The Greatest Lover

God is the universe’s greatest lover, and with the exception of a few, terrible hours that the Son of God spent upon the cross, no person of the Godhead has ever been alone.  We were designed to join into the same kind of relationship with God that the persons of the trinity share among themselves.  The plan is for every moment to be spent in the conscious awareness of His presence, the conscious enjoyment of His love, and the conscious purpose of living to bring a smile to His face.

Borken Compas

There is something inside of me that turns away from God just as naturally and persistently as a compass set to point to the South Pole.  As long as my conscious mind is in control, the needle can point straight at my true north, which is God Almighty; but the second my conscious mind relaxes the needle points south again to self and sin.

With You, For You, Through You

Brother Lawrence had the right idea, that every moment is to be spent in the presence of God.  But I’m afraid that his technique is a little too passive for modern man.  Instead of trying to block out everything but God I have much more success in trying at the start of each new segment of the day to tell God that I want to live this portion of my day with Him, for Him, and through Him.  Then from time to time throughout the task to repeat this simple prayer, “with You, for You, and through You.” 

Is There Any Hope For A Spiritual Renewal?

Is there hope for spiritual renewal in America?  A few days ago we looked back to a time when the economic situation was worse than it is today and learned that America successfully weathered that storm.  Is there a time in American history that we can look back to where there was a serious moral decline?  The answer is yes. 

In the time period following the American revolution up to about 1800 America experienced a significant moral and spiritual decline.  Most of the concepts that we would include under the heading of secular humanism arose in France about the time of the American revolution.  When France came to our aid in the Revolutionary War it created a great deal of goodwill toward France and made people very open to French ideas.  The country was soon flooded with atheistic literature and in a very short time a school of American writers rose up and began to support these new ideas.  The most prominent was Thomas Paine, who wrote brilliantly in support of the American revolution before he turned his talents to an anti-Christian crusade.  His book, "Age of Reason" probably sold over a million and a half copies, a simply amazing print run for that day and age.

The "Bible" of secular humanism, the French Encyclopedia, was widely read in America during this period.  Apparently they even had shadowy George Soros type figures financing the decline.  Many of Paine's books and the most damaging French books were either given away or sold at below cost.

While things didn't get as bad as they are now, the decline was serious and it seemed to be gaining momentum.  An observer in Connecticut noted that, "Infidel opinions came in like a flood."  From Kentucky:  "Youth became blasphemers against God.  If a young man of real ability had decided to enter the ministry it would have excited astonishment."  Another observer from Virginia stated that he expected every educated young man he met to either be an agnostic or an atheist.  In about 1795 a student a Yale estimated that there was one believing Christian in each of the freshman  and junior classes, about ten in the senior class, and not one believer in the sophomore class. 

More and more people decided to live together without getting married.  The occupant of the White House, Thomas Jefferson, did not believe in the inspiration of the Bible.  He was a big fan of the French revolution and French ideas.  Jefferson's secretary of war, Henry Dearborn, had this to say about Christian churches.  "So long as these temples stand we cannot hope for good government."

The forces of darkness were very confident.  Paine said, "I have gone through the Bible as a man would go through a wood with and ax and felled trees.  Here they lie and the priests may replant them, but they will never grow."  The French philosopher Voltaire claimed that by the early 1800's the bible would have passed "into the limbo of forgotten literature."

So what happened?  There were still a lot of people alive who remembered the great outpouring of the Spirit of God that took place in the 1740's.  They began to pray.  And starting in 1799, God began to answer.  For the next 35+ years, there was always at least one community somewhere in the United States that was experiencing a revival; an unusual outpouring of the Spirit of God.  Hundreds of thousands of people became converted.  The entire moral landscape of America was transformed.

Pray for revival.  The situation is NOT hopeless.  Pray for revival until revival comes or until the day you die.  And when you get to heaven, if revival hasn't come yet, keep praying.  There is still hope for America, just as there is hope for all the other nations of this world.  Prayer is the key. 

"Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up."  (Luke 18:1 NIV) 

Is There Any Hope for the Economy?

"Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up."  (Luke 18:1 NIV)  "I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority."  (I Tim. 2:1, 2 NIV)

The United States of America is trillions and trillions of dollars in debt.  Meanwhile nations like Greece and Italy are dealing with unsustainable debt and will probably cause the collapse of the Euro.  Many observers believe that what is happening in Greece and Italy right now is a picture of America's not so distant future.  And if the American financial system totters and falls we will probably take the rest of the planet with us.  It all seems so hopeless.  Is there a way out?

Absolutely!  They key to our survival is the Christian church.  Prayer is our only hope.  Less watching the news and more praying about the news is the key.

