As our church prepared for our Missions Sunday, the Spirit of the LORD stirred my heart to bring a message of challenge to our congregation about what the people of our culture really need.
If goes without saying that people need the LORD. But over 40% of our society have never had an adequate presentation of Jesus. So the message to our church was wrapped up in four simple truths;
People need an audience with the Holy Ghost. Jesus said He would send another comforter and that when "He" comes (speaking of the Holy Spirit), "He" would lead and guide us and teach us. But more importantly, "He" would convict the world of sin. The only way people can come to the knowledge of their need of a Savior is through the witness of the Holy Ghost. Therefore;
People Need to Feel The Holy Spirit's Presence In Our Churches. The biggest assault on the modern church is we have become so good at "doing church" that many feel as though we no longer need the Holy Spirit moving in the church. In essence we have programmed the Holy Spirit right out of the church service, with the exception of reaching one or two sinners at the end of "our" services. The tragedy of it all is, if the Holy Spirit is not free to move and stir hearts and set people free, then people will walk into our churches bound by the strongholds of sin and they will walk right back out the doors of the church completely unchanged and then the church will have lost it's relevance.
People Need To Feel The Holy Spirit In Our Lives. We are supposed to be the physical representation of the Holy Ghost in a dark and sinful world. As Spirit-filled believers, people ought to sense there is something different about us. When Moses had spent time in God's presence, his countenance was changed. If people cannot tell any difference in us from the next person, how will they see Jesus in us. We are supposed to be the salt and light of the earth. Salt and light affect their surroundings and as a Spirit-filled believer, we should as well.
People Need to Feel The Holy Spirit Where They Are. If we keep the message of hope and peace to ourselves and keep the work of the Holy Spirit sequestered away within the four walls of our churches, the world will fail to have the witness of the Spirit. Statistics have shown that people are not flocking to the churches therefore we must take the Holy Spirit with us to where they are.
The bottom line is, people need an audience with the Holy Ghost before they will ever feel conviction for their sins and before they will even know they are in need of a Savior.
What are we doing about that?
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Relying On The Power of Prayer
The Holy Spirit has certainly stirred my heart regarding the Days of Harvest for this year. We started the year with a week of prayer and thi spast Wednesday night I shared a message that the Spirit stirred my heart about and I felt it was worthy to repeat in this blog.
We've all heard messages and sermons about prayer and the importance of prayer, the only thing we are lacking is praying.
I say that because prayer is more than just words. Prayer is one on one communion in the presence of our Creator. Having said that some points the Spirit quickened me about are;
1) We cannot pray effectively unless we have a desire to pray! Simply put, if we do not have a desire to be in our Creator's presence, then we will not pray. Oh we may bring a wish list from time to time but I'm talking about "being in His presence.' You see our desire for prayer will be birthed out of our desire to be in His presence, not just to bring a wish list.
2) We cannot pray effectively without the help of the Spirit! We need the mind of the Spirit because sometimes we do not know how to pray and the Spirit can pray through is in our prayer language. If you want to pray effectively then pray "in the Spirit." Use your prayer language. Some call it "tongues" but it is simply a prayer language and when you pray in that way the Apostle Paul says our spirit is speaking mysteries to God.
3) We cannot pray effectively unless we allow ourselves to be broken! I'm not necessarily talking about tears, although I have experienced God so real that way, but what I am talking about is having our pride broken. Pride will keep us from having a desire to move into our Creator's presence because in His presence our pride will be exposed. We have to allow that human pride to be broken and recognize we need our God engaged in our lives.
4)We cannot have the power without the Spirit and we cannot have the Spirit without prayer! If you want power in your prayer, then you need to seek the Baptism of the Holy Ghost that Jesus spoke about in Act 1:8. The early disciples received this infilling on the Day of Pentecost and they were refilled a few days later and the Gentiles were filled, with the evidence of speaking in other tongues some 8 years later in Cornelius's house and some believers in Ephesus received the same experience another 8 years after that. This experience is still available to you and I and it will give you power in your prayer. But you have to get into His presence in prayer and He will not withhold anything good from His children.
We've all heard messages and sermons about prayer and the importance of prayer, the only thing we are lacking is praying.
I say that because prayer is more than just words. Prayer is one on one communion in the presence of our Creator. Having said that some points the Spirit quickened me about are;
1) We cannot pray effectively unless we have a desire to pray! Simply put, if we do not have a desire to be in our Creator's presence, then we will not pray. Oh we may bring a wish list from time to time but I'm talking about "being in His presence.' You see our desire for prayer will be birthed out of our desire to be in His presence, not just to bring a wish list.
2) We cannot pray effectively without the help of the Spirit! We need the mind of the Spirit because sometimes we do not know how to pray and the Spirit can pray through is in our prayer language. If you want to pray effectively then pray "in the Spirit." Use your prayer language. Some call it "tongues" but it is simply a prayer language and when you pray in that way the Apostle Paul says our spirit is speaking mysteries to God.
3) We cannot pray effectively unless we allow ourselves to be broken! I'm not necessarily talking about tears, although I have experienced God so real that way, but what I am talking about is having our pride broken. Pride will keep us from having a desire to move into our Creator's presence because in His presence our pride will be exposed. We have to allow that human pride to be broken and recognize we need our God engaged in our lives.
4)We cannot have the power without the Spirit and we cannot have the Spirit without prayer! If you want power in your prayer, then you need to seek the Baptism of the Holy Ghost that Jesus spoke about in Act 1:8. The early disciples received this infilling on the Day of Pentecost and they were refilled a few days later and the Gentiles were filled, with the evidence of speaking in other tongues some 8 years later in Cornelius's house and some believers in Ephesus received the same experience another 8 years after that. This experience is still available to you and I and it will give you power in your prayer. But you have to get into His presence in prayer and He will not withhold anything good from His children.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
