Revival, Do You Really Want It?

     People pray for Revival, they complain, they whine, they talk....how much better would everything be if God would pour our a Spirit of Revival across our nation. 

     Do you think they sincerely want Revival? It's a lot like a person that wants to be healthy, active and full of energy, but they won't step away from the cookie, or the french fries or donut or whatever it is they are stuffing in their mouth. They won't stand up and walk a little ways to build their strength, they want to just be zapped by the Spirit and let it do all of the work, right? Let it bring Revival, they'll wait...

     What is it that keeps us from living Revival? Too much work?

     What do you think Revival looks like? Is it when we are sold out to God? When we don't put anything before Him? What holds you back from living that way now? You?

     God has poured out the Spirit that brings power, how many people actually walk in it? Or do we just visit it on Sunday morning at church? 

     We have been in a church of Revival and we can tell you, a lot rests on you to bring it to the world. You can't be an "Arm-chair" Revivalist! So we encourage you, get up, step away from whatever is holding you back...start living Revival, it's waiting for you!

     

Do Not Let My Enemies Exult Over Me!

Do Not Let My Enemies Exult Over Me!

To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in You I trust,
Do not let me be ashamed;
Do not let my enemies exult over me.
Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed;
 Psalm 25:1-3a

     Who are your enemies? You probably start thinking of a boss, a neighbor, coworker, ex-spouse? But no, God's word tells us that our battle is not against flesh and blood, remember?

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
 Ephesians 6:12

     That kind of redefines your enemies, doesn't it? Maybe you should think of your temper? your envy? your covetness, jealousy, slothfulness, gluttony, selfishness, self-centeredness, insert your own idiosyncrasy here!  Youch!Those are part of us, aren't they?

No, They are your enemies!

     We are called to be a holy people, whatever hinders you from living a righteous life and walking daily with your Heavenly Father is what is your enemy.

Chapter 4 Next Step

     After we get the part down about dying to our own will, the rest starts falling into place! But you do need to remember that there are times your will tries to recover it's position as the "Boss" in your life. Keep dying to it daily!
     The next thing that Jesus taught goes after "Love the Lord God", it is to "Love your neighbor as yourself" Mark 12:31. 
     If you have died to your own will, the first step, remember? this won't be as difficult as it is if you're still holding onto it.
     As you have started implementing your "Love of God with all of your heart" as your first, most important foundational steps to stand on, "loving your neighbor" just makes sense! 
     When God started re-arranging my heart to make it a place He could rest in, He took time to convince me that He loved me! Beyond question and beyond reason He loved me! He set about changing my understanding through His word, through other Christians speaking into my life,  through Christian music and through His provision and protection of me. 
     After He convinced me that He did truly love me and had even designed me the way I was, not to be like I might of wanted to be~ skinny, vivacious, charismatic! He loved me plump! and mellow! and quiet! Wow! It still surprises me that He made me this way and wants me this way! If He is happy with me this way, who am I to question and actually it's an insult to Him for me to question His workmanship! 
     The next thing He started showing me was that He also created some of the people that I didn't find too attractive, either in their appearance or characteristics! He showed me that He is the Potter and I am the clay, and so is everyone else! I have to learn, and so do you, to appreciate His workmanship in others and not criticize it!
     If He has designed everyone, then they deserve respect, right? Don't we believe in respecting God's workmanship? Yes, we do! We find it easy to marvel at the sunsets, the mountains, the oceans, the stars and even babies! 
     As the babies grow older they lose some of the marvel that we had seen in them before, or do we cease to see it? And then by the time they are adults we tend to not marvel in them at all! Some of them we barely tolerate! But that's not the way it should be, we are to "love" them as ourselves and even more! With humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. Philippians 2:3b. Remember, they are God's creation!
     In our own power we're not able to love everyone as Jesus would have us to do, but He did die for all and His Holy Spirit can bring the love of them into our hearts. It goes back again to dying daily to our own wills and living in His. 
    Are you still His disciple? Still with us? Then Love your neighbor as yourself! Sorry, no exception! 

Chapter 3 Follow Me

     A previous article covered the choice we make to follow Jesus or follow our own, and the world's, choices.
This is kind of like a flow chart, if you've chosen your own way or the way of the world you can quit reading here, because we're going to be exploring the process after you choose to follow Jesus.
     All of this is in scripture, so we're not going to be re-inventing anything! If we follow Jesus, that makes us His disciples! The definition of disciple is "a follower or student of a teacher". For our purpose, Jesus is the Teacher and we are the student! So now we start looking at what our Teacher is teaching. 

     First Jesus told us that the greatest command is to " love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength" Mark 12:30 and if we're His disciples (remember that means we're His followers and students!) then we will take it to heart and start implementing it into our lives. 

