• “We cannot grow in grace by withdrawing from others.”
  David Timms, Living the Lord’s Prayer

• “The greatest test of a servant is how you act when you are treated like one!”
  Sam Ward

• “Faith never knows where it is being led. But it knows and loves the one who is leading.”
  Oswald Chambers

• “Spiritual formation in Christ is the process by which one moves and is moved from self-worship to Christ-centered self-denial.”
  Dallas Willard

• “The more I think it over the more I feel there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
  Van Gogh

• “When the time comes to die, make sure all you have to do is die!”
  Jim Elliot

• “God doesn’t need your good works, your neighbor does.”
  Martin Luther

• “A gospel-centered disciple is a disciple whose center of gravity is neither community nor mission but a settled identity in Jesus.”
  Jonathan Dodson

• “A worshiper can work with an eternal quality in his work but a worker who doesn’t worship is only piling up wood.”
  A.W. Tozer”

• “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”
  Soren Kierkegaard

• “The mission is not to do my thing, or your thing, but to do our thing.”
  Mark Driscoll

• “Revival is when God gets so sick and tired of being misrepresented that He shows Himself.”
  Leonard Ravenhill

• “Great spirituality is what you do with your pain.”
  Richard Rohr

• “Don’t be leaning on a shovel and praying for a ditch. Work like an Arminian, sleep like a Calvinist.”
  John W. Bryson

Which speaks to you?

Could you add a tweet of you own?

Related articles

• Can You Tweet The Gospel? (pasturescott.org)
• Oswald Chambers (c.1874-1917) (lwharper.wordpress.com)

I think it would sound a lot like this:

Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear. I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks – masks that I am afraid to take off; and none of them are me.

Pretending is an art that is second nature to me, but don’t be fooled. F0r my sake, don’t be fooled. I give the impression that I am secure, that’s all is sunny and unruffled within me as well as without; that confidence is my name and coolness my game, that the water is calm and I am in command; and that I need no one. But don’t believe me, please. My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, my ever varying and ever concealing mask.

Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence. Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness. But I hide that. I don’t want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind – a nonchalant, sophisticated facade – to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows. But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation, and I know it. That is, if it’s followed by acceptance; if it’s followed by love.

It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self-built prison wall, from the barriers I so painstakingly erect. It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself – that I am really something…

Who am I, you may wonder. I am someone you know very well. I am every man you meet. I am every woman you meet. I am every child you meet. I am right in front of you. Please… love me.

Denis Waitley – Seeds of Greatness, pg 26-27

Yeah, I can hear the objections now.

I don’t claim this!

I won’t speak those lies over myself!

Okay. All right. Sorry I brought it up. Let’s paste on our piety one more week. Offer up one more hollow hallelujah and cardboard profile.  Another standard Hallmark greeting and stained-glass smile.

And cry and die a little more on the inside.

But…(I’m asking!)…what if?

What if the realest and safest place we could find on weekends was not the bar or the gym but our places of worship?

I do like my cave, but, granted, that last bit is quite unlike me. I have Baptistic roots but there are doors closed to me because of my ‘aberrant’ theology, and, likewise, I have not found a home among their polar opposites (I’m too Baptist I’m told). Ah, well, such is life. My wife quipped a few years ago that if I were the type of person to “play the game”, I would be set for life with meetings and denominational appointments. She followed that up by saying, “I respect you more because you don’t.”

She so completes me.

John-surnamed-Wesley was a fussy dresser, I’m told, always neat and fashionable without being conspicuous, starched to the gills and spotless. Hands soft and manicured, Wesley’s skin was probably sallowed from dwelling indoors by candle’s glow.

He’d heard of outdoor preaching but thought such was “almost a sin”** as it did not meet with the standards of Anglican piety. The party line reasoned that outdoor preachers  did so in violation of civil and canonical law. Those street preachers! How vexing and “uncouth”! If someone needed religion, it was required they come to the proper place.

All this before Aldersgate.

Until Aldersgate John was the typical minister of his day, interested primarily in maintenance and methodology (he never really departed from the latter), keeping the constituency enrolled as good Anglicans, filling his hours parsing the Greek and Latin texts, everything tidy and predictable. These, and straining to be holy enough.

Then, Aldersgate.

