About three weeks ago I had a dream that a couple of people were coming to our house for prayer. But when I opened the front door a stream of people came in and kept coming…and coming. All different races of people. I wondered how they knew to come. They said
“We knew you’d be open!”
Our lounge was packed with people and I lifted up my hands and said “No social distancing here!”
The dream ended.
During the lockdown we had been doing a Bible study every morning and two others had been joining us via Messenger. So we just thought now we are “allowed” to have two people come to our house we will just invite them on a Sunday morning to continue this bible study, but now in person.
That was three weeks ago and every week more and more people have come on a Sunday. We have such a blessed time of worship, bible study, prayer and eat lunch together. Yesterday was beautiful. We had guys join us from a Christian halfway house, where they take in men who have come out of jail or rehab and give them a place to live and a job.
The Lord spoke to us about House of Saul versus House of David and the outcasts going to David in the cave at Adullum….
On Friday I said to the Lord “What is going on?” This home-Church thing seems to be taking off at our place FAST, like it’s almost out of our control.
we have literally just opened the doors and people have come.
He gave me this scripture in our family bible study and confirmed It the next day as I was reading the book “Anointed for Burial”
”Go and join this chariot” Acts 8:29
As my friend Tim Shey has said , I think we just need to follow the cloud at the moment guys.
Be willing to do things differently because suddenly all our plans have been interrupted. Like the old thing is dead now. We’ve got to just follow the Lord.
And as my other friend (and spiritual father) Bill Randles has said – the church needs to meet in flesh and blood.
“You tell me this”, said Shaz* as we sat over coffee, “You tell me: if there was a homeless person lying in the gutter, would it be a Christian or a druggie that stopped and helped him? It would be the druggie every time.”
The parable of the Good Samaritan came to mind. And I knew she was right.
I said “I agree with you Shaz.”
That stopped her for a second.
We had met for a coffee, but when we got there she refused to have one. Said she’s not paying that amount for a coffee. I offered to buy her one but she refused that as well. So I drank my coffee and she sat opposite me with nothing. Instead she had the sugar bowl. With a spoon she stirred and stirred as she spoke. The constant stirring was mesmerising and I had to tear my eyes away from it. Also it was easier than looking in to her tormented eyes the whole time.
But when I agreed with her, she stopped stirring for a second and said,
“Ha – we agree on something. What do we do now?”
Shaz’s and my relationship isn’t an easy one. To be honest, I have no idea how to handle her. And that’s something I constantly say to the Lord, believe me.
Before Shaz, I thought I was pretty experienced with all sorts of people. When we had our home church for the outcasts there were times where we had seven heroin addicts sitting around our table at once for lunch. We have had neo-nazi’s in our home, murderers, profoundly mentally disturbed people, lonely people, homeless ones, ice addicts, people I met while street preaching, whoever God sent. They were difficult and God always gave us grace for each one.
I first met Shaz in March. I preached at the homeless mission in the city and she was there. Full of anger, bitterness, hard, cold as anything, she told me what her father had done to her from a terribly young age. She asked me how God could forgive someone like that if he repented. And why would she want to go to a place (heaven) where that animal might possibly be? She spat at me that nobody has been able to help her, even Christians.
As I listened to her story my heart broke. And she was right too, I didn’t know how to help her. What the heck do I say to this woman who had been so wounded by the one who should have protected her? ‘Oh God’, I cried out in my heart, ‘help me! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to say to her.’
I didn’t know what to do, so I just put my arms around her little body, my head on her shoulder and cried. I sobbed. I said I am so, so sorry that this happened to you and I was. I cried and cried as she stood there silent, as stiff as a board while I wet her shoulder with my tears.
Then she moved away from me and I heard her swearing and cursing as she left. I said to God that I am sorry I failed. I couldn’t get through to her and I had no idea how to help her.
Two weeks later she was back at the mission.
She came over to me and said roughly, “the compassion you showed me that other night saved my life. I was going to go home and neck myself but after I met you I didn’t want to anymore.”
Then she swore and cursed Christians and left.
And pretty much that has been our relationship since. She clings to me, she pushes me away. She seeks me out, she runs and hides. Like a puppy who’s been abused and is scared of being hurt again. One time she came up behind me at the mission and hugged me. She literally clung to me. The anointing and love of the Holy Spirit came upon me so strongly that I just cried and prayed in tongues while I hugged her back. And she clung and clung. Then she ran out of the building.
