The News #17

Everybody like to win; everybody like to associate with a winner. It makes you feel good. I’m a Boston Celtics fan. Last year “we” won it all. This year “we” didn’t. Somehow it’s “we,” even though I don’t remember making a single free throw in any of the games. “We” win championships. “We” have a great economy (even when it’s bad it’s still great by world standards). So “we” get to feeling pretty good about ourselves.

In terms of the economy, “we” think we are part of the group of people who are smarter, the group of people who know how a country and an economy should be set up. “We” feel sorry for those less fortunate than ourselves, and without even being aware of it “we” have an unconscious pride in or dominant position at the top of the world’s economic hill. That’s pretty much what was going on inside of me. Until this whole TARP bill business.

Huge economic institutions were facing bankruptcy. The question was, if they went down would they take the entire financial system with them? Would it cause a great depression? Or if we let them go bankrupt would that ultimately be a good thing for the economy? What would you do if you were in charge? A trillion or so dollars and the fate of the economy are on the line. How would you make the call?

I’m here to tell you I have it all figured out. I honestly believe I know as much as can be known about the situation. Here is my conclusion. There isn’t one single human being on the planet who can tell you what the right thing to do was. Nobody knew. It was too complicated. Too much of it depended on those millions of free will decisions. Nobody knew what to do. And now that we have taken certain actions there isn’t one single person alive in the world who is smart enough to know weather or not we did the right thing.

The News #16

Usually, when we speak of revival, we are thinking about the impact it will have on the world around us. Millions of people will be saved. Certain kinds of movies and TV shows will no longer be made because there will no longer be an audience for them. Standards of right and wrong will again be established and recognized by a majority of the population. These are wonderful things to pray for.

But please be aware of the way this usually starts. It usually starts in the house of God. It usually starts when God pours out His Spirit on His people. I am praying that very, very soon God will become more real to us than we have ever imagined He could be. That we will have more of His power, His love, and His peace than we ever expected to have in this life.

God is all we really need or want, whether we know it or not. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a great awakening so that we all became so happy in God that we weren’t really paying any attention to the economy or material things? Wouldn’t it be great to become so happy in God that we are just as serene with or without a job or a good salary? Let us pray for the blessing of God on our nation, and yes, pray for the health of the economy because Christian giving fuels the doing of many, many good deeds in the world. But all of that is secondary to the spiritual condition of the people in our society. Pray for a great awakening. Pray for God to be glorified. Pray for millions of souls to be saved.

The News #15

I love comics. All kinds of comics. The little three panel jobs in the newspaper, graphic novels, and comic books. Several decades ago I came across a little, mini comic book designed to share the gospel with the unsaved. It carries a clear message of both the mercy and wrath of God. I recently ordered a stack of “This Was Your Life.” I’m going to be sharing one of them with an unsaved friend when they arrive. If you want to view the comic, the link is provided below. (Click the corner of each page to turn the page.)

The News #14

If a great awakening will include a new revelation of the reality of divine judgment, what must I do if I sense the Spirit of God beginning to give us such a revelation? First and foremost, you must use this revelation as a new motivation to pray for a great awakening. There are two master motivators to prayer for revival. One is a deep sense of distress because men are not glorifying God. A concern for the glory that is due His name can, and should move us to pray.

“Lord, it is inconsistent with Your power and Your glory for the English speaking world to descend from a Christian Civilization into post Christian barbarism. Men are saying that You are not real and that You do not matter and that Your gospel is actually a bad thing. Dear God, for the sake of the glory due Your name, pour out Your Spirit in great power over all the churches in the English speaking world and revive us again I pray!”

(Please don’t be offended by my emphasis on the English speaking world. I can, and do pray for people groups from all over the world. But I have sensed that the Holy Spirit has given me a special prayer responsibility for the English speaking part of the world. Probably because I’m not smart enough to learn a foreign language?)

A burning passion for the glory of God is one reason to pray. May God give us all such a burden, such a revelation. But a burning concern for the dying souls of men going into the darkness of an eternity away from the presence of God is another great motivator. If God begins to make this real to you, understand that it is your call to pray. And understand that for some of you, it may be the beginning of a call to speak to some of the people in your life as the Spirit leads.