Thankfully, the Holy Spirit tampered with the diminutive priest (he stood barely five feet, six inches) and veered him away from idle religion. It took a failed ministry to the New World (Georgia, incidentally) to cause a downtrodden John to return to England where he would reevaluate his state of quo and not jibe with the man in the mirror. The perfunctory, finicky and methodical Wesley wound up at a meeting of Moravians in Aldersgate Street and learned for the first time he no longer needed to work his way to God by rigidly follow principles and being the best Anglican he could be.

He learned that salvation can be both instantaneous and processed and all the while have something known as the inner witness of the Spirit for complete assurance. He learned that Salvation and Rest and the Abiding Life are all listed together in the Thesaurus of Theology.

Aldersgate was like the release of pent-up, stifled air for the overstuffed, religious don. Aldersgate was the passing of religion and birthing of real living. For the first time in his 34 years, Wesley lay down for a nice long nap in Jesus’ pasture. So long Anglican-ism, hello Methodists.

There are two doors mentioned in Revelation that have everything to do with which side of Alders-gate we stand. One is a closed door (3:20) and has Jesus standing on the outside knocking.

Is anyone home? Will anyone invite me in?

The other door stands open (4:1) and invites those who respond to the call to see into the heavenlies. One door, being closed, forces Jesus to be part of what we are doing. If He comes late, or has to wait, so be it. We have our business to attend to. With or without Him.

The Second Door leads to a very wide room where choirs, thrones, angels, judgments, decrees, prayers, scrolls, horses, creatures, martyrs, armies, wedding parties and the Godhead fill the room. Through this door the Lord invites us to join Him.

Aldersgate is being freed from our safe caves of familiarity, self-effort, activity, striving, earning, doubt, and instability and ascending on eagles’ wings through a doorway into a vast cavernous place. I don’t quote from religious Elihu very often, but I like what he told Job: “Oh Job, don’t you see how God is wooing you from the jaws of danger–how He’s drawing you into wide open places…?” (Job 36:16) 

There’s a door we grudgingly open (or not), and a prodigious door that is already open, waiting for us, welcoming us, inviting us. Into His world. Which do you prefer?

I know which one John preferred.

So tell me about your Aldersgate.

****************************************

*The Letters of John Wesley, 1:286
**John Wesley: A Biography, by Stephen Tomkins

You can read/view more of his life here and understand why I and many others consider him a God-called voice crying in the wilderness, pleading with the church to awaken from her sleep.

Listen to these meaningful words of Pastor Wilkerson’s, written on Wednesday, the very day of the tragic car crash that took his life:

“To those going through the valley and shadow of death, hear this word: Weeping will last through some dark, awful nights and in that darkness you will soon hear the Father whisper, ‘I am with you. I cannot tell you why right now, but one day it will all make sense. You will see it was all part of My plan. It was no accident.”‘

The monthly newsletters recorded from his sermons, and always accompanied with a personal note to his readers, were rife with ‘right now’ words for me and I was always built up in my most holy faith from his challenges and encouragement.

I shall miss him.

We all will.

REVIVAL is a work of God among Christians bringing them to…

…conviction
         …repentance
                       …confession
                                     …restitution
                                                   …reconciliation
                                                                       …separation from the world

AND

…submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

(Vance Havner)

Closed quote.

If this is indeed what stipulates genuine revival…then…

(And I think you know where I am going with this)

Dare we not fall upon our faces right now? Confessing, Repenting, Mourning, and Getting off the Throne?

Should we not be appealing to God for kindness which leads to repentance?

Should we not be pining for a holy wind to stir the flames of passion within?

Is love abated?

Are the embers turning to ash?

He has charged us to buy gold, refined in the fire. What could this possibly mean? Remember, the Laodiceans boasted of their riches and self-sufficiency (Rev. 3:17). They arrogantly strutted atop the pedestal of prosperity, deceived by the wealth they rolled around in, seeing it as God’s favor all the while pushing Him to the outer margins of their existence. They blindly played at religion and made a good living at it.

Their All-Knowing Judge saw it differently:

“You stink with poverty.”

“Your Sunday best cannot hide your indulgences and adulteries.”

“You no longer look to Me and I have removed light from your eyes.”

“You’ve turned sour in My stomach.”

But there was grace even for them. Yeshua called them to seek—to ask for, to eagerly want!—a crisis in their fellowship. Such crisis as would lead to purity, transformation and a baptism of renewed Love! He said, “I counsel you to BUY FROM ME gold, refined by fire…” The word translated ‘counsel’ means to partner with, agree with…to come to the same conclusion! He’s telling them, in essence, There’s no other way…

But to trust and obey. 

