Carriers

 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all  Acts 4:33....."I pray that God will send us a man out of the fire." A.W. Tozer

My heart's desire is to see the prayer of Tozer realized in our day. I think it may well be happening. The Holy Spirit fire that has been falling at Asbury College for more than two weeks seems to be spreading outward. God is sending men, and women, and the young and the old, out of the fire and into the dryness that has been the church. They have encountered a God, a Savior, a Holy Spirit that they never really knew and are going to a church that has had such an imperfect knowledge of them as well. They are filled with Spirit fire and I can only pray that the fire will spread. Spread to the church, and then through the church, to the surrounding culture. Not just in this nation, but in all the nations.

Author John Eldredge said in one of his books, "I want to see Jesus. The real Jesus." I think, among the many thousands that have been a part of the Asbury Outpouring, that has been the result. They've "seen" Jesus. The real Jesus.  And as Sandy Patti's classic song goes, "Nothing will be the same anymore." 

Some years back, I read a Larry Crabb book entitled, "Real Church: Does It Exist? Can I Find It?" It detailed the large number of not only church members, but pastors and leaders who have grown bored and disillusioned with what they were experiencing, or better put, not experiencing in what they called "worship." There was a mundane sameness to all of it. They were meeting in the name of a Savior who didn't seem to be very much present with them. They were talking about Him. Singing about Him, but they were not encountering Him. As the Bible recounts concerning the people of Israel and their drifting from God, "leanness entered their souls." I fear that same leanness has entered into the souls of too many and into the soul and heart of His church itself. Thus our desperate need for Carriers of His Fire.

The internet has made this move of God available in ways that no previous outpouring could. Millions have watched, and not merely watched, but been swept up by the Spirit that they saw so present in the midst of those who were at Asbury. Prayer groups and worship gatherings are spontaneously springing up everywhere, and in some very unlikely places. Walls are coming down. Differences are being resolved. Reconciliations are taking place. His love, peace, and joy are being described as the central fruit of what is happening. Where once having people willing to stay much beyond 60 minutes in a church service, people are lingering for hours on end, singing, praying, soaking in His presence. They don't want to leave.

I think most who would describe themselves as regular church goers would say that they know pretty clearly what to expect at this Sunday's worship in their church. That's a problem. There is little if any expectation of His presence being anything but ordinary. In fact, His presence is mostly taken for granted, and they, we, have no way of "proving" that He was even there. Into such the voices and carriers of fire must come. The need is desperate.

The first century church depicted in Acts set a fire that spread through the known world. Though the winds never ceased, they have surely slowed to a crawl, at least here in America. May it be that all those who've been impacted in any way by what has happened at Asbury, be carriers of His fire. Sent out from the fire to be used by Him to set fire to His church, and through His church, the world to which they've been sent. Scripture says that our God is a consuming fire. May He consume us. All of us. Come Holy Spirit.....we need you.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Onlookers

For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”  John 4:24....."The Methodists conquered the world with their joyous religion because they were first and foremost, worshippers......This generation needs to rediscover how to worship." A.W. Tozer

In the 1990's, the Praise and Worship movement swept into the church, sweeping many, including me, with it. It was fresh, it was lively, and it became the main form of "worship." But was it really enhancing worship. Even more, was worship really at the center of our motivations? It can't be denied that many fellowships changed over to a much more contemporary style, using guitars, drums, keyboards, and multiple singers, in order to attract younger people. More and more we went deeper into the idea of producing a "show" than we did encountering our God. Worship leaders worked hard at getting the congregation into all of it, or at least a part of it. My observation, more often than not, was that they failed. The worship team may have been filled with energy, but the congregation wasn't. The majority were spectators, onlookers, and not worshippers and partakers of a Holy God. What many have called "The Asbury Revival," is changing that and transforming worship across the face of the church. In our America and beyond. 

The flesh cannot create revival no matter how hard it may try. It comes only by a move of the Holy Spirit, and what began at a chapel in Wilmore, KY has left the confines of that sanctuary and set holy fires of renewal and worship at an ever growing number of college campuses, church fellowships, and wherever "2 or more are gathered." No platform filled with skilled singers and musicians is needed. A spontaneous desire to praise Him, adore Him, and worship Him is springing up and people are worshipping from the heart, and they go on worshipping Him. There is no sense of time. People want to remain in His presence. What takes place is a complete melting of hearts and lives before Him. Confession of sin, repentance, and complete surrender to His Lordship. Lives are coming to Christ and souls are being saved. People are being transformed. Many who have left the Lord and His church are coming back to Him, and revival, which is never about any location but the heart, is being taken back to wherever these have come from. I, we, can only pray that it would not cease. That His Holy Spirit would continue to move, to blow, to sweep up.