     Next step after realizing that we are Jesus' disciples and we are to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts....how do we do that?

     Maybe if we think about how we show love? What or who do you love? When you are in a love relationship you long to be with that person, right? You long to know everything about them. You want to please them, make them smile, hear their voice, hear their thoughts, spend time with them! Or in a more shallow way of love, if you love football (yuck! I don't!, but many people do!), you follow your favorite teams, you know their statistics, you know who the good team members are, you spend money and time to see them play. They are part of your conversation, they are what you look forward to watching or seeing, you want them to win! 

     Do you wear a T-shirt that boasts of your support of God like you do for your favorite team? Not likely, why not?

Do you want to see God win? What would that look like? It will eventually be seen when every knee is bent, but do you focus any energy on it? Do you pray about it? God has won the final victory, but there are daily battles that could be won! You don't wait until the Super Bowl to get involved with what your team is doing, do you? No, you watch it through every play of every game! 

     Ok, there are other areas that people focus on besides football or sports! It just seems like it's the biggest target in our country. In a very scary way it reminds me of the games that were played in Rome before their demise! They didn't care anything about the people sacrificed, their concern was only about entertainment. But that's not our subject here! It's a rabbit trail that I can easily be distracted by! 

     Do you spend time trying to relax? Down time? Yes, this is where my downfall is! But yet in scripture the only place I see that the disciples had "down time" was when they were in jail or prison. Even then, though, they were praying, worshipping and converting their jailers! John the Baptist loved the Lord God and for him that meant preaching to everyone that would listen to him, until he was put to death! Peter loved the Lord God, it meant living a life consumed by God, until he was put to death. Stephen loved the Lord God, it meant dying because he would not turn from his Lord. Paul loved the Lord God, it meant a total life change! The people that he loved and had previously loved him turned on him. They tried to kill him, and he eventually did die because of his life lived for God. Do you see a common thread here? Do you love the Lord God to death? 

     Most of us will not have to face a choice of loving God to our  physical death, but how about death to our own will? Do you love the Lord God to the death of your own will? That is what a disciple is and does. One who has set aside everything of their own to follow their Teacher. It's not about part time following.

     So again, if you choose to follow Jesus after He saved you from the dungeon of your sin, then the next step is to love Him to the death of your own will. His words are “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. Luke 9:23

      

    

Unanswered Question!

     Recently we've shared a message with a friend and have come to recognize that we need to be respectful of the maturity of the believer. Not everybody is on the same page and that's okay!
     We tend to get excited about what God is saying to us or what He's doing in our lives, and even though He may be active in other people's lives He isn't necessarily doing the same thing!
     People who are not as far down the path as we(we being the more mature Christians) are, may be offended by our attitudes about where God wants His people to go.
     It's a difficult balance to find. We have immature Christians that need milk and get choked on meat, and then we have the mature Christians that need meat to keep getting stronger and would lose strength on just milk! How to balance?!
     In the walk with God we have to be open to each other, not judgemental from either side. The mature Christians need to give space for God to work in the lives of the non-mature and trust that He knows what He's doing! But then how do we help the non-mature Christian realize that they're not being judged when they overhear a message that contains a lot of meat for the mature Christian?
     My husband thinks I often ask a question but already know the answer. I've tried to explain to him that sometimes I do have my own opinion, but I'm asking the question so I can hear his opinion too! In the case of this question, I want to assure you, I don't have a clue! I can see the problem, but I don't know the answer!
     I believe the Christian walk can be seen kind of like someone going through our school system. We have preschoolers, elementary level, middle school, high school, college and then we have people that are the professors! They continue to grow and study! We should be working our way through school and graduating to higher levels.
     However, if a preschooler hears a teaching that is designed more for a college student, they may become offended and think the message is being judgemental, what to do? Do we dumb down the message designed for the college student to prevent the offense to the less mature? Once again, I don't have the answer! I wish I did. Christians get a lot of reputation for being judgemental when they're really just trying to encourage growth in their brothers and sisters.
     Should we leave each other in elementary school and not encourage each other to grow and learn? How do we handle our less mature brothers and sisters, to encourage them and not offend? These are questions that as a family of believers we need to consider. But the responsibility is not just on the more mature, the less mature also need to consider that they may at times be stretched beyond their comfort zone and instead of being offended maybe they need to read the word, check the truth in the message that has ruffled their feathers and if it is true, try to apply it to their lives.
     No wonder they always made the kids sit at a different table at family gatherings!  =D