As we sat at coffee that morning she cursed and called me a hypocrite. Everything I said to her was wrong, and she told me off the whole time. It was exhausting.
I left feeling like I had failed, yet there was an inexplicable joy in my spirit.
Two days later in the mail I got a card from Shaz in child-like, painstakingly neat handwriting saying that she can’t tell me this to my face but I am the only true friend she has ever had and that she loves me.
She said she doesn’t know how to be with “normal” people and that is why she hangs out with the street-people.
I cry for these ones. These ones who haven’t known love.
Not long after this we visited a local Baptist church, a good and decent church we sometimes go to. The pastor explained that they want to build a bigger auditorium to be able to seat more people at once to cut down on the number of services over weekends. To do this they are raising $2 million to replace the perfectly good auditorium they already have. I looked around and I knew that they would get that $2 million.
Much of what is missing in the organized Church today is the work, or move, of the Holy Spirit.
We totally underestimate the Spirit of God and what He can do if we let Him.
We have over- organized and created programs for this and that instead of seeking God and letting Him lead by His Spirit.
God has a will, an opinion, a way but we don’t even recognize that fact anymore.
I often feel like the organized church is a slave mill: keeping people over- busy, working them in to the ground, churning out program after program- and what for? “There is a way that seems right to man but the end of it is death”.
God Himself has a way. It is by His Spirit. It is the centrality of Christ. The Spirit of God when He is working will always point to and exalt Jesus Christ. If Christ is not center, if He’s not there, then it is a work of the flesh. Get rid of it! Stop wasting everyone’s time, repent and seek God’s face.
We often use this scripture “Behold,I stand at the door and knock.If anyone hears My voice and opens the door,I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” (Rev 3:20) as an evangelistic tool. But it’s not. Jesus said this to the CHURCH in Laodicea. He was outside the church. Pushed outside His own church because He wasn’t needed anymore, “we have a program”!!
You can be enthusiastic without being anointed. Don’t confuse the two.
God pours His Spirit out where Christ Jesus is exalted.
If someone gets up to preach and exalts himself- no matter how inspiring the message, no matter how much he has done for the Lord- rather than exalting Christ , then that is not of the Holy Spirit.
It is always the flesh versus the Spirit. Flesh will exalt Self. The Spirit will exalt Christ.
There is a trend to put down doctrinal truth nowadays – ‘God is not doctrine, He is bigger than that’. Let’s just talk about experiences.
Yes there is absolutely a place for sharing testimonies and stories about what God has done or is doing.
The problem is when doctrinal truth is thrown away then so is the exaltation of Christ. It becomes all about Self. My experience, my exploits. Me, me, me. Thus there is no witness and no anointing of the Spirit. Give me a person who knows the Word of God, and thus the God of the Word, any day over someone who is simply enthusiastic about what they’re going to do for the kingdom.
You will find that it is the one who seriously and deeply seeks the God of the Word, who it is that really knows Him and that that is the one that shall be strong and do exploits.
When God calls someone to His service He begins by dealing with them in secret.
In a hidden place is where our ministry for God begins. Secretly, just you and Him, hidden away together. Like a lovers’ tryst. We meet with Him in the secret place and we tell Him all that’s in our hearts, our worries, our sins, our thoughts, our hopes and dreams. And He speaks to us, He shows us things, meets with us. It is in the secret place that He does His deepest work in us. When we meet with Him there is nothing He cannot do, for we willingly offer ourselves to Him, simply in the deliberate act of going to spend time with Him. Healing, deliverance, forgiveness, joy, cleansing, calling, commissioning, authority, anointing are all available in the secret closet of prayer.
Written on my heart in and in my spirit are the special times I have spent with the Lord in prayer, times that I will never forget.
It is where I got to know Jesus. My prayer closet used to be in my living room on the rug after everyone else had gone to bed. I remember one day in the sunshine I looked at that rug and was amazed to discover it was covered with many little dots all over it. At first I wondered what the circles could be. Suddenly I realised they were my teardrops, shed over many years in the presence of the Lord on that rug.
That rug was the first place I met the Lord and was broken under the weight of my sin. The rug was where He kept calling me and drawing me back to, like the beloved in the Song of Songs. I had young kids at the time and I remember through the exhaustion of days with toddlers I would long to get to night-time just so I could meet with Him again.