“Buy from Me?” Just how was that possible? He had just told them they were POOR. With what currency could this transaction be completed?

You must let Me place you in the furnace.

No God, anything but that! we say.

It’s the only way, Child.

You will never learn to Love Me until all of self is abandoned. Until then, there will always be an obtrusive challenger for My affections… 

Now…

This is going to hurt…

But I love you too much to let you go away. Remember My promise to never leave you?

It’s still binding, even in this horrible, beautiful place.

I know the flames scare you. But those very flames are your freedom.

And you want to be free…

Don’t you?

–First century parable from the lips of Jesus

Long about noon on Saturday a father and son will meet in a giant bear hug far from the horizon that once separated them.  And Mom will be there too, just the right touch needed to make a three-corded strand.  Perceptive onlookers might catch a glimpse of something arcane and otherworldly in this simple tapestry: a family wrapped, cinched and secured in the keeping power of the Strong-Armed One.  I’d call that an unbreakable family bond.

The son is, at long last, coming home.  Gone will be the rags and fetters of the far country and, though the memories of depravity and hellishness will linger, the air will be gloriously cleared of the demons that enslaved and harrassed. 

I noticed a subtle nuance about that story this afternoon.  I found in my Bible, the NASB’s translation of Luke 15:32 to be, “this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live…”  The translators took the verb anazoo and made the distinction in it’s aorist tense that a process or action has begun that, if it continues, will certainly end in a completed action or effect. 

That’s pretty technical sounding so let me dumb it down for you and me.  When I have told others of our son’s return, I (a) do not refer to Graham as a “prodigal” because he no longer wears that moniker by the grace of our Lord, and (b) advise them not to expect our boy to exude an ethereal glow and matching halo.  The boy has begun to breathe again the new air of the liberty by which Christ has set him free.  He is just now beginning to lay hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of him. 

Like me (and you), he will not have “arrived”.  He might break our hearts again.  (I sure wish there was a verse 33 in that chapter so we could see how it plays out six weeks, six months or six years from the banquet!)  He might revert.  I pray not, for the scriptural phrase “a dog returning to its vomit” is not such a good thing.  It’s deadly, in fact. 

All we have is today. 

And 15:20.

And verse 32.

And that’s got Mom and me giddy from the word go.

And go we will.  To meet our son on a hillside of grace, restoration, reconciliation and…

JUBILEE!      

Finally, let me end with this captivating story found in Philip Yancey’s book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?  The details might not mirror ours exactly and while it is about a young girl rather than a teenaged boy, you’ll see why I’ve done it.

A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old- fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. “I hate you!” she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.

She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.

Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car–she calls him “Boss”– teaches her a few things that men like. She lives in a penthouse, and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.

She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline “Have you seen this child?” But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.

After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. “These days, we can’t mess around,” he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. “Sleeping” is the wrong word–a teenage girl at night in down town Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.

One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball.

God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, “Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.”

It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.

Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. “Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault; it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?” She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone in years.

The bus has been driving with the lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God.

When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, “Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here.” Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice. If they’re there.

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads “Welcome home!”

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, “Dad, I’m sorry. I know…”

He interrupts her. “Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home.”  

Here’s to new beginnings, new hope (thanks, New Hope Academy!) and 15:20. 

bou-lim-i-a [boo-lim-ee-uh, -lee-mee-uh, buh-] a serious eating disorder, characterized by compulsive overeating usually followed by self-induced vomiting or laxative or diuretic abuse, and is often accompanied by guilt and depression

Fallen, fallen, fallen
Is Babylon
Fallen, fallen, fallen
Is the City of Doom
The queen of every dark desire
Fallen by famine, plague and fire
Fallen is Babylon
Fallen is the City of Doom!
–Michael Card, City of Doom

We christians are something. We binge and purge our way through the world like a bunch of spiritual boulimics, pining for and dining on Egypt. Trouble is, Spirit doesn’t mix with Egypt and sonship and onions make a lethal cocktail. Mixing leeks and manna sours the stomach and fouls the breath, yet we say it is the way to stay relevant; so we pull up our chairs at the pub, get tipsy on Nile water, not as drunk as the pagan in the next stool mind you, but tipsy enough to coherently give ‘em the Romans Road in a bar ditty.

