Pray to God…

“Your will be done, on earth, as in heaven, Your kingdom come.”

Put all things in the Lord’s hands. Trusting. Faithfully. Prayerfully. Obediently. We tend to omit the submit and be obedient parts.

The BODY needs the Head and, yes, the BODY needs to be REVIVED. In the Word. In the Holy Spirit. In Truth.

Not as it has been being so-called “nourished” these many past decades in politics, worldly beliefs and practices, appeasing the world and sin. Refusing to write, speak, preach the whole Word of God. Similar to the decline of parenting over the past 50 years or so, wherein those who birthed children and began a family determined it was more important to “be their FRIEND,” rather than being the parent, the adult,  to their offspring providing the proper guidance and instruction. Providing DISCIPLINE REQUIRED.

The church is no different.

Desiring to be liked and accepted by the world rather than pleasing and acceptable unto God. The Father. Disobedient children believing they were the center, the power, rather than submitting to and obeying the Father. And His inerrant infallible instruction DAILY in our lives.

We were, are no different than that undisciplined brat in the store throwing a tantrum because the parent won’t buy them what they want, do what they want — and invariably the so-called parent relents and bows to the child allowing the child to rule and lead. Just as Scripture says it will be in the end times. You can look it up for something to do later on. It’s there. It really is. Right within the Word of God.

Only God our Father does not bow to us — we are to bow to Him!

A bunch of spoiled brats. Coddled and told they are the reason the sun rises in the morning. And they are the end all be all of everything The center of the universe. Undisciplined. Unrepentant. Sinners. Refusing the instruction of the Lord and His Word while contending they are part of the body of Christ!

Oh my, oh my, oh my the deceptions we permit, the lies we twist into perceived truth!

The only hope for America — not only the church within America — but for America is a sincere, repentant, humbled, turned to the whole Word of God, turned to God as Father, as obedient children of His, turned to the Lord Jesus Christ, turned to the Holy Spirit.

Otherwise?

There is no hope for the lost in need of salvation. There is no hope for those pretending to be Christians when they are indistinguishable from anyone in the world.

Otherwise, the fall of America and the American church, the rise of sin and evil within, and the swift coming of the Antichrist is swifter in coming.

We the people, the declared disciples of Jesus Christ, the professed children of God must repent of our sins and being lax, loving the world more than loving God and the Word. Repent of our wandering in the wilderness these many decades and return to the Bible, To Bible-reading, Bible-preaching, Bible-teaching, Bible-centered-believing, Biblical view lived lives!

The American church is like a drowned body in turbulent deadly powerful waters.

The Lifeguard is always on duty and prepared to save, to rescue, to revive.

But the drowning body must make itself known to the Lifeguard. The drowning body must desire to live, to be removed from the turbulent deadly waters attempting to kill them, push them under, and the body must shout out boldly, faithfully to the Lifeguard asking for help. Repenting of their foolishness in entering such deadly waters and not being prepared for what that meant. For venturing into areas they knew they ought not go. To accept false guidance and instruction as to it being okay to go into certain waters, “come on in, the waters fine, surely you won’t die…”

Heard that before somewhere? Perhaps read something similar before?

Call out. Seek the Lord. Allow the Lord, and His Spirit by its Supernatural power to save. To revive. But it takes work, effort on the part of the individual body comprising the whole body. Just as a hand without an arm and everything else attached and part of a complete body does nothing, is of no use, no good if just a hand without the body, the heart, the mind — the Head attached and the hand responding to the Head.

Ken Pullen

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2021

ACP — A Crooked Path

The American Church Must Be Revived!

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

By Buddy Smith

Reprinted from American Family Association

The church in America has been given a failing report card. In the book, Churchless, George Barna and David Kinnaman take a look at the rising population of adults who do not attend church. Based on two decades of Barna Group interviews with thousands of churchless men and women, the book outlines a profile of the unchurched and the cultural context that has led to the trend away from church. According to the Churchless data, “in the 1990s, 30% of the American population was unchurched. Today, two decades later, that percentage has risen to more than four in 10 Americans (43%).”

This report on the church in America looks even worse in stark contrast to Jesus’ memorable and final command to his followers that we refer to as the Great Commission:

I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20).

So, the current report card points to failure and will likely continue unless something dramatic happens. Christians today are not only losing ground to Jesus’ command to make disciples but the growing population of unchurched refuse to embrace our worldview and are growing more antagonistic to our beliefs about Jesus Christ. The friction is heating up between these opposite and competing worldviews by an antagonistic, progressive, and emboldened effort from popular culture to evangelize the church.

Is there an antidote to this failing report card for the church in America? The psalmist cried out to God with a similar question in Psalm 85:6, “Won’t you revive us again, so your people can rejoice in you?” In the formation of this question, the psalmist gives clear insight into the difference between a rejoicing, victorious church and a failing, defeated church. The difference between the two is found in the obedience quotient of the people of God to the command of Jesus.

Once when He was eating with the apostles, Jesus commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:4, 5). Many failures of the modern church are rooted in all the wonderful things we are doing for God without first doing what Jesus said in these verses. Without prayer and worship, we are without the Holy Spirit’s power to accomplish the Holy Spirit’s work.

And then came the day of Pentecost and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:3). This passage makes it clear that these men and women weren’t just prayerful and worshipful but they were filled with God Himself! They were supernaturally changed from the inside out by the power of God who subsequently breathed His breath of life into His people and the church was born. God wants to do that again for His church today. He wants His church revived; fully alive with Holy Spirit power like He gave the early church to boldly proclaim the gospel of His love. How long has it been in many of our churches since God moved in supernatural power? Jim Cymbala, in his book, Fresh Power, writes,

“The church cannot be the Church without the Holy Spirit empowering it… If we downgrade the Holy Spirit – worse yet, if we ignore him… and even worse than that, if we grieve or quench him – we end up with a modern Church that it totally foreign to the New Testament.”

One of my favorite descriptions of revival is the simple but sublime statement given by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones: Revival is the church returning to Pentecost. Whenever I think of the church returning to Pentecost there comes to mind a story of Billy Graham, who, as a young Youth for Christ evangelist, held a citywide tent crusade in Los Angeles, California, 1n 1949. Thousands of people came to Christ during that crusade, many of them Hollywood film stars. A minister of a liberal church in the city wrote in the local paper, “Billy Graham has put the church in Los Angeles back 100 years.” When he heard that, Billy Graham is said to have responded, “Oh dear – I was really trying to put it back 2000 years.”

The God who empowered the disciples is the same God who is waiting to empower us. Jim Cymbala says,

“God by his Spirit enabled ordinary men and women to do and say things beyond their natural abilities. There was no human explanation for what was taking place. This is the story, in one way or another, of every man, woman, or church that has ever been used in great ways for God’s glory.”

A.W. Pink said, “Most Christians expect little from God, ask little, and therefore receive little, and are content with little.” Leonard Ravenhill said, “If you are content to live without revival, you will.”

I, for one, am not content to live without revival. This is what I need most and what our churches need most today. I have set my heart toward God in prayer that He will come and revive His work in me as well as in the church. We must pray and work together, for His glory and honor, that the American church will regain its influence on both hearts and culture!