I am experiencing both, excitement and fear for what God is doing in, through and around me.
It's an awesome sense, knowing that God has a plan. My problem, if I can pinpoint just one, would be the simple fact that I wrestle with being in control. My tendencies lead me to pursue the things that I have control over, or at the very least, have some sort of leverage. Yah - not the case as of late. And that's okay, I guess.
It's an interesting place - a place that I have not made myself too familiar with over the years - a place that I am learning to appreciate and embrace. That doesn't make it any easier; just my reality.
That said, I am seeking God's will for my life, my family, my finances, my ministry, my future. Or is it His life, His family, His finances, His ministry and His future?
Perspective changes everything.
~Andrew
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Man... Why Revival Tarries by Leonard Ravenhill. Wow... it will tear your soul to pieces because its all true. I just finished reading it... and its taking everything in me to not cry. It will totally rock your perspective. I recommend you read it, but pray about it first, and prepare yourself beforehand. Its good, and everyone needs to read it, but it is a wrecking ball. I totally get where you're coming from.
Andrew,
I am excited to hear about all this perspective changing!
Michael,
What's a couple of it's main points?
-John
John,
Here's a preview of what's in the book... just blows my mind, but its true. Get a cup of coffee; this is gonna be a long post:
The tragedy of this late hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people.
Preaching is a spiritual business. A sermon born in the head reaches the head; a sermon born in the heart reaches the heart. Under God, a spiritual preacher will produce spiritually minded people. Unction is not a gentle dove beating her wings against the bars outside of the preacher's soul; rather, she must be pursued and won. Unction cannot be learned, only earned - by prayer. Unction is God's knighthood for the soldier-preacher who has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory. Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet; it is won or lost before the preacher's foot enters the pulpit.
The ugly fact is that altar fires are either out or burning very low. The prayer meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its ministers what time they spend in prayer? Yet ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen, degrees or no degrees.
Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from men. Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls. (Imagine a field sown with pearls!)
No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit ban be a shop window to display one's talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off.
We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and pay-ers, few payer-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.
The two prerequisites to successful Christian living are vision and passion, both of which are born in and maintained by prayer.
The secret of praying is praying in secret. A sinning man will stop praying, and a praying man will stop sinning.
He who fears God fears no man. He who kneels before God will stand in any situation.
Let us invite the searching eye of God to locate this corrupted, spotted, stinking Self in us. Let it be torn from us and crucified with Him, so that henceforth, we no longer serve sin.
The Holy Spirit could write the life of Elijah in two words: He prayed. No man could do more than that for God or for men. If the Church has as many agonizers as she has advisers, we would have revival in a year.
Much of our praying is but giving God advice! Our praying is discolored with ambition, wither for ourselves or for our denomination. Perish the thought! Our goal must be God alone. It is His honor that is sullied, His blessed Son who is ignored, His laws broken, His name profaned, His Book forgotten, His house made a circus of social efforts.
Does God ever need more patience with His people than when they are "praying"? We tell Him what to do and how to do it. We pass judgments and make appreciations in our prayers. In short, we do everything except pray.
The man who can get believers to praying would, under God, usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known.
"This church will either have a revival or a funeral!" Madness you say? Exactly! A sober church never does any good. At this hour we need men drunk with the Holy Ghost. Has God excelled Himself? Were Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Hudson Taylor special editions of ministers? Never! If I read the Book of Acts aright, they were just the norm.
Why does revival tarry? The answer is simple enough - because evangelism is so highly commercialized. Revival tarries because of cheapening the Gospel. Revival tarries because of carelessness. The evangelist is happy seeing his friends; and while sinners groan at the altar, he is drinking in the rich cream of men's praises. Thus America and England are strewn with spiritual derelicts, confused and confounded. Revival tarries because of fear. As evangelists, we are tight-lipped about the spurious religions of the day, as there were more than one name whereby we must be saved. Revival tarries because we lack urgency in prayer.
Its about revival: why it tarries and what men of God and preachers are doing today that is hindering the next genuine revival in America and around the world. By the way, this was written in 1959... almost 50 years ago.
Post a Comment