How ironic that we fight for things like blended worship to make everyone happy when there is a much more pathological issue of blended worship going on among those who name the name of Christ: Jesus said it was like trying to serve both “God and mammon” (you say mammon is money but it is really anything that steals our devotion from the Lord and thus opposes Christ). Light and dark. Egypt and the Promised Land. The broad road and the narrow road. Babylon and Zion. Manna and mammon.

Sadly, too many of us swallow Egyptian food then regurgitate it because, while we may like its taste, we don’t want the curse that goes along with it. Quoting from a friend, we’re “buying real estate on the Nile River” instead of packing our bags for the wilderness. We choke down leeks and onions along with our Passover Lamb even though the Death Angel is just down the street.

Let me tell you where all this ranting is coming from. It is on me. Me, I tell you! Although I am a saved man I confess I still dabble in Babylon. The other morning when I should have given the earliest hours to the Lord, it was more important to me to see to some other tasks and the Lord called me on it. And while we’re on the subject, Scott, he added, what’s the deal with you watching that stuff on TV last night? Do you enjoy sitting through a movie that curses My name?

I immediately fell into repentance and confessed to My Master that I can be such an ‘Egyptophile’. I said, Lord, the man You saved does not want or need the bells and whistles, comforts and conveniences, luxuries and bounty of this world. The man You saved wants YOU! He wants YOU at the loss of all other things this world has to offer. Babylon is fallen! Fallen! Why in heaven’s name would I want a world that has a life span?

My prayer to the Lord that morning continued (I often write my prayers to the Lord),

The man you saved is a violent warrior. He is looking ever and only to the Commander and seeks to please Him. He is faithful to Sandy, never looking at another. He is a Lover and a Leader. The man You saved is a friend to all and will freely give his shirt and coat to one in need—even though he has his own needs. The man You saved lives the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle. He isn’t entrusting his soul to a prayer he prayed or an aisle he walked but to the Person of Christ. He is a “Lord’s Prayer Man” not a “Sinner’s Prayer Man.” Thy Kingdom come, Lord, and let it come in me!

I know this man is alive, Lord, and every once in awhile I can actually see him. So why do I still feast at ‘Pharaoh’s Diner’? Why do I do it only to look in the mirror later and disgust myself? If this man, this saved man, can muscle up to the head of the line and punch the lights out of this other entity who passes himself off for me, I know he will never choose Egypt and its crap (‘scuse the language, used only for effect) because he knows, (a) it is never palatable, and (b) it is passing. This saved man will never forage for a half-eaten Wendy’s burger covered in maggots in some dumpster but will sell all he has for the Manna from heaven.

That’s what got me on this soap box today. I sincerely hope I didn’t needlessly offend you but every once in a blue moon I need a swift kick in the derriere to jolt me back into kingdom reality when I catch myself eyeing the green of Egypt. And I suspect you do too. So, c’mon, brothers and sisters, let’s stop the retching. The bags are all packed, the wilderness is calling, and the Lord is wooing us to our inheritance. Giants will fall. Kingdoms will perish. And we will not look back, by the grace of God, but forge ahead. What’s to miss, after all?

Someone please pass the manna…

So, what’s that I hear today?

*crickets*

Guess those anger management classes have worked wonders. Or perhaps we’ve all gotten sheepish after all those empty threats of showing the gas companies by not driving. If memory serves, our lust for the road didn’t downshift one iota, so we ate our crow and found that silence is the better virtue. Or maybe we just got conditioned to the frenetic oil market and what was once a crisis is now commonplace, redolent of the proverbial frog in a kettle. Mmmmm, yeah, a nice warm bath after a hard day…hey, do you smell something? Smells like chicken…

The church too has been conditioned by the elements around her and rather than jumping out of the fryer, she has gotten comfy in the nice warm liquid bubbling all around her. She’s made agreements and concessions with the world, looked the other way and sold bits and pieces of herself to the lowest bidders. And with each rising degree she adapts. She thinks she can win the world so long as she stands one half-step away from it even though she sloshes around in the same putrid waters the world splashed in just a half-step earlier.

