balanced.

It doesn’t work. All you do is step over here and then say, “Well, I went too far this way. I think I’ll swing this way next year.” The first child, I tried to let them have everything they wanted, but Jesus is our balance. Only in Him, He is the whole truth.

I don’t know how to make this practical to you, but I pray that Jesus will make it practical to you. He can do that if you fellowship with Him, if you take time with Him. I was asking Marcia how she could do all the work that she does and not fall apart. And if she falls apart next year, I’m not going to be disillusioned. I don’t think she will. But she said she never misses her time with Jesus, her time with Father, her time of intercession, her time of communion. She gets the rest she needs, even though it means a great sacrifice to her of not always fellowshipping with you late in the evenings because she loves you. But you can’t take from both ends of the day. It means she gets her exercise and her food. And when she is faithful to obey Jesus in this, not to make health foods a God or to make exercise a God or even a specific prayer time a God, but because she is faithful in the little things that Jesus has asked of her for her to stay healthy, He is able to use her consistently. When we walked around the world yesterday, Marsha knew where we were going. She had been there. And without health and without strength, she could not have met all these people and brought Jesus to them.

And Jesus is practical many times. Sometimes He is not what we would call practical. He can and very often does use the ways of the world without the spirit of the world. Because those good ways that are in the world belong to Jesus anyway. The practical how to do things. But every once in a while He goes beyond. He goes farther. He goes to what we would think is above reason. Above logic. It’s not contrary to it, but it supersedes it. And then we can’t say, “Well, that isn’t Jesus because it doesn’t sound practical. It doesn’t fit in with all my other experiences.” But we have to fling ourselves into His arms and get ready for a new adventure. And say, “I trust You, Lord.” I shared with you before about the spirit of rumor that is flowing throughout the earth right now. Causing division. Causing heartache. Causing people to fall away. And I ask you not to be a part of gossip, of rumor, of dissension. But to support your pastors, to support those in authority, to support one another and those in your neighborhood. Our church is really the circumference of about five blocks. And many of us do not know our next door neighbor. Maybe we have lived in our neighborhood five or six years.

And we don’t know more than three people on the block. And this is our ground which Jesus would like to walk in, in this area, to meet every one of those people as He calls you to do it. And He’ll give you that piece of bread that will be love to them. That will mean something to them if it’s cooking a meal for them when they’re sick. If it’s offering the baby sit or to be part of a carpool. Whatever it is, that is the area in which Jesus has called you. And it is not as fearful as we might think. Everyone is sitting in their houses with the doors closed wondering why they’re so lonely.

And we can go as Jesus directs, not to knock on the door and say, “Are you saved?” But to knock on the door bearing the Savior. This would be a great joy to Jesus if we would not neglect the neighborhoods where He has put us. The office or the school where He has put us. This is full-time ministry. This is faith ministry. People ask me if I have a faith ministry and I know what they mean. And I say sometimes it’s a faith ministry and sometimes it’s a fear ministry. And they’re only referring to financial. And Jesus has been good in almost seven years now to provide every need of mine without any source of income. And I thank Him for that and yet I know it’s just one small aspect of His faithfulness. And every one of you who has a job or who is looking for a job is on a full-time faith ministry. It takes faith to feed your children. It takes faith to know whether to take a transfer, what this is going to mean to the family, whether to get a new home or to let the old one do, whether to get your son a pet when you know that you’re going to end up taking care of him.

All these things have to do with the faith ministry. Faith in Jesus, and we can’t live without Him. When you do hear of divisions in the church, maybe in your own church, how are you going to respond? Are you going to say, “I always knew it would happen? I was afraid these cell groups would become little cliques. I knew that when three couples got together that eventually someone would trade a wife or two. I could have told you it wouldn’t work.” How are you going to respond when things aren’t perfect? Are you going to throw out the ideas, the great yearning that we have to be won? Or are you going to encourage those people who are broken up and say, “It has been a blessing to me that you tried in this group to meet Jesus and that you did meet Him successfully for months and months,” and give them the courage to begin where they left off? Are you going to be peacemakers and heal or are you going to say, “I told you so”? “All this talk about submission, I knew it was wrong. I knew I really had equal voice and I had my rights and I had this and I had that. I was the smart one all along.” Or are you going to say, “Jesus, what did You want to teach us in this?”

“How do You want me to submit to everybody and put everyone and their need for You above my selfishness?” Are we going to use failure as an excuse not to go on with Jesus or to live mediocre lives for Him?