The Principle
The prayer closet was where Christ called me, commissioned me and got me to preach to Him the first time. He told me to begin the food pantry from our garage which lasted 8 years and springing off from that a prayer meeting was borne, a home fellowship began and people were saved.
That was my training ground. It was years of apprenticeship before my life’s work began. The secret place was where it all really begun, yet the fruit spread out in the open and things began to happen.
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in Secret shall reward thee openly” (Matthew 6:5-6).
When something is birthed in the Spirit in the secret-ness of prayer, then it is a true work of God and it will start to move out in to the open without our having to force it.
God said to Elijah, after he proclaimed a drought in Israel to evil King Ahab
“‘Get away from here and turn eastward, and hide thyself by the Brook Cherith…’ ” 1 Kings 17:1-3
Go hide thyself. Just you and me. And thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly… God had more work to do in Elijah before He would send him out for the huge victory at Mount Carmel. He had to be made ready, sharpened and polished for his work.
The Fruit
It was “after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah….saying “Go show thyself…” 1 Kings 18:1
When it was time and God had finished His preparatory work in Elijah then he was sent out from the Lord’s presence.
A true prophet, (one who speaks for God), has been with the Lord, spent time in His presence before he/she goes out and speaks to man on God’s behalf. And Elijah carried out from the Lord’s presence a word from God. It was to tell Ahab that “I will send rain on the earth.” 2 Kings 18:1
“…a man who kneels before God will stand before men.” Leonard Ravenhill
If we want to truly minister then it begins in secret, just you and God. When it is time, He will send you out to carry His Word to others and you will begin to bear fruit for Him.
You see it comes down to this: from where does it originate?
You want to work for God? From Where does your work originate: heaven or earth?
One is the heart of God, planned in the counsels of heaven and revealed and birthed through the Holy Spirit in His Church on earth. When the Spirit works through the Church eternal fruit is brought forth.
The other is the arm of flesh. Man looks around at the needs of man on earth or in the Church-system and plans what he can do to help. But there’s no divine imprint on it and it will be dead works because it originated on earth rather than in heaven.
This principle also applies to Moses, Christ Jesus and the Apostle Paul. All were dealt with secretly for years before God sent them forth on their divine missions. We are often in a hurry but God is not. God is after fruit that will last and He will spend much time and energy in preparing His servants for His work, after all the testimony of Christ on this earth is a stake! Let us seek God Himself in secret, and from that place of living relationship He will reward us openly.
Sensitivity to the Spirit of God is driven primarily by being able to hear Him.
“The Lord God has given Me
source: catechismway.blogspot.com
The tongue of the learned,
That I should know how to speak
A word in season to him who is weary.
He awakens Me morning by morning,
He awakens My ear
To hear as the learned” Isaiah 50:4
Again, sensitivity to the Spirit of God is driven primarily by being able to hear Him.
“He awakens my ear to hear as the learned”
This hearing happens within our spirit. This can be sometimes channelled through our physical ear as we listen to a sermon, or someone gives us an encouraging Word, but not always. But it is always through our human spirit.
What do I mean by our human spirit? When we are followers of Christ, His Holy Spirit comes to dwell in our human spirit and quickens (or makes alive) that inner part of us which was previously dead through trespass and sin. With our spirit now alive to the Lord and His Spirit dwelling within us we have the ability to hear His voice.
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” John 10:27
Whether we hear a sermon, read something or feel a prompting in the spirit, we know it is of the Spirit of God when it bears witness with our spirit.
Sometimes you may listen to a whole sermon and nothing registers in your spirit. It could be an intellectual masterpiece, or it could stir our emotions, but if it doesn’t penetrate through the realm of our soul and into the spirit it is simply the flesh and profits us nothing spiritually. Another time you may hear a couple of words, a line of a song, read one verse and your spirit suddenly jumps. You know like you know that that is a Word for you. That is the Holy Spirit speaking, bearing witness to your spirit.
When that happens we need to slow down and listen. We need to allow it to really sink in and take root in our hearts because the Spirit of God is trying to tell us something. We need to wait on God. But even more than that, we need to be so intimate with Jesus that we are constantly in a pose of listening to Him. Remember Mary sitting at His feet… We are with Him where He is so that when He speaks a Word, or wants us to do something we are so close to Him that we know like we know immediately.
