You Can Come Along God, if you want

If we were all real honest, we would all admit that we move on without God at times. We decide our way, and if he would like to come along, he surely can. It is in this mindset that we get to a place where we are out there and we think he has led us, and truthfully, he has not. A couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of something that happened in the life of Moses that we can learn from. Look at his conversation with God below about never moving on without God...

12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

Moses confesses to God that he did not want to do anything if God was not going to be a part of it. Moses knew that walking to a place without God would not hold the life and the purpose God wants for us. Where do we really arrive at if God has not led you where you arrive? Do we really want to be at that place? Moses in his mind walks down the road of what arriving somewhere without God would be like and he wanted no part of it.

Q: Does a fear of this grip those in ministry today? Do we want God to lead so much that we will wait until he does lead? or Does our pride or pressure from the church get us to move to fast? Why do we plan more based on our creativity and very little through fasting and prayer? Why do we read the latest book first of the latest new speaker instead of getting in a closet with the Bible, pen, and notebook?

You see, Moses knew that God must be present and leading us or we will fail? Our mode of operation today is that huge numbers constitute success. Moses could have taken large numbers into the promised land, but without God. He wanted no part of it. Large numbers do not mean God has lead. So, what is it going to be for us? Do we want God's leading or what we can come up with?

Prosperity Gospel

I just watched something on Joel Osteen and listened to the message of how by just believing and being positive that God is going to bless so much in such a way that brings stuff and a comfort we have ever known.  I immediately thought of something the scripture records about the Apostle Paul and how this mindset would apply to his life.  Look at what he wrote of his life in 2 Corinthians 11:

23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food,in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.  

Did you see all the things Paul describes in these verses?  I wonder why  he could never believe enough to get to a place of comfort and ease.  What problems of faith Paul must have had!!  He ultimately is beheaded in Rome and never experienced the message of the prosperity gospel.  He must have never been able to figure out how to be positive enough to be free from trouble.  Obviously, based on the life of Paul, the prosperity gospel is shattered.

  We will never be free of trouble, and simply because it comes into our lives does not mean that some thing is wrong with us or that we do not have faith enough in God.  So, the ultimate question comes, was Paul prosperous?  I think he would say that he was, for to him knowing Christ was the ultimate experience and reality for him and everything else paled in comparison to that.  That is what is truly prosperous. 

Message to Men

We have now been back in the states for 1 year and one of the things that has become apparent to me is the void of spiritual men in our land.  I am referring to men who fight for injustice, truth, their family, who are servants, full of integrity, and are willing to lead their families instead of their wives.  This could very well be the real crisis of the church and why our culture has the issues that it has.

About 10 years ago, my grandfather gave me a book that had impacted him significantly during the middle part of his ministry years.  I have not looked at it in about 7 years until last night.  As I read some of it this morning, I was struck by the words from Leonard Ravenhill in his book "Meat for Men".  Read this quote from page 19.

"God hungry men find God.  As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so the souls of the Upper-Room crowd panted for the living God.  Spiritually naked, they fled to Him that they might be clothed upon with the blessed Spirit.  Empty, they craved to be filled.  Powerless, they tarried until they were endued.  Bankrupt and beggar-like, they pled the riches of His grace.  Then this fear-filled crowd became fire-filled messengers.  Though swordless, these soldiers of Christ fought the might of imperial Rome and won.  Though without ecclesiastical prestige, they opposed the frozen orthodoxy of sterile Judaism and pierced it to the heart.  Unlettered, they unblushingly declared the whole counsel of God and eventually staggered the intellectual Greeks.  Without question, the greatest need of this hour is that the Church shall meet her ascended Lord again, and get an enduement that would usher in the revival of revivals just before the night of nights settles over this age of incomparable corruption."

We need to become men as described above.  Our churches, communities, and nation need men who pant for God and who are empowered with God to win the cultural and spiritual battle we face right now.  Where are these men?  I want to be counted among them.  How about you?