We can’t use this as an excuse to lose our first love, as an excuse to draw back and say, “I’m just going to be an observer for a while.” But to get in with your loaf of bread and your wine and minister healing in the midst of failure and bind up the brokenhearted and set those free who have been captive to the law, without judgment and without criticism and without condemnation. And you’re going to see what is pure gold in all the structures that have been built up. What gold have those structures held in place? What gold have they created? And when everything is shaken and only the gold remains. Let’s make sure we know what gold looks like so we don’t throw it out. God will bless us as we bless others and as we refuse to judge, as we refuse to condemn. And we will make His heart glad. We will anoint Him.

I’m trying to remember where that passage is. I used it last week at Alberta. Do you remember where it is, Charlotte, about the woman ministering to Jesus? I think I’d like to close with that. Maybe I can remember. It was just before Jesus was going to die. And no one in the group seemed sensitive to that. It’s in Matthew chapter 26, verse 6. “Now when Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it upon His head as He reclined at table. But the disciples were indignant when they saw this and said, ‘What is the point of this waste? For this perfume might have been sold for a high price, and the money given to the poor.’ But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me. For the poor you have with you always, but you do not always have Me. For when she poured this perfume upon My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done shall also be spoken of in memory of her.’”

John talked about us being gifted. This woman was a gift unto Jesus. She was a gift because she had costly ointment. She had a treasure. And she walked into a room full of very close friends of Jesus. And she was a woman. And she came and she took this costly ointment and poured it upon Jesus’ head. And it ran down over His whole body, and the fragrance filled the house. And just prior to this, God had said that whenever you gave money to the hungry and to the thirsty, and when you fed and clothed and did all these things, you were doing it unto Him. So it was very logical that the disciples would say, “Well, why don’t we sell this and give the money to the poor?” Thinking they had really learned the lesson before. But they had no concept of the timing of Jesus. Because here it was just a short time before Passover, before His crucifixion and death. And they were insensitive that He would soon be leaving them. And it must have been uppermost in His mind and all the future days throbbing in His head of what would come about. And this woman came and soothed Him and anointed Him. And she didn’t just pour part of the ointment out.

She poured the whole thing. And she didn’t count the cost. She didn’t count her reputation. It took boldness for her to do this thing that would give her disfavor, that would make those in the room say, “What does she think she’s doing? Doesn’t she know that the poor could make use of this? Why is she wasting it on Jesus?” Many of us have gifts and talents. And we don’t have anyone to receive them. No one that we can pour them out on. Maybe because of our own fears or lack of experience. But even would we have someone else to receive? We should first take those gifts and those treasures, those loves and those longings and pour them out on Jesus. And only as we pour them out on Him, if He’s there to receive them with all of who He is and to be ministered to by us, when that happens, the fragrance fills the whole household of faith. As we minister to Jesus, the perfume spreads throughout His whole church.

Every person can breathe in the freshness and the sweetness of the costly ointment and know that someone did not count the cost, that someone said, “I will pour out my all on Jesus.” And this is before He was glorified. This was before He died. But it was for His burial. How Jesus knew what was coming. And I don’t know if the woman knew or not, but she was sensitive to the Spirit of God. And she was sensitive to Jesus. Her timing was perfect. If she had done it a few years before or a few months before, or if she had waited a couple more days, it would not have been right. But at this point, when Jesus knew His days were short, when He longed for the fellowship of those He had kept close to Him and they weren’t there to give it, where they had no concept of what was going to happen, this woman came. And she knew. And she poured herself out on the Lord Jesus. And we can do this today. We can risk. And we can ask Jesus for the right time and the right place. And we will pour ourselves out completely on Him. And the fragrance will fill His house.

Jesus is real. And He’s more important than anyone else in the world or anything else. And if you have not seen Him, ask to see Him in a way that whether you would be killed or your reputation would be killed or you’d be ruined financially, that still you would say, “It is nothing, Jesus, because I have You.” That He is that real, that touchable, and that much a part of our everyday life.

I want to thank you for pouring yourself out on me this week and loving me at a time when I didn’t feel too lovable. It was hard for me to come back to camp because I’d been here two years ago and you knew me two years ago and I have changed. And I thought, are they going to let me change? Are they going to let me grow? Or do they have a picture in their mind of who I was then and they want to keep it?

I think that when I saw you, yes, I did. I said, “Thank You, Jesus, that while I recognize these people, they are different. They have grown. They have matured. They have drawn closer to You. And so while they’re the same, they are different. And I want to know them as they are now. And I thank You for giving me that opportunity to be two years older.”