“He who has ears to hear let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches”
Jesus said something similar to this multiple times through the gospels and also repeatedly to the churches at the beginning of Revelation. Since He repeated this phrase so often there must be a reason for it.
Hearing in the Spirit Leads to Speaking Forth in the Spirit
Notice in Isaiah 50:4 it says “The Lord God has given Me The tongue of the learned, That I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary…”
The hearing in the spirit and the speaking forth of a word in season to those around us are connected. How do we speak forth with the tongue of the learned into people’s lives in order to minister and be a blessing? By having our ears awakened to hear as the learned! We need to hear from Him first or else we will have nothing to offer others.
The deaf-mute man whom Jesus healed in Mark 7 is a picture to us. This man could not hear, thus he could not speak. Jesus first touched the deafened ears, then spat and touched his tongue.
“Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly.” Mark 7:34,35
Are you wondering why you have nothing to give others? Do you not know what to say when someone comes to you for help? Do you feel like you have failed them?
You need your ears opened by the Lord. Go wait on Him. Confess your need, confess your desire to be able to feed others with the Word and ask Him to open your ears to the Spirit. Then when He tells you to do/say something, do it. Prompt obedience to the Lord is a sure-fire way He will keep speaking to us.
“Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass” Psalm 37:5
The word “commit” here literally means to “roll off or away”.
It is applied in this instance to things that are “a) round, globular or rolling, such as a wheel or dung” and “b) heavy – such as would be rolled and not carried ,ie a large stone”. (Strong’s concordance)
It is the same word that is used in Joshua 5:9
“Then the Lord said to Joshua ‘This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.’”
So when Psalm 37:5 says to “Commit your way to the Lord” it is literally saying to “roll upon Jehovah thy way”.
In the Hebrew it is not just to roll off your burdens, but to roll them off onto another, to transfer them.
When we have a burden, a fear or a difficult situation the Word of God tells us to roll it off onto the Lord.
Let us commit all our concerns to God, entrusting them to Him, our loving Heavenly Father, knowing that He is working together all things for the good for us.
On Saturday night I preached at an inner-city mission. And praise the Lord a prostitute was saved!
After all these years of street-preaching and never being invited to preach anywhere, I have actually been invited to preach monthly at this inner city Mission for the homeless and disadvantaged.
The thing is I don’t know how to do “normal” preaching. I can’t get three points and then a conclusion and stand behind a pulpit.
As part of my Chaplaincy course I’ve just been reading an essay on how to be an “Effective Communicator” as a preacher. Even though this article does make some valid points, I find it rather sad that it is all about how to get your points across, how to make sure the audience remembers what you’ve said, how to be an effective communicator etc etc.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t seem to come into it at all – it’s all fleshly business-speak. In these days of downloadable sermons and effective sound-bytes there is a need for anointed preaching again. For goodness sake let’s get back to the power of the Holy Spirit! So here’s my “how-to” list to preach in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Preaching in the Spirit
Be in an intimate relationship with Jesus. If you’re not, then please don’t preach. Really.
Be constantly in the Word. It just needs to be a part of you.
Check your heart. If there’s anything between you and God deal with it immediately.
Cry. Yes, weep. This is hugely important. Weeping is the key to the anointing. This is something that cannot be forced, so ask God to break you for the sins of the people you will be preaching to. Preaching should ALWAYS come from a place of brokenness but it usually never does, and that’s why power in preaching is so rare these days.
Ask Him for His heart, for His burden, for what He wants to say. Even if you only get one scripture from Him it is enough. It is better to preach that one verse for 5 minutes if it’s from His heart than to preach for 30 minutes from your flesh.
Yield yourself to Him and His will. Ask Him to have His way in you and for you to be a vessel for Him.
Pray before you go: For Him to fill you with His Spirit; for the people’s hearts to be prepared; for the Spirit to preach through you right into the spiritual realm. You will need to resist the devil – all his methods, his agents, his interruptions, anything he would seek to do to disrupt or interfere with God’s message being delivered.
Cry again.
Thank God for the victory we have in Christ Jesus.
Go in Holy Ghost boldness, knowing it’s not about you, but about Him.