Here, where I live and serve Him, I believe we are seeing in our fellowship and beyond, the deep stirrings of His Spirit. I, and countless others have long prayed for a Tsunami of His Spirit to come upon His church, and that we would, as Tozer, learn how to truly worship Him. May what Tozer said of the Methodist movement of John Wesley and his leaders be true of us as well. May our worship of our God be so sincere, so real, so joyous, and so alive that a fire of desire is lit in the hearts of believer and unbeliever alike. May we really be those who do worship Him in spirit and in truth. May we understand that anything else and anything less isn't worship at all. It's just a lot of people watching a performance. We need no more performances. No longer onlookers but full partakers. Let us have a visitation of His Spirit. A visitation that becomes a habitation.

Blessings,

Pastor O 

The Return

 "But now this is what the Lord says: 'Do not weep any longer, for I will reward you,' says the Lord. 'Your children will come back to you from the distant land of the enemy. There is hope for your future,' says the Lord.

'Your children will come again to their own land.' " Jeremiah 31:16-17

Twenty five years ago I purchased a video set entitled "First Love." It was a chronicle of the Jesus Movement of the 1960's and 70's, a movement that swept me, and hundreds of thousands of others into it. A number of singers and musicians who were much used by God in that movement came together to sing and tell their stories of that time and into the present. As I watched, my heart was deeply stirred, and I began to cry out to Him that He would "do it again." Twenty five years. A quarter of a lifetime. A long time to wait, but I think He may be "doing it again," but in a new and fresh way.

So many of us in the time of the Jesus Revolution as it was called, were disaffected, without hope, and held captive by a myriad of addictions and destructive tendencies. Jesus took hold of a generation, and it changed the church and the culture. Today, in places like Asbury College, Lee University, and a host of other Christian and even secular campuses, the Holy Spirit is moving, and it is beginning through the current youth of our culture, just as it did more than 50 years ago. I believe we will see once more, "our children returning from the land where they've been held captive." 

Jeremiah 31 addresses a people who had been widely scattered as a result of their sin and rebellion. They'd been taken captive by the Assyrian empire and dispersed throughout its boundaries. God was telling them that He would do a work that would bring these exiled captives "home" to Israel. In the same way, we are in the midst of a widely scattered, disaffected, cynical, culture of youth who see nothing of real worth to believe in. I think these moves of the Holy Spirit that are happening throughout our nation and moving out into the nations, are going to be bringing many, very many young people "home" to not only their loved ones, but to the God and Creator who loves them above all. The fires are burning, the Spirit is moving and blowing. Lives are being transformed, set free, and made new. I pray it is only the beginning.

Volumes could be written on this, and possibly will be written, but I want to add something here. Churches are filled with parents and grandparents whose children are living as exiles in the land of the enemy. The burden they carry for them is great. If you are one of them, take heart. He is moving to bring the exiles, your exiles, home. Surrender them to Him and trust Him with them. He knows the way home even if they do not. He is faithful. Claim His promises. Yield to Him, trust Him, obey Him. Whatever failures you may have had in their getting to the land of the enemy, confess them, repent of them, and let Him redeem them. And behold what He does as He works to bring them home from the land of the enemy.....to His land. Kingdom land. Your land, and theirs as well.

Blessings,

Pastor O

The Return - Postscript

 I contemplated whether I should share this or not. I've always sought to be transparent concerning my life, but there are some things too complicated and painful to talk freely of. This is one of them.

In the previous writing, I exhorted parents to have hope that the Lord would bring their children home to Himself and to them. He is faithful to do this. I know because it was a reality in my life as well.....

In my broken marriage, there was a little girl. I'll call her Cassie to protect her. She was blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful. She was pure joy to be with and had the most tender heart toward His Holy Spirit. I remember her shedding tears in many a service, once at only 5 years old, saying that she wanted to be a "better girl" than she had been. Missionaries who visited our home always spoke of how special she was. She was not mine by birth, but she was raised as my daughter, and I was every bit her father. That all changed as her mother slowly drifted from both the Lord and our marriage. Eventually, she left me, and took Cassie with her. I had never adopted her as my own because her natural father still lived and I didn't feel it was right to do that. So when her mother took her away, I had no legal rights to her. I will never forget the agony of the day they left, holding her in my arms and weeping. I was not to hear or know almost anything of her for the next 10 years, though I continually cried out that He would bring her back to me. I believed that He promised that He would. After a decade, He did.

