Sunday, February 4, 2007

We Must Wake Up

Today as I look at the lives of some who claim to be Christians and even go to church my heart begins to break. As believers in Jesus, we have access to so much, yet we are settling for so little all the while the Lords heart is breaking over each one of us. He desires that His children would just come before Him and seek His face, but because of our sinful nature, we get so caught up with the cares and pleasures of this life. Most of the time its not even deliberate sin, its normally seeking other cisterns that cannot satisfy our soul. We place things that need to be below God up before God. The Church of America must begin to wake up. Most Americans today want to go to a good college, then get a good job, maybe marry after that, and then live a comfortable life until they die. Beloved, I beg you to reconsider that dream. There is a much better life than this. Those of us who are Christians are embracing an upside down kingdom, which is completely different from any other kingdom. Jesus displays this is Matthew 5 with the B-attitudes. His definition of being blessed is different from Americas definition today of being blessed. He says that your blessed if you have a broken life basically. Your poor in spirit, living a lifestyle of mourning, being lower than everyone else and servant of everyone else, in the midst of searching for God. This is what the Lord is calling us into today; this is what the true Christian lifestyle is supposed to look like. Money and wealth is not something we need to seek, they will only corrupt us. Jesus says in Matthew that we cannot serve both God and money. I tell you that if we even somewhat learn to obey this command God will do what He promises and provide. He compares us to the birds of the air who do not reap or sow anything, yet the Lord still provides for them, but how much more will the Lord provide for us, His bride, who are much more valuable than birds. I tell you the Lord is faithful and will give you what you need.
In America, we as the church are wasting our lives. We say we believe in Jesus yet we do not live like it. If Jesus really was a real man and really is now at the right hand of the Father we must fall down before Him in reverence giving Him our lives. Our lives need to be lived like that of the great evangelists: David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitfield, A.W. Tozer etc. in a place of a holy consecration to the Lord seeking for an encounter from Him. The need of the hour is preachers and teacher who are set apart for something greater, who have the grace to sustain long hours in prayer and fasting. We need those who weep between the porch and the altar, who hide themselves from the world and pray. There is a phrase that most everyone has heard which goes, “we cant be so heavenly minded that were of no earthly good,” but the truth of the matter is that so many of us are so earthly minded we are of no heavenly good. The greatest impact that a believer can have is not with his talents or his giftings, but it is in a place of prayer asking that God would begin to change the way things are and send revival. Leonard Ravenhill says, “Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you damned?”