“Stockholm Syndrome” has invaded the church. She has become sympathetic and friendly to the same world system that has abducted her and would see her die. The thing about “SS” is that while the abductee might become more friendly toward the captor, the captor remains just as determined to see his scheme through, never becoming amenable or sympathetic. The church is deceived into thinking her becoming more worldly will work to her advantage. (A note here: I’m talking about ‘church’ in the most general terms, not she who is the Bride, the wise virgin, the one wrapped in His Light)

In various parts of the world today, where the heat is the strongest against the church, 150,000 are martyred yearly. This is overt persecution. What we have in America today is another type of persecution altogether. It has been called “warm” persecution (as in the temperature slowly being raised and the church’s being oblivious to it until it is too late) or “passive” persecution, which elicited this comment from a visiting Chinese pastor who was eyewitness to the seductively damning culture of America, “It would be very difficult to stand for Christ in the face of such persecution.”

While America burns, the church is up in her palaces playing the fiddle with her eyes closed, not once taking into account that those same fires will soon consume her as well. It is clear the church is making no impact on modern society here in the west. Instead I have this peculiar picture in my head that the collective society, from media to man on the street, stands over the pot like diabolical schoolkids giggling at the frog. Poke him, Ernie, see if he jumps…no, no, turn the knob…higher!…higher!…

Or maybe they don’t notice us at all.

Five years ago, George Barna wrote, “It is quite astounding that although Protestant and Catholic churches have raised – and spent – close to one trillion dollars on domestic ministry during the past two decades, there has been no measurable increase in one of the expressed purposes of the church: to lead people to Christ and have them commit their lives to Him.” In 2005 his reporting showed that despite higher levels of creativity, glitzier marketing, savvier productions, cheekier technos and slicker services, spirituality has not deepened and our cities still puke out the fumes of the dark kingdom that rules over them.

And here we are, doing the backstroke, not feeling the burn. Hey, I ask you, my reader, is there hope? Is there not a cause? Is this thing salvageable? What is the application of all this for YOU? (hint, hint, I’m asking for comments)

beloved there is nothing more
no more blessings and no more rewards
than the treasure of my body and blood
given freely to all daughters and sons

–from Derek Webb’s Beloved

We are in perilous days, beloved. It is clear from acerbic toxins that are polluting our culture that Christianity is being targeted by postmodernists as an extremist religious outfit whose intent in America is to wreak havoc, threaten the “liberties” of society and kill any and all who get in its way. Think that’s too over-the-top? Trot on down to your local Border’s and look up some of these titles (and some are best-sellers!): American Fascists by Chris Hedges; American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips; The Baptizing of America by James Rudin, et al (see other titles in Brent Steeno’s alarming post here)

This tactic of the enemy parallels what was instigated in Rome during the first century when the “cult of Christianity” was subjected to close scrutiny and suspicion. They were seen as ‘counter-cultural’ because they refused to pledge allegiance to Caesar and were thereby added to the list of undesirables and insurgents. Each year, all Roman subjects were to enter a temple and pay homage to the emperor, declaring their undying support of the empire with the words, “kurios kaisar” (Caesar is Lord). But those heroic saints, called ‘christians’ (followers of Christ) as opposed to ‘caesareans’ (worshippers of the emperor), knew who the real enemy was.

Two words. The confession could be said so quickly and confessor could be done and out the door for the year. They could even be whispered so long as a temple attendant could hear and attest to it. Two simple words. What damage could such a diminutive phrase do? And yet, many bold faith-walkers would never cave.

Among a litany of heroic accounts, there is one about a mother who refused to engage herself in emperor worship. She was thrown in jail until she would confess. And to make sure she would, they put her newborn baby in a cell next to hers. All night long her hungry child cried and all night long the guards would plead with her to confess. “Just confess, lady. As soon as you do, you can get out and attend to your baby. Come on, just two words. Say them.” She wouldn’t and as the night wore on, her baby’s cries became hoarse and less frequent and in time, died away all together. Two words she would never say, even if it meant her child’s end, which, sadly, it did. The mother’s anguish did find solace when she too met her death in the jaws of hungry lions.

Would modern evangelicals stand under such a climate? Would I?

Forget Global Warming…there is a coming fire against the Church—and we’d best wake up. Let me make a statement here: since the church will not come under God’s authority to purify her, He is going to use the world to do it. We will call it ‘persecution’ but it will actually be judgment. Think not? Read 1 Peter 4:17. Go ahead, I dare you. I won’t even give you a link to it so as to weed out the scoffers from the true seekers of Truth.