I preached Isaiah 1:18 on Saturday night: “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
The Holy Spirit had impressed upon me that it was all about being honest with God, calling a sin a sin. So that’s what I preached. Afterwards there was a time of ministry and the prostitute came to me and we cried together and she was saved, praise the Lord. The pastor said at the end of the night that there had been a shift in the Spirit tonight, that there was a new honesty and people were being real.
And that’s the point: a shift in the spiritual realm. T Austin Sparks called it “preaching to the back of things.”
Preaching to the flesh is a waste of time. The flesh cannot receive the things of the Spirit. People may feel inspired in the emotional realm for a while, but nothing changes. No, we must preach to the back of things. We preach to the angels, the devils, to the spirit of man, to Christ Himself. And that’s when things happen.
I’m happy to answer any questions about this article!
Jesus said that we are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. As society continues on its rapid descent into darkness the church is called to be salt in the earth, a preserver from evil. But we also are to be a light in the darkness – a place to where people are drawn away from evil and unto good. The thing is, because this world, its value systems and philosophies, is so quickly changing into a post-Christian mind-set, Christians are often seen as the enemy rather than the light. We are the enemies of progress, enemies of other religions, enemies of certain groups of people, such as homosexuals.
Is this right? Should this be the case?
Today Christians have to contend with issues that were never mainstream issues years or decades ago in a society based on Christian values. Today we are post-modern and post-objective truth. Thus what was unacceptable years ago – adultery, fornication, porn, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, occult practices – is now acceptable. It even may be argued that we have gone beyond mere acceptance and that these practices are now actively promoted.
In response to the post-Christian world around us one tends to find that Christians generally go one of two ways: They either accept society’s evolving standards, deny the truth, and be perceived as loving, (the “light”), in order to try to save some; or they go the other way and become so angry at the changing world and the fact that other Christians have denied the truth that they dismiss grace and preach the truth but with no love (the “salt”).
The thing is, we need to be both light and salt. We need to find the balance of grace and truth.
Okay, so this is what I can make of it: We absolutely, resolutely need to remain faithful to the truth of God’s Word. To change His Word, to dismiss parts of it, to pick and choose the easy bits is just not an option. What this world needs more than ever is clear, decisive, objective truth. As this world is decaying we need to be the salt that slows the corruption. We need to either take all of His Word or none of it. We can’t have it both ways. We need to be resolved because we will be tested on this time and again. Know that if you are going to stand by the truth of God’s Word then at times you will be perceived as sounding harsh, unloving, intolerant. For a Christian to just simply speak the truth now is an act of hate. And here’s the worst bit: Most Christians feel the same. (Generally speaking) Christians now, rather than denouncing the sinful acts, denounce the preacher who is denouncing the sinful acts.
But…..and this is a big BUT…. It all comes down to the state of our heart. As Christians we need to understand this. There is no point preaching the truth, or trying to live by the truth of God’s Word if our heart is not right.
I have seen preachers, street-preachers, Christians who seem to hate the people they are trying to save. They are so angry at them. They yell, they point their fingers at them. “It’s God righteous anger” they say. Well, maybe it is, but let me ask you this: are you so full of the Holy Spirit that you are absolutely, positively sure it is God’s anger and not your own that you’re venting?
Are we angry at our son, our daughter, our sister, our friend because of their sin? Because they haven’t done what we want them to do? Are we angry at the world for changing around us?
As we stand for the truth are we full of spiritual pride because we are right and they are wrong?
Have we let a religious or a legalistic spirit take hold of us?
Listen my friends, this is really important as we stand for the truth of God’s Word. Because sinners know. They know I tell you. They know if you hate them. They know if you are angry. THEY know if your heart is not right.
They know the anointing of the Holy Spirit too. They don’t know what to call it but they see it and feel it.
They feel the difference between someone who is telling them the truth because the love of God constrains them to and someone who is telling them the truth because they have a religious spirit.
God sent me two homosexuals the very first night I street-preached. These two young men mocked me at first, they kissed in front of me (shock horror!), they laughed at me. But God loved those boys. His love shone through me to them and they stayed with me for one and a half hours. I told them the truth. I told them what they are doing is an abomination to God. Yes I used those words, but not in anger or contempt, and God’s love held them fast. I shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with them. At the end we all hugged, cried and I prayed for them. One fell to the ground crying, the other clutched his chest and begged me to stop praying. Six years later I am still in touch with the one who fell to the ground. He calls me his favourite Christian. He calls on me for help when he needs it and when he does I still speak the truth to him in love. I am believing that he will be saved one day.
