Ready4Revival

Our culture desperately needs a spiritual awakening. I happen to believe that God is waiting for believers to cry out to him for it.  If revival is going to happen there are several things that must take place. I jotted down a few of them today:

1:  Ask God to bring conviction. (Brokenness)

If revival is going to occur the people of God must experience brokenness over sin, brokenness over the spiritual condition of our nation, and a brokenness that leads us to repentance.

2.  Pray for the cleansing.

And God cleanses our hearts it will bring purity. Purity will bring spiritual power. That spiritual power only comes after genuine repentance and cleansing occur.

3. Pray for God to give us a spiritual hunger.

Without a spiritual appetite, we will continue to be complacent, lethargic, and apathetic. That which will turn us around is a renewal of our heart. That renewal will come with a desire to draw close to God. This is often referred to as a spiritual hunger where we are  thirsting for the presence of God

4.  Pray for a loving unity.

Whenever the people of God will begin to experience revival there will be a sense of unity among God's children within the church and within the families of the church.    The unity that the church would experience I think would center around the word of God, the worship of God and the work of God.

5.  Pray for a passion to see people saved.  (Evangelism)

When revival comes God's people are reoriented to the task that God has given us to do.  His last command was a command to evangelize the world.  So whenever the people of God experience revival  we have a renewed sense of evangelism.

6.  Pray for a passion for missions.

Let us pray that God would reach the precious souls of people not like us.   Let us pray that God would raise up followers of Christ would be willing to lay aside the comforts of their home, and homeland to go to a people were much different than themselves to share the gospel. 

7.  Pray God will call people into ministry. (Laborers)

many errors are springing up in our land, we have a great need for laborers to stand against them.  Let us pray that God would raise up followers of Christ to boldly stand and earnestly contend for the faith.

8.  Pray that God would rend open the heavens.  (Sweeping Revival)

Before a person, family, church, nation can experience a walk with God, the prevailing power of God must reach into the hearts and destroy any rebellion. What we need is the prevailing power of God to reach in and take away our iniquity.  We must pray the guy would rend open the heavens and sweep our hearts with revival fire.

9.  Pray for God's mercy on our land.

Revival is a great errand the gospel ministers are sent to fulfill. We're to be about the ministry of reconciliation; as investors for God, we are to call upon sinners, to be reconciled to God. We are to call upon the church to receive the gracious invitation to return to him and to humble themselves and to actually be brought by faith into a state of reconciliation with God, then, and not until then, can we be able to walk with God. For all of this to occur we must pray for the great mercy of God upon our land and its people who inhabit it.

10.  Pray for boldness for believers.

To be bold in the Lord we must have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us uninhibited. We must maintain a holy, settled, habitual, and altogether uninterrupted communion and fellowship with God, in and through Christ Jesus. To walk in boldness with God means that we are walking daily in the Scriptures with the complete dependence upon His power that is only found in His the fulfilled promises. The believer who is emboldened will be voluntarily dedicated to the glory of God and will take pleasure only in honoring the Almighty.

Compassion like Christ

Matthew 9:35-38   “³⁵Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.    ³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸ Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

As a believer it's important to keep in mind that we have a mission, a purpose for and from Christ. 

One of the things that stand out to me clearly from the scriptures is that Christ had compassion for others before he had compassion on himself.  This compassion led him to meet the needs of others.

Christ met the physical needs of those around him the Scripture says he went through town after town village after village. As he went through these towns and villages he met people who had great needs, and he met them right where they were. Often being interrupted he took the time to lovingly minister to those he met.

The compassion of Christ led him to meet the spiritual needs of those people he met. He went teaching and preaching to those towns and villages thereby meeting the  greater needs of the people.   His world needed the good news and guess what? 

The generation we live in today still needs the good news!  Christ compassion caused him to have concern over their spiritual eternity. He was concerned for their condition, he prayed for them, he challenged them to forsake their former lives and follow him.

Here is something else that stands out to me as I reflect upon this passage:  Christ compassion caused him to petition his father in prayer.  He asked for things to change and He repeatedly taught his disciples, even the Pharisees and Sadducees, and those around him to ask God. He talked about praying in the smallest amounts of faith and producing the greatest results imaginable.  On one occasion  He gave a model to pray, but most impressive He lived before them as an example of what prayer was to be like. 

This may seem simple but I think it is a truth we often forget or overlook: Without asking there can be no answer!   What is it we have failed to ask God to do?  In our lives, our family, our community?   Is there an area we simply need to asked God to work in and then trust him to answer?  We should learn to pray and understand that without God nothing is or can be accomplished.  Yet when we get up from our knees and leave our prayer closet we should expect God to use us to meet those needs.    I cannot tell you how many times I have prayed for something and then God gave me an opportunity to be the one to meet that need.     

You'd do well to realize the one we asked wants to bless more than we know, think or can imagine. 

As you pilgrimage through this world remember that we are sent out and we are not the sender!  We are sent out we are not sent in that is an important distinction. It's also important for us to realize this is His field and not ours.  Therefore,  if it's His harvest and not ours why wouldn't the Lord of the harvest grant the request of the one who's praying? 