The News #13

What would it mean for us to receive a revelation of hell, where the Holy Spirit made it ever so real to us? Why would God do such a thing? Dear friends, please listen very carefully to what I am about to say.

I do not believe that God really blesses and uses any form of ministry that is not Spirit led and directed. That is to say that I do not believe that Christian activity that is not empowered by the Spirit bears any real fruit. So if you take a mental understanding of what I have been writing about hell and then go out and start to warn everyone you know, I don’t think it will do much good. It might even do some harm because any exposure to the truth apart from the gracious working of the Holy Spirit tends to harden the heart of man. So don’t rush out and go up to total strangers and yell, “Turn or burn!” in their faces. It won’t do any good.

But if God begins to revive His church He is going to take most all of us into a deeper, richer relationship with the Father than any we have ever known. And part of that deepening relationship will mean that we will have more power, and a clearer sense of direction in our Christian service than we ever had before.

A great many of us will be used to either directly lead people to Christ or to invite them to church where they will hear the gospel and be everlastingly saved. And it won’t be really hard to talk to people and it won’t seem all that awkward, the way it does now, because it will all be done under the direction and in the power of the Spirit of God.

Now you don’t have to wait for a great outpouring of the Spirit of God to witness. I’m not saying that. But whether in revival or not I believe that such work is fruitful only when God directs us and empowers us. If God is so directing you at this time, well and good. Follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. For the record, I will be speaking to someone I know in the near future about her soul. I believe it is God’s time and place to do that. So you don’t have to wait for revival, but you do need to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit and if you are not sensing His leading in this area, that may not be your ministry and this time and you shouldn’t trouble yourself greatly about it.

The News #12

Michael Jackson died last week. I was profoundly moved. If you know me very well, you probably can’t believe I wrote that last sentence. I certainly wouldn’t have expected the death of “The King of Pop” to have much of an impact on me one way or another. So the reaction was most unexpected. This is why I was so moved.

My first thought was, “How terrible it would be a child molester and die in an unsaved condition. It would be unspeakably horrible for anyone to go to hell, but how much worse must be in store for a child molester.” And right in that moment it was almost as if I could hear him scream. That first scream, the scream that you scream when you realize you are dead and hands take hold of you and begin to drag you down into the earth. That first scream that you scream when you realize that it is all true, that you are descending into hell, and that there is no possible way of escape.

Dear friends, I do not know if Michael Jackson is in hell right now; he might have gotten saved in some private moment. I don’t know if he molested those children. A jury sat for months listening to evidence and returned a not guilty verdict on all counts. In any event, he has now faced the judgment of a Judge who sees all, knows all, and who cannot be deceived. Not matter what he was guilty off, the blood of Jesus had the power to cleanse, the power to save.

I’ve been writing about the power of God and the possibility of a transformation of our society through an outpouring of God’s Spirit. When this has happened in the past, God made hell very real to unsaved people and used it to bring them to salvation. And if there is going to be another great awakening I expect that God will make a revelation of the lake of fire to be a very important part of it.

But I am not writing today about the impact of hell on the unsaved. I am writing about the impact of a revelation of hell on the born again, on those of us who are safe from this horror through the wonderful grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. Before God ever makes the danger of damnation real to the world, I expect that He will begin to make it very, very real in the hearts and minds of His people.

The News #11

The impact of this sermon (see the last post) was extraordinary. Mature, intelligent adults found themselves crying out in terror. Some literally stood up and ran to pillars in the church interior and held on with all their might from fear that the ground beneath them would open and they would drop into the flames. None of this was due to emotional manipulation or great oratory. Jonathan Edwards was not a great orator, and at this point in his ministry he would read his sermons word for word from the pulpit. What happened was that the Spirit of God came down on that place with great power. He made it all very real and very vivid to them. A spiritual renewal began in that place and many, many people were born again in the next several months.

I’ve know about this sermon for a long time, but recently I learned something I didn’t know. This was very typical of preaching from American and English pulpits during past Great Awakenings. I’m not suggesting that each and every evangelistic sermon should reek of burning sulfur and be so vivid that people can hear the screams of the damned sounding in the background, but I am suggesting that some of them should.

Do you know where you find the most vivid and disturbing descriptions of hell in the Christian Bible? You find them in the gospels. They are words printed in red in some of your Bibles. They are words spoken by the Savior of the world.