The thing with grace and truth is that people in the world need the truth, oh how they are starving for it! And they need the grace of God to temper it. It is speaking the truth in love that makes the difference. It is the truth that sets people free. Not one person will be truly saved by a gospel that’s been sanctioned by this world. But not one person will be saved by speaking the truth in hate.
Let’s get our hearts right before our King and be full of His Spirit. Then His light shining through us will attract others to us so that we can speak the truth to them in love.
This is what the Lord put in my spirit two weeks ago during a 7 day fast.
I asked the Lord what He meant.
He said 7 x 7 years = 49, the 50th year is the Jubilee.
We know that since Christ died about 2000 years ago, each year has been a Jubilee year in the spiritual sense. Captives have been set free every year since then. He paid the debt at Calvary for our sins and “…wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:14).
But as well as in the spiritual sense, 2016 is an actual physical Jubilee year.
God had said to the Israelites “Six years you shall sow your field and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather its fruits, but in the seventh year that shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard.” Leviticus 25:3,4
The seventh year was a year of rest for the land. And the Jubilee came at the end of 7 x 7 years, in the 50th year.
“And you shall count seven Sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven Sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for your and each of you shall return to his possession and each of you shall return to this family. That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you.” Leviticus 25:10-11 (emphasis mine)
The Year of Jubilee was the year when all the captives were set free and each returned to his family. Israelites whom had gone into slavery because of debt, were released. Israelites whom had lost their inherited land through debt received their land again in restoration.
The Year of Jubilee is a year of restoration. A Year when captives are set free, when each person returns to his family. A year of the prodigals returning.
watercolour, pencil, conte on board
The Holy Spirit then spoke to me clearly and definitely: “Go after them. Go after them”
Blow the Trumpet in Zion conte crayons, pencil
Twice He said to go after them. Just as David went after his family when the enemy, the Amalekites had stolen them. Just as he pursued his enemies and overtook them, neither did he turn back again till they were destroyed (see Psalm 18:37), so we must too go after our loved ones. We must too pursue the enemy, bind the strong man of rebellion whom is holding our family captive and in the Name of Jesus, set them free!
It is significant that the Jubilee was proclaimed on the Day of Atonement when the trumpet sounded. The Day of Atonement was a day once a year when the Israelites’ national sin was purged. Although the Day of Atonement is yet to be fulfilled for Israel as a nation, Jesus Christ has fulfilled the Day of Atonement with his atoning death at the cross for every individual who will come to Him in repentance and faith.
Through the atoning death of our Saviour Jesus Christ there is still mercy available. Let us no longer look at our family and friends and think they’ve gone too far now to ever turn back. Let us not play their sins and failures over and again in our minds. Let us instead be as David, and as the Son of David and pursue them in faith.
Jesus came all the way from heaven to earth to seek and save that one lost sheep. (Luke 15) He seeks after that which is lost. Just as that woman kept sweeping her house until she found that one last, lost silver coin, (remember that silver = redemption in God’s Word), so we must too not give up hope for our children, our grandchildren, our parents our friend. So we must in the power of the Holy Spirit, go after our loved ones in prayer, in fasting, in spiritual warfare until we catch that first glimpse of them on the horizon, turning their backs on their sin and filth and returning to their Father’s house.
And one last thing… as our prodigals return home, as we see them coming, let us prepare our hearts to receive them.
Let us not be as the elder brother. Let us not remind them of how they’ve sinned against us and let us down. Let us not keep reminding them of their sin, but instead let us be as the Father, full of love and compassion, full of rejoicing that they’ve returned. Let them repent. Let them come.
This must sound self-evident, but consider for a moment. What if that one person who has hurt you the most, the one who has betrayed you, let you down over and again, what if that one came back to you? How would you respond? God forbid that just as our prodigals take that first tentative step to return we should chase them away with the rod of bitterness or unforgiveness or anger.
So:
List your prodigals, even the ones you’ve given up on
Ask God for scriptures to pray for each one
Go after them in the power of the Spirit
Prepare your heart to receive them when they return
Hosea 6:5: "Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth."
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