Do Not Despise Thy Weakness

Most of the people that I meet in ministry assume that they minister most effectively from their strengths.    After all,  when a pulpit committee begins to question a perspective pastor the committee will often focus on that pastor’s strengths,  glancing over the weaknesses,  but primarily focusing on the strengths that that pastor brings to the table.   Strengths that will benefit the church, and help  whatever situation they just gone through.

 much of what we read in the past oral training field has to do with our strengths.   The focus is on becoming a better leader,  presenting polished sermons,  leading effective evangelism and prayer ministries.  None of which I necessarily disagree with.  So, please do not misunderstand my intentions on posting this blog.   

However, that’s a wrong assumption and a perverted vision of “spiritual gifts.”   Contrary to popular thought,   What we find throughout the Scriptures  is that we minister most effectively from our weakness. 

Paul was writing to the church of Corinth and he relayed this truth to that church from Christ himself.   Listen to what Jesus told Paul:  “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9)

You see beloved the power of God is not made perfect in our strengths,  but rather in our weaknesses. I realize that this goes against the grain of everything we read and are taught,  but I wholly believe it is a  spiritual, scriptural  teaching.

This understanding led Paul to minister differently.   He operated from a different perspective, maybe just maybe that is why he was so powerful.   The words of Christ gave him strength so much so Paul declared to that  Corinthian church:

“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 
(2 Cor. 12:10)

How many of us  have truly learned to delight in weakness?  How many of us truly embrace insults as that which makes a strong?   How many of us go through a hardship understanding that God is at work to produce something of eternal value in our lives?   Do we prize persecutions as a gift from God?   Or do we pray,  that God would quickly removes these things that He’s placed in our lives to produce his glory?  

 If we have the wrong attitude in our weakness is quite possible in ministry we will not bless the church but we will burden it.

 As I write this blog am reminded of the apostle Peter and his words in his first  letter:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  (1 Peter 1:6-7)

Death: A Real Reality

Death - it is real, it is really hard, and it really stinks. 

The last several weeks I have watch a friend loose the battle to Cancer.   I have stood and watched this precious family in my church morn, ask questions and battle their own warfare.  The reality hits you like a mac truck pushing down the highway of life.

You see, death was not apart of God’s plan in the beginning.  When God created, He created us for life and to live!  He created us for relationships, and companionships.  God said, “It was good, very good.”  But something changed all, of that.  Something within each one of us.

Today,  death is a classroom we do not ask for, a teacher we despise.  Why?  Death tears us apart from those we love, admire, and relate to.   In death we experience the  consequence of sin and rebellion.   I am reminded today that there are two kinds of death:   spiritual death and physical death.   

But you say I noticed that Adam did not die in Genesis chapter 3.  He went on and he lived several more years.   So if death is a part of the  consequence why didn’t he die immediately?  

It is here we learn a valuable lesson:  Death in the Bible is not termination, rather it is  separation.     The day that you die, the day your body quits breathing you do not cease to exist. It is true your body is gone.  But, you are still very much alive.  

You, meaning the soul of man?   Yes.  A man’s soul is still alive and lives on long past you draw your last breath.  As I reflect on watching my friend take his last breath, I only find comfort today in knowing that he has made a great transition, he has not stopped existing but now he exist in a different manner, for now he is spirit in the presence of  God's spirit, and one day he like many others before him will find a promised glorious Resurrection.  In this I hope for, confidently expecting God to redeem this sad moment.  You see the simple truth is this: every person is going to live forever somewhere.  

Statement of truth:
The Bible does not speak of death as termination it speaks of it as separation.

Today, Tim is separated from us, but he is not lost from us, he is only a breath away! 

Still there is not only a physical death, but the Bible teaches that there is an eternal death and a spiritual death.  This is an eternal separation, not a temporary one.   In Christ we experience a temporary separation, and in Christ we have the promised hope of an eternal reunion that will be grand and glorious.

Yet without Christ,  one will experience eternal separation from God.  The word of God is clear: One day this individual will spend forever separated from God and place called hell.   The reality today is this:  You will continue to exist, death is not the end of life but a transition in life. 
Where we live forever depends on what we do with Jesus!

In his dying days Tim told me he wanted his life and death to be an expression of the Gospel... 

I just happen to think it was.

Death - it is real, it is really hard, and it really stinks.  At least on this side of things.  Because we who are left experience the pain of separation.  So I hold on to a wonderful promise that God can work all things to his good, even when I think it stinks.

When the master meets us

NIV Matthew 11:28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”

Make no mistake about it Christ is not inviting us to leisure or laziness, however,  He goes on to say: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, from gentle and humble in heart; shall find rest for your souls.”

He encourages us by telling us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.   The writer of Hebrews picks up on this in Chapter 4 when he talks about a high priest who has passed through the heavens his name is Jesus, the Son of God.

As I read the text,  I wonder if the writer of Hebrews isn’t thinking about the invitation of Jesus in Matthew when he writes “let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.”  {See Hebrews 4:14 through 16}

As I work and serve the kingdom of God through the local church I see people and yes I myself at times in life have needed rest, grace, and help in times of distress and need.  It is wonderful and comforting to know that we have a Master who meets us where we are, when we need him the most.