A Prayer for Revival
A thousand thanksgivings for a thousand eternities would not be enough to express our joy for freeing us! You paid more than what has ever been paid before to set me free. No longer am I a slave to sin, but by your grace a bondservant to you, O King.
And now I think of so many still enslaved. Won’t you free them too? Your grace is enough, your death paid the debt we owe, won’t you take them too?
Lauren is in Nigeria, Kara and Chloe in Tanzania, Rachel in Germany, and the ME team in the Middle East, preaching the gospel to sinners like us. Use them and speak through them. Won’t you take those whom you deserve? What about Kalyn, Linda and the Kids, Jenny, Aimee, Randy, Nando, Glen, AJ, Johann, Danny, Ewasko, and my family? Take them, please!
I don’t want your name to be forsaken in their lives. I don’t want your name to be blasphemed in their hearts. I don’t want your grace to be untasted by their souls. I ask and hope that it is your will that they be saved. I beg that they will become accountable to you now, before your majesty forces them to bow in the end. I beg you for their salvation. Do great things amongst the nations; redeem your tarnished name! Bring back the lost, take the throne, Jesus!
Victory is yours, how can we be in denial of it? You are Savior. You are Lord. You are Sovereign. How can we ignore it? Wickedness and perverseness is this generation. Our culture mixes souls with one another by cheap words and cheaper sex. We belittle every gift you give. We murder children and sacrifice them to the god of convenience. We sell the ideals of fiction and forsake reality. We are blinded and deafened by the sights and sounds of our iniquities.
And your children are spoiled by their rebellion. We wait for heaven but forget the One who will take us there. We sit in our big new buildings with Playstations, Pipe organs, and coffee shops, shaking each other’s hands for being saved. How many of us watch instead of worship? Who is genuinely contrite for their sins and desperate for the refreshing breath of grace, which only you can provide?
Revive us O Lord. Revive the dead and dieing in the great halls of your bride. Command us and give us what you command. Let us seek your righteousness and authentically seek your face, instead of just listening to a song about it.
Stoned in our day, and loving thy enemies.
“They won the crowds over to their side, stoned Paul and dragged him out of the town, thinking that he was dead. But when the brothers gathered around him, he got up and went back into the town.” Acts 14:19-20.
Paul and is boys are preaching, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, healing folk and causing a riot amongst the peoples of Lystra, Antioch, and Iconium. Gentiles and Jews alike rise up, win over the crowds, and throw big freaking rocks at Paul until they presume he is dead. Then they drag his tattered body outside the city and dump him on the dirt road.
I can see his disciples standing around his body. Some are crying, some are in shock and probably scared. I’m sure Barnabas is praying fervently. And then Paul opens his eyes. He stands up and dusts off his tunic, and then to the astonishment of all normal men, he turns toward the gate of the city and walks back in.
And you know what the Bible says Paul does next? ”Strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, [Paul said], ‘Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.’” (Acts 14:22).
PAUL! You just go boulders dumped on your body, man! Are you okay? WHERE ARE YOU GOING!? Those people just killed you! “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
Have you ever heard of such a thing? Did Paul reject those people, pray for a mighty smiting of the town, or forsake God? No. He “preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples.” (v.21).
Does this happen today? Yes.
Here is the URL to an article from the SBC about a man named Jameel in the Middle East. Read it and be encouraged, for even his trials did not turn him from the faith and his love is still strong for his enemies. http://www.sbc.net/redirect.asp?url=http://www.imb.org/. Praise Jesus for witnesses like Jameel! May we never have to be in a similar situation, but if we are, may we react the same way Paul, Stephen (Acts 7:54-60), Jameel, and Jesus did. May we pray on their behalf to God for their salvation out of love and a passion for their very souls.
Doubt and Faith 2: Steadfaster
I was reminded of my friend who told me of his doubt in the scriptures. His main contention was his doubt in the actual personification of Satan; he felt the Devil was compensation by an early eastern culture to deal with the idea of sin and death. I think he couldn’t see past the red tights, bifurcated tail and pitchfork.
A friend of ours, AJ Neely, and I tried to bring up angels, certainly everybody believes in angels. He denied their existence too. “What is the point in angels and a devil? He doesn’t need them, why would they exist?”
“Well, He doesn’t need us either, and yet we exist. It is what He has chosen to do,” one of us said.
We were dumbfounded by this denial. Scripture is so explicate about Satan and how he comes to “steal and kill and destroy,” (John 10:10). Ezekiel 28:12-19 tells how Satan, once a beautiful cherub, grew prideful and became unrighteous and was cast down to earth by God. Biblegateway.com found 129 entries when I typed in “Satan,” “Serpent” and “devil” (I have kept in mind that serpent in some cases actually referred to a snake).
In short, evidence is clear and backed up by scripture. The Word of God is inerrant, but sometimes I take the acceptance of that for granted. As my friend showed me, who claims to be a Christian and believes in the Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience of God, not everyone believes this.
Doubt in the inerrancy of scripture presents several problems. If you allow the bullet of doubt to penetrate your thinking in one area, what is to keep another bullet from hitting you in another area, next time more vital? Soon “I deny the authenticity of Satan; the scriptures are a metaphor” will become “Jesus wasn’t really the Son of God, but he was such a good, moral teacher and healed so many people that we can attribute this to him as an adjective.” Eventually that too becomes “There is no God, just a way people should treat each other.” If you deny one part you deny it all. A double-minded man is a fool. He builds his house on sand. When the torrents of rain surely come, his house will be washed away (Matthew 7:26-27). He is tossed about like the sea driven by the wind, out of control (James 1:6-7).
You literally have no foundation when you doubt the scriptures. There is no more common ground between you and believers, there is no more joy. What would be the point? If one thing is untrue then all others are untrue! Can you see the lack of logic in this? Can you see that when you doubt what the Almighty Sovereign God says is true, when He cannot lie (Titus 1:2), all His works are perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4), and all His scriptures are inspired by Him (2 Timothy 3:16), you therefore cannot have faith nor hope in eternal glory with Him?
What a miserable burden this produces for the shoulders of the double-minded man! How the lies of Satan, telling people that he does not exist, enslave those whom believe in them. “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness,” (2 Peter 3:17).
Standfast! With all Hell breathing down your neck, with all the sulphury fumes of the lies of the enemy in your ear, STANDFAST! You have the Armor of God for a reason, “so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil,” and, “so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm,” (Ephesians 6:11 & 13).
I can attest that it is not by our own strength that we stand, but by the grace of God. “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me,” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
Remember the scene in Braveheart of the first major battle between the English and the Scots? William Wallace gave the most hardcore pep-talk on freedom ever then went and taunted the English generals. Shortly afterwards the Scots began to harass the opposing army by lifting their kilts and bellowing war cries. When the armoured cavalry of King Edward the Longshanks charged the starving peasants of Scotland, they did not at first flee. They stoodfast and decimated the cavalry because of their faith in the plans of their leaders.
For consider the psalmist’s praise “The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold,” (Psalm 18:2).