There was a flowering garden planted among the cesspool that was first century Rome. Its blooms were peaceful, loving, sacrificial to one another and to their unbelieving neighbors, worked hard in their secular employ, obeyed their masters as unto Christ, rendered to Caesar, turned their cheek when slapped, when asked for a shirt they gave their coats as well, visited those in prison, fed the hungry, offered shelter to the homeless, touched lepers–and all the while, they were violently opposed to the Kingdom of Darkness and shook its foundations with their prayers.

With their prayers, mind you. In no instance were they to breathe out violence against any human counterpart. Never, no never, was it in their doctrine to impose and subjugate. Never would they even think of legislating righteousness solely for their benefit and ease but rather it was their conviction to live it out. These were the lion-hearted.  They stormed heaven with their prayers against the TRUE enemy, satan; and Heaven, in turn, sent a firestorm of retribution against the principalities and powers of the air. In short, Heaven opened up a can of…well, you know.

Today, the enemy is using the same tactics. While we sleep, he is sowing tares and plotting terrors against the Church. In the coming days, there will be all sort of heinous things said about the Church and many will start believing what is being reported. Very soon and critical mass will be reached and we will be seeing pastors sent to jail for preaching Truth. Strike the shepherds, and the sheep will scatter.

In the last days, there will be a great falling away. When judgment comes, who can stand? I am reading a lot of arrogance out there by men of God who brag on their hard preaching and expect the day will come when they will be carted off for it and they say, bring it on! It’s as if they want you to think have been recruited by Heaven to be its champion. Let’s check our pride. Let him that thinks he (will) stand, take heed lest he fall…The fight isn’t against flesh and blood, as hard as that will be; it is against devils and satan himself. And ultimately it’s against God who is a consuming fire.

Consider this a warning. Will you listen?

I am resolved no longer to linger
Charmed by the world’s delights
Things that are higher, things that are nobler
These have allured my sight!

I will hasten to him
Hasten so glad and free (Bass—me—oohh, sing it: Hasten so glad and free!)
Jesus, greatest, highest
I will come to Thee!*

One hundred and fifty years before that song pealed forth from the lungs of robust Baptists, Jonathan Edwards penned his own treatise of resolutions, a list of 70 things he was resolved to lay down, take up, and set forth to do**. These Resolutions were a dedication of himself to God—a giving up of himself, his rights and all that he had. Mr. Edwards went over this list each week with the Lord, allowing the Spirit to take inventory of his heart. Here are just a few:

LIVE A PURPOSEFUL LIFE

RESOLVED, never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, but what tends to the glory of God
RESOLVED, never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can.

LIVE A GROWING LIFE

RESOLVED, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find…myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.
RESOLVED, to strive every week to be brought higher (spiritually), and to a higher exercise of grace, than I was the week before.

LIVE AN EXAMINED LIFE

RESOLVED, to inquire every night, as I am going to bed, wherein I have been negligent—what sin I have committed—; also, at the end of every week, month, and year.
RESOLVED, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it.

LIVE A HUMBLE LIFE

RESOLVED, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings, as others.
RESOLVED,…all my life long, with the greatest openness of which I am capable, to declare my ways to God, and lay open my soul to him: all my sins, temptations, difficulties, sorrows, fears, hopes, desires, and every thing, and every circumstance.

LIVE A HOLY LIFE

RESOLVED, in narrations, never to speak any thing but the pure and simple [truth].
RESOLVED, never to give over, nor in the least to slacken, my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.

LIVE A CONSECRATED LIFE

RESOLVED, frequently to renew the dedication of myself to God.
RESOLVED, never, henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God’s.

LIVE IN LOVE

RESOLVED, never to do anything out of revenge.
RESOLVED, never to speak evil of anyone, so that it shall tend to his dishonor…
RESOLVED, to do always what I can toward making, maintaining and preserving peace.

LIVE IN LIGHT OF ETERNITY

RESOLVED, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.
RESOLVED, [that] I will act so, as I think I shall judge would have been best…when I come into the future world.

*entire hymn found here.
**for all 70 “Resolutions for Godly Living,” visit Nancy Leigh DeMoss’ website. Thanks to Life Actions Ministry’s “HeartCry: A Journal on Revival and Spiritual Awakening” for providing this piece (Issue 37: Winter 2007, pp59-61)