Promises, Promises

If you are like me, you are bombarded with issues every day that could cause you to begin to doubt your faith. Money problems, health problems, family problems, etc. can wreak havoc on your belief system.

Entering college or young adulthood is an especially difficult time in a persons faith walk. It really is the crucible that puts our belief system to the test. For the first time in life it is your choices that matter, your decisions that are paramount, not your parent's, teachers or anyone else's. You are now responsible for your life.

I've often stated that at some point we must reconcile what we actually believe about God and His Word. Either what he says is absolutely true or it's not - and yes I still believe in absolutes! This is that point in your life.

When we feel tempted to fall prey to our doubts, that's when it's more important than ever to praise God for His promises. After all, it's not really faith until it's tried under fire, is it?

If "death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Prov. 18:21) then we must train our tongue to speak life in every situation. Now don't get me wrong, I know that is much easier said than done, but so is learning to walk, talk or any of the other activities we do so naturally every day when we are mature. As we mature in our faith we will also learn to speak life, if we practice.

Do you believe God's Word and His promises are true? If you do, then boldly speak them as life into every area of your existence, especially when you are tried. If you fail, thank God for His grace and forgiveness and learn from it. Every child falls many times before learning to walk and occasionally after.

We build our faith by using it. Speak life! Do whatever it takes and muster the courage to believe what is true even if every circumstance around you says it's false. God cannot lie about who He is or what He can do. If He said it, then believe it!

What a Move of God Looks Like

I too was in the service with Nick at that powerful service Sunday Night at Southside Assembly in Batesville. I can’t tell you how marvelous the presence of God was and how much He spoke to me personally. At the XAMC service on Monday night a young man we had prayed for the week before came and had been born again on Sunday at another church. We are seeing some very exciting things!

I’ve been asked many times what revival or awakening looks like. While I am very much a student of revival I’m no expert; but I do have some thoughts about what awakening looks like.

It looks like anything that glorifies God above everything else, has people prompted by the Holy Spirit to pray for others, sees people born again and empowered by God to live holy and biblical lifestyles, and anything that couldn’t care less about denomination, personality, relevance, growth models, missions statements, numbers or who gets the credit.

Revival and awakening certainly must be concerned with good stewardship of what takes place and it can’t be unorganized and unsupervised, but I believe the reason we haven’t seen a culture changing move of God in more than thirty years in this country is perhaps because well intentioned believers get in God’s way too much. It doesn’t have to look like, feel like, behave like or grow like we think it should in order to be of God. In fact, it probably won’t!

So what does revival awakening look like? It looks like what we’ve been seeing at XAMC, at YIELD and at Southside Assembly. It looks like God’s people doing God’s business for God’s Kingdom. If that’s being done by three or three hundred thousand, it’s still a legitimate move of God.

Old Diaries

Romans 7:18

I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can't make myself do right. I want to, but I can't. NLT

I began transferring some diary entries from my old hard drive to my new computer this morning. They were from 2002 through 2005 and I stopped to read some of the things that were on my mind four or five years ago. It amazed me how little I have grown and how some of the same problems I was dealing with then are still issues in my life today.

When I first became a Chi Alpha Missionary in 1998/99 there was a song by Caedmon's Call called Thankful which talks about this very matter. We are absolutely incapable of doing anything good on our own. We are completely at the mercy of God for all our growth and development as believers and as human beings.

Look around. When was the last time you saw a genuinely good person whose life was not completely controlled by God? Even the best of people (and there are some with an appearance of goodness) with the best intentions will fail on their own every time. There are skeletons in every closet and a secret behind everyone’s closed doors. It’s only through the Messiah that anyone can be truly good.

In his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster points out that while we can’t become good on our own, we must place ourselves on the path to righteousness by adopting the great spiritual disciplines of believers throughout history. Our spiritual heroes practiced disciplines that caused us to be where goodness and godliness can happen in us.

As Foster describes in the book, “We must always remember that the path (the discipline) does not produce the change; it only places us where the change can occur.”

He speaks of the specific disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. As we practice these, (and we should) we must not think that they will make our walk with God easy or that all our problems will go away, but these disciplines are some things we can do in the process of God making us who and what we should be.

Don’t blow your potential and purpose and don’t quit because of frustration. I’m not the guy I was when I wrote those old diary entries even if I do still have some of the same problems. I realize that God, in His own sweet time, is doing a work that will someday make me who He created me to be. He’s doing the same in you!

Make Up Your Mind!

2 Timothy 1:12

…for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. KJV

At some point every person must choose what they believe about God and His Son Jesus. Once the decision to follow Jesus has been made, every believer must then choose what they believe about the miracles, promises and extraordinary life He calls his followers to. Sadly, too many believers have decided that the promises of the Bible are not true for them or for our time.

In XAMC and at YIELD Youth Ministries (the youth group Nick Nesler works with) we are constantly challenging our students to make up their minds about whether God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are still in the business of personally changing lives and performing miracles.

On Wednesday night June 6^th, Nick came to YIELD with a serious back and knee injury and was virtually unable to walk. After leading the students in over an hour of prayer for him I saw a miraculous healing right before my eyes and the entire youth group witnessed this as well.

Last night it was me who needed prayer after a day of unexplained sickness. I almost let our enemy Satan convince me that I needed to stay home but I went on, led worship and was healed while the students prayed for me.

XAMC and YIELD are both experiencing a powerful move of God. It doesn’t look like the quintessential revival service, but I’ve said for years that when God moved on His people again most believers wouldn’t recognize it and most believers around us don’t. It amazes me that we are experiencing such power and the mainstream church can’t even sense that anything is happening.

It’s time for us to make up our minds. Does God still do the miraculous or has He changed? Is His Word still truth or has it become impotent? Believe what you want, but as for me and a certain group of teenagers and college students, we know whom we have believed, and we are persuaded that he is able to keep that which we have committed unto him against that day. God is still God and we will not be persuaded otherwise!