Cassie was a victim of the wreckage of our marriage and suffered because of it. She ran away at 16, became involved in a Haitian cult, and impregnated by its leader. She eventually returned home to North Carolina, began attending a church, and gave her heart to Jesus. Sometime after she came back to Christ she contacted me. I was overjoyed. It took some time, but we began to try and rebuild what was lost. In the interim, she met a young man and married. She had two children. On the surface, all seemed well, but Kim still carried many deep and unhealed wounds. She came to see me and spent a weekend with me. I had not seen her since she was 11 years old. It was a wonderful time, and we made plans for me to come see her the following month. That would not happen, because just as the enemy had crept into my marriage, he crept into hers. She left her husband, and eventually divorced him. She also left the Lord....again. She began a journey into New Age mysticism. She kept in loose contact with me, and I witnessed from afar the slow disintegration of her life. She became an alcoholic and that addiction took over her life to the extent that she eventually lost custody of her children. She would often call me late at night after she'd been drinking. She continued her downward spiral, and the beautiful young woman who had visited me soon looked 10 years older than she was. She was diagnosed with liver disease, and it took her life at the age of 41. 

In my living room I have a wall filled with photos from my life. A number of them are of Cassie as a little girl. Smiling, happy, filled with life. His life. Whenever I look at them, I grieve over what the choices of others ended up bringing her to. Yes, she was responsible for her own choices, but a life was placed upon her that she never asked for or wanted. Her choices led to her death, but that is not the end of the story. She made one last choice before she left this life. That choice was to return to Christ. God brought her back to the land she had once belonged in and now belonged in again.

What happened with Cassie is not extreme. Many parents have suffered worse, but I share this story in order to exhort any who read it to never lose hope. I never saw the complete restoration of my relationship with Kim, but I did witness the restoration of her relationship with her Lord and Savior. I know she's with Him in eternity as I write this. I know that one day, all will be restored between us, and that laughing, beautiful, funny little girl that I spent so many wonderful hours playing with, taking along on pastoral visits, and listening to her stories about her day, will be with me again. God kept His promise. It didn't unfold the way I wanted, but in the end, it was for her eternal good and His great glory. He is faithful. Whatever land your child, grandchild, or loved one may be held in, trust Him. There is no "land" so dark, so far away, that He cannot bring them back from it. He brought Kim home. He'll bring them home as well. He's faithful.

The Church

 "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them."  Ephesians 2:10....."The church is God's evidence before the universe of His very high character."  Ray Ortlund..."To live above with saints we love, O Lord, that will be the glory. To live below with saints we know - well that's another story!" Unknown

I love the old hymn's lyrics, "It's a glorious church without spot or wrinkle, washed in the blood of the Lamb." It's true as to who and what the church of Christ is in Him. When the Father looks upon His church, that is what He sees, because He sees a Body that is under and washed in the blood of Christ the Savior. 

Christians, the people of God, are a flawed people. We have imperfections, sometimes glaring imperfections. We make mistakes, we react when we should respond. We don't always do the right thing. Sometimes we sin. In all of this, He looks at our heart. At the heart of His church and at the hearts of His people. What He looks for is a deep love for Him and desire to live for Him. A deep desire to love His people and the souls of those who don't know Him. That we sometimes do this imperfectly is covered by both the blood of Jesus and that He does see our hearts and our perfect desires that we seek to live out through imperfect lives. But we need to understand a very sobering truth. We, His church, are to represent the very perfect character of God even through our imperfect lives. We are to be His portrait to a creation, a human race, that He desperately loves and desperately needs Him. As we allow Him to examine us, how are we doing at that? How does the fellowship we belong to "look" to the surrounding culture? What do they say about us? Do they even know we're here? What does it say about us, you and me as individual parts of the whole? Do they know whose we are? Do they see Him in us? Do they even know we're here? Sobering questions indeed.

The politcal and religious systems of the day in the early church were aligned against them. Persecution was increasing all the while. Yet Scripture says that even the unbelieving pagans around them spoke highly of the integrity and character of the followers of Christ, and they were amazed by their love for one another. The world system and the enemy that empowers it will always be aligned against the church. Against His people. But that cannot, will never stop the witness that we are to give it in the midst of all of its darkness. Are we doing that? Or, does the world know more about our scandals, our fallen celebrity preachers and the luxury lifestyles some of them live? Do they know more about how we criticize one another, focusing on minor differences of doctrine and theology than upon the calling and mission of our Lord and Savior. When they see us, when they see our churches, what is it that they see? Are we verifying for them what the enemy would have them see?