Chapter 2 ~ The Choice

     When you are freed from your dungeon cell of sin and brought into the sunshine, you encounter the One who paid the price for your freedom. Then you face the choice of following the One who purchased your freedom, or of following your own choices and whims.
     If you follow the One, you will choose to learn His teachings. His teachings lead to life and freedom in Him. If you follow your own choices then you will find yourself ensnared by the same things that caused you to be put in the dungeon cell of sin.
     *1 There is an example of a man that wanted to follow Jesus, and asked what He needed to do, Jesus told the man to sell all that he owned, give it to the poor and follow Him. The man was not able to let go of his possessions. He became sad at the idea of letting go of the things that he had! How often are we like that? It isn't easy to change our value system, it takes a great deal of trust and faith in God to learn to trust His word and Him. He will give us the trust and faith if we keep coming to Him, it is not something we can do by ourselves or by our own will. Our own will can choose to come to Him or to continue in our own ways. *2 But He is the One that will complete a good work that He started in you! If you continue to choose Him.

1 Mark 10:17-31
2 Philippians 1:6

Chapter 1 ~ Do You Know Christ, or Do You Just Know of Him?

     (When God gives a word to a person it's not uncommon for Him to give the same word to someone else, it's a way of staying in check and knowing that this is God speaking.
     Lately God has done this regularly for me and I am very thankful. When you are writing things in the Christian world you have to be very careful to not insert your own words or let there be any influence other than the Lord. With that being said, He has put on my heart the need to write about learning to be who He wants us to be and then walking in it. I have hesitated and even pulled back from writing on this! There are so many others qualified more than I am! But if I don't write what He gives me, I won't be in obedience and luckily He has had some other's, more well known that Lorna Mercer, write on this subject so it has prodded me to do my writing!)
     When you claim to believe in Jesus, what does that mean? Many know that Jesus was a man and that he did actually live in Israel. Does that make them Christians? No.
     So what does it take to make a person a Christian? The early day disciples were people who followed Christ, they were able to sit at His feet and hear His voice. That would be ideal! But now the way we are able to follow Him is to read His word. That is how we're able to sit at His feet and hear His own words.
     If a person goes to a new country and wants to be a citizen of that country they need to learn their language and study their customs and history. The same is true of becoming a Christian, it's like becoming a citizen of a country with no borders, but it still has a language to learn, and customs and history to study.
     To believe in Christ as your Saviour is more than just repeating some words. It changes your life! You transfer your citizenship, you put away your old language, you learn to speak as your Saviour speaks, you put away your old customs and learn the new customs of the One that you claim to follow and you study His history. In His words "you are a new creation". 2 Corinthians 5:17
     Granted, it's not easy to learn a new language, I did take a Spanish class and it was the most difficult class I was ever in. So I agree that you may progress slowly at first, as I did in Spanish, but the more you study and try to speak in the way that Jesus would have you speak the easier it becomes! You learn to speak in love and faith. You put away fear, criticism and hatred because they are not part of the language of your Saviour.
     As His student you should study His history, the truth of Jesus's life and death become part of who you are. You live in a way to honor Him because He lived and died that you could be free and not condemned to death! He freed you from always being controlled by the enemy or your own habits! Now you are free to serve Him, and to serve Him should be your desire! If the knowledge of your new freedom doesn't bring you joy and the desire to serve Him you probably don't really grasp the situation you were in and the freedom He paid for with His very blood.
     Imagine yourself in a gloomy, dark, wet dungeon. There is no sunshine, even very little candle light. You can hear the scurrying of rats in the darkness, looking for a crumb to eat or even someone asleep that they might chew on. Only rags cover your body, your body and hair are dirty and filthy. You are closed into a small cell with heavy chains cutting into your ankles and wrists. The chains are holding you in your small cell if by chance there is anyway you're able to push the large wooden door open. It has been so long since you've eaten more than a small crumb of stale bread that you are barely even able to stand to your feet, much less push that door open! In the other cells you are able to hear people crying, begging for mercy. But in this dark, hopeless place there is no mercy! And then you hear the guards approaching your cell! No, please! not another beating! I have nothing more to give! But the guards open your cell and remove your chains. They tell you that someone has paid the ransom for your freedom! You are speechless, you had expected another beating, but instead you were being given freedom! The guards carry you between themselves up the stairs and to the door of the dungeon. They push it open and throw you out! The day is bright! There is fresh air! And then the One who paid for your freedom picks you up, carries you to a clear flowing stream and gently place you in it, washing years and years of dirt and filth from you. Placing fresh, new clothing on you and laying out a feast before you. You have been cleansed, your needs have been met when this One came into your life! He asks you to follow Him. You gladly agree and become a citizen of His!
     That's why it should be your heart's desire to learn to speak as He does, to study His customs and history! It is possible to turn back to your own selfish ways, but if you do it's likely you'll find yourself in the dungeon again, with nobody else that is willing to pay the price for your freedom. When the truth of your situation is really recognized by you, you naturally love and follow the One that paid the price for your freedom.