David Wilkerson - A Call to Anguish

And I look at the whole religious scene today and all I see are inventions and ministries of man and fleh. It's mostly powerless, it has no impact on the world.

And I see more of the world coming into the church and impacting the church rather than the church impacting the world. I see music taking over the house of God, I see entertainment taking over the house of God. Obsess with entertainment in God's house, a hatred of correction and a hatred of reproof. Nobody wants to hear it anymore!

Whatever happened to anguish in the House of God?

Whatever happened to anguish in the ministry?

It's a word you don't hear in this pampered age.

You don't hear it.

Anguish means extreme pain and distress. The emotions so stirred that it becomes painful. Acute deeply felt inner pain because of conditions about you, in you, or around you.

Anguish!

Deep pain!

Deep sorrow!

Agony of God's heart!

We've held onto our religious rhetoric and our revival talk but we've become so passive.

All true passion is born out of anguish. All true passion for Christ comes out of a baptism of anguish.

You search the scripture and you'll find that when God determined to recover a ruined situation he would share his own anguish, for what God saw happening to his church and to his people.

And He would find a praying man and he would take that man and literally baptize him in anguish.

You find it in the book of Nehemiah. Jerusalem is in ruins.

How is God going to deal with this? How is God going to restore the ruin?

Nehemiah was not a preacher, he was a career man.

This was a praying man. And God found a man who would not just have a flash of emotion, not just some great sudden burst of concern and then let it die. He said "No. I broke down and I wept and I morned and I fasted. Then I began to pray night and day."

Why didn't these other men have an answer. Why didn't God use them in restoration? Why didn't they have a word? Because there was no sign of anguish! No weeping! Not a word of prayer!

It's all ruin!

Does it matter to you today?

Does it matter to you at all that God's spiritual Jerusalem, the church, is now married to the world?

That there is such a coldness sweeping the land?

Closer than that...

Does it matter about the Jerusalem that's in our own hearts? The sign of ruin that is slowly drainning spiritual power and passion.

Blind to lukewarmness, blind to the mixture that is creeping in. That's all the devil wants to do is get the fight out of you. And kill it! So you won't labor in prayer anymore. You won't weep before God anymore. You can sit and watch television and your family go to Hell.

Let me ask you... is what I just said convicted you at all?

There is a great difference between anguish and concern.

Concern is something that begins to interest you, you take an interest in a project or a cause or a concern or a need.

I want to tell you something I've learned over my years, of 50 years of preaching... If it is not born in anguish, if it had not been born of the Holy Spirit, where what you saw and heard of the ruin that drove you to your knees, took you down into a baptism of anguish where you began to pray and seek God, I know now, Oh my God, do I know it?! Until I am in agony, until I have been anguished over it, and all our projects, all our ministries, everything we do, Where are the Sunday School teachers that weep over kids they know are not hearing and going to hell?

You see, a true prayer life begins at the place of anguish.

You see, if you set your heart to pray, God's going to come and start sharing his heart with you.

Your heart begins to cry out - Oh God, your name is being blasphemed. Holy Spirit is being mocked. The enemy is out trying to destroy the testimony of the Lord's faithfulness and something has to be done.

There is going to be no renewal, no revival, no awakening, until we are willing to let him once again break us.

Folks, it's getting late, and it's getting serious.

Please don't tell me, don't tell me you're concerned... when you're spending hours in front of the internet or television.

Come on.

Lord, there are some need to get to this altar and confess. I am not what I was, I am not where I am supposed to be. God, I don't have your heart or your burden. I've wanted it easy. I just wanted to be happy.

But Lord, true joy comes out of anguish. There is nothing of the flesh that will give you joy.

I don't care how much money, I don't care what kind of new house, there is absolutely nothing physical that can give you joy. It's only what is accomplished by the Holy Spirit when you obey Him and take on His heart.

Build the walls around your family.

Build the walls around your own heart.

Make you strong and impregnable against the enemy.

God, that's what we desire.

From Rod and Ellie Hein, for 2011

May your joy be full,

May your cup (which is your spirit) overflow

Your body be rejuvenated with youth and strength

Your bones be healthy,

and your blood be energised

Your mind be renewed

Your soul restored

Your emotions brought into line with the Word of God

Your vision be recharged

Your spiritual sight clear and far

May you be filled with courage

and confidence in Christ Jesus

May you walk blameless and in obedience

....to the One Who has called and chosen you...

For His purpose

May you laugh and dance and rejoice exceedingly

And cry only when it is for a good purpose

May you pray

May you intercede

And weep for the nations....and harvest of souls

May you be that harvester....who brings in a great harvest

To lay at the feet of Him

Who gave Himself for us

And poured out His life that we may live

ABUNDANT LIFE!

Closure - 2010

Human beings need seasons. Seasons that mark beginnings and ends.

Moments to consider, moments to meditate and remember what has been and what is to come.

All that seems to be God-ordained.

Today I look back, as the last day of the year and consider what has gone, and what is to come. I look back and see what a tough year it has been, the hardships, the disappointments from beginning to the end.

Maybe my main lesson through it all has been: blessed is the man who put his trust in God and cursed is he who trusts men.

So with eyes fixed on Him, and on HIM ALONE, I go on, knowing He is faithful. In Him I can have FAITH, for He never changes!

Oh God, how I love you!

Art, by Eliana Walker

Art is when your eyes are opened to behold the infinite. It happens during just a few seconds when that humanly invisible gate between this world and reality is unlocked and we`re able to grasp the true meaning of beauty. That`s where light comes from, where sounds are clearly heard and where feelings are fully understood. Once you`ve been there, life is not the same.

Colors look pale, musical notes are not enough, words become powerless, yet necessary and full of purpose.