As I said, we're human, and on this side of eternity we will never live out our witness perfectly. But we can have a perfect motivation and desire to do so. We may have and live out a burning desire to bring Him glory. We can confess and repent of what have been our failings, and we can invite the power, healing, and wholeness into our fellowship and lives anew. We can be, to the fullest extent possible, His glorious church without spot or wrinkle. God is moving, even as I write this, doing that very work among His people. May we, you and I, and the body of Christ be swept up in it all. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Joining Him

 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.  Matthew 23:37..."Ask God where He's grieving in your life and in the world and join Him there." Alicia Britt Chole

The portrait of Christ standing atop the heights and looking down upon Jerusalem always moves me. I can sense His broken heart over the rejection of the city, nation, and people He came to save. I can't help but think of eternal tragedy experienced by those who rejected Him and the consequences of their rejection. I can almost feel His sorrow. The thing of it is though, I tend to always keep this portrait of Christ in a kind of compartment. I know He still grieves over the nations and their ongoing rejection of Him, but somehow, it doesn't seem so personal. Yet the quote from Chole written above pierces me as I contemplate it. When Jesus looked down upon the city, He didn't just see the crowds of people. He saw the individuals as well. The nation of Israel and its religious and political leaders had rejected Him, denied Him. So too would, at least for a moment, His disciples. Again, I can contemplate all of this from afar, but it still doesn't bring me into understanding the depths of His sorrow.....until I realize He continues to look upon this world, and my place in it, and grieves over how we continue to reject and deny Him in so many different ways. That's not a realization we come by easily. I can understand His sorrow over the sewage of our culture. I can also understand His grief over the waywardness of those around me. I am too often blind to how my ways may so often grieve His heart. But if I am to be all He saved me to be, I need to know, and I need to be made new in all of those places.

We're told in Scripture to not grieve the Holy Spirit, but that may be one of the most ignored commands in His Word. We grieve Him all the time and in so many ways. We don't notice and sadly, we're not much concerned about it. We figure His grace and love will cover it. They do, when we confess and repent of it. Someone said that we can't really enter into the fullness of His salvation until we truly experience sorrow over our sin. That is key to experiencing the fullness of His grace. For that reason we will not become truly conscious of our grieving Him until we begin to understand how deeply our indifference, our cold hearts, our selfish living, wounds His heart and Spirit. 

Chloe exhorts us to join Him in His grief over the world and over us, but we can't and we won't until we feel and understand that grief ourselves. That means we need to invite Him, cry out to Him to open our eyes to see and our hearts to understand. When we do, we can join Him in those places as He brings healing to us, and then through and with us, healing and salvation to the human race He came to save and deliver.

We may know what's wrong in the world, and even in His church. Do we know what's wrong in us? Do we know where we're grieving His Spirit? Can we join Him in those places? Can we grieve with Him and then rejoice with Him as He works in us and then through us to minister healing and wholeness there. As He offers His healing grace to us, may He not say any more, "but you would not have it."

Blessings,
Pastor O

Eternity Amnesiacs

 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.  Ecclesiastes 3:11...."We are so focused on the opportunities, needs, responsibilities, and desires of the here and now that we lose sight of what is to come. You cannot make sense out of life unless you look at it from the vantage point of eternity." Paul Tripp

Not long ago I wrote about us having amnesia when it comes to remembering who our God is and who we are in Him. In his devotional, New Morning Mercies, Paul Tripp writes about our also being "eternity amnesiacs." That is, we live without any real perspective on eternity. If we're honest with ourselves and with Him, we know how true that is.

A simple question for each of us is, where do our thoughts about eternity enter into our daily lives? What is eternal life anyway, and if there is such a thing, what determines our place in it? As the above Scripture says, God placed a sense of eternity in the human heart when He created us. Indeed, He created us for eternity. The fall of the human race in the Garden destroyed that sense and yearning as He intended it, but it still remains, though we've found, believer and unbeliever alike, a myriad of ways to dull and diminish it. 

Satan, the enemy of our souls has blinded us to the reality of eternity, convincing us that everything centers on life in the here and now. Our culture underscores this more deeply each day. Our senses and cravings are appealed to in every way possible. The old commercial that proclaimed, "You only go around once in life. You have to grab for all the gusto you can," is still shouted at us, though the proclamation of that message may change in the delivery. Some do live "going for the gusto," and others live just trying to survive. Most of us live somewhere in between. Yet eternity is real, and all of us will be spending it in either the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or in the presence (and torment) of the hater of the human race. What we do with Jesus is the deciding point. What have you done with Him?

It will be a tragedy beyond words to enter into eternity without Him. It is also a tragedy beyond words that so many who profess to believe and follow Him live just as oblivious to eternity as those who don't. We too are going for the gusto, or struggling to survive, or just trying to make it through with more good in our lives than bad. Moreover, we are as confused by life as those who don't believe at all. We measure and weigh events in much the same way as the world. We lack an eternal perspective because we lack His wisdom and discernment. We lack men (and women) of Issachar, those who know and recognize the days we live in and what we need to be doing. We're often as overwhelmed and confused as those in the world without Him. 

The worst part I think is that we spend so little time living in such a way as to prepare ourselves for what eternal life will be for us. How we live for Him here determines how we will live with Him "there," in eternity. It should not be that it is not until we grow old that we begin to give any thought to eternal life at all. So we go on living as eternity amnesiacs. We must awaken and come to our senses. One day, it will be too late. And none of us know when that day will be. 

Blessings,
Pastor O