Perhaps a little history lesson will help us to understand what is at stake.  By the end of the American revolution the economic situation was much, much worse than it is today.  The government was massively, hopelessly in debt.  They had printed way, way too much money and inflation was raging totally out of control.  Washington despaired of being able to provide for his troops.  It took a wagon load of money to purchase a wagon load of supplies.

And don't be tempted to think that people were wiser, holier, and more prudent then than we are now.  The states weren't willing to pay the federal government what they had promised to pay and the federal government didn't have any way to make them pay up.  What this means is that the people of that time wanted something (national defense) that they weren't willing to pay for.  Does that sound familiar?


As a result Washington's army was months and months behind in paying the troops.  Their diet was inadequate and they frequently went dressed in rags and without shoes.  The troops were in danger of being discharged at the end of the war without any money to pay the expenses of their trip home.  Some of Washington's officers were working on a secret plan to march the army to the capitol to demand justice.  Only the presence of George Washington and the love that his army had for him saved the revolution from turning into some kind of military dictatorship.  The wise men of Europe expected our whole democratic experiment to collapse.  If Las Vegas had existed then all of the smart money would have been betting against the future of the United States.

After a few years of independence enough people realized that the government simply wasn't going to work.  So after a great deal of debate we ended up with a new constitution and a new political leader, our first president, George Washington.  And George Washington and Alexander Hamilton put together a plan that brought us out of national bankruptcy and on to a sound economic footing.  I won't bore you with the details, but I want to emphasize the main point.  The economic situation was worse then than it is now and wise men found a way out.

Let me share a prayer burden with you.  We all need to pray that God would give the people in power the same kind of wisdom He gave to Old Testament leaders like Daniel and Joseph.  We need to stop looking horizontally at the (seemingly) hopeless situation and start looking vertically up to the heavenly solution.  There is hope and that hope is prayer offered to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ.

Why We Can't Get Along

"When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. "  Galatians 5:19-20

This is the definite Bible list of what's wrong with human nature.  This is what sin has done to us.  A lot of what is on the list is about what you would expect:  sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, drunkenness, and wild parties.  That sounds like what you would expect from a Biblical description of sin.  But let's look at the other half of the list:  hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, and envy.

A few years ago a man in California plaintively asked a now famous question:  "Why can't we just get along?"  And this is the reason why.  Sin, by it's very nature, is divisive and quarrelsome.  This is human nature 101.  What can we learn from this?

We can be more understanding of the political process.  Go back two paragraphs and look at that list again the next time you see the battling talking heads on the TV.  There never has been and never will be a time in which the people in politics put the good of the majority above all other values.  There are exceptions, but they simply prove the rule.  If you want leaders who will be noble and enlightened you'll have to wait for the millennium.

We can be a little more thoughtful about the way we do church.  If you are the devil, and you understand that all this stuff is in human nature, you are going to constantly attack local churches by trying to get a small group of people together to get rid of the pastor.  When we get into church disputes are we really being motivated by principles or is a weakness in our nature being manipulated by evil spirits?

We can be really careful in our relationships at work and at home.  If you reread that list you might wonder if anybody could ever stay married to anyone else for a lifetime.  And you should certainly have a clearer understanding of why there is so much gossip and office politics at work.

How should we respond?  We should love everybody and forgive everybody.  We should be "the very soul of kindness."  And we should always keep a careful watch on ourselves.  There is a lot of junk inside of me.  I have to hold tight to Jesus if I am going to walk in love and be willing to forgive those who sin against me.

Blind Captivity

"The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will."  2 Timothy 2:24-26

I've been praying this passage as a prayer for a Christian woman who has abandoned and divorced her husband.  And every time I pray it seems backwards.  I would expect a knowledge of the truth to lead to repentance.  Wouldn't you?  The devil has you confused ("held captive by him to do his will").  So the Holy Spirit begins to reason with you.  He helps you to understand what you are doing is wrong and why it is wrong.  And because of this you repent.

That's not what the passage says.  The passage says that the repentance is a gift from God and the knowledge comes after the repentance.  You don't repent because you came to your senses, you come to your sense after you repent!  Does this mean that the devil can build some kind of a stronghold in my life (a "snare" that holds me "captive to do his will") that is so strong that I can't think my way out of it?  Does he bring us into a state of pure moral blindness where we simply can not see the truth any longer (at least as it applies to the sin that binds us)?


So all of a sudden, while praying for this woman, I find myself asking if I shouldn't begin to pray this for me!  In what areas of my life am I so blind, so completely given over to Satan's control, that I can't even begin to see things from a godly perspective until God Himself rescues me by giving me the gift of repentance?  Where am I acting so irrationally that I literally need God's help so that I can come to my senses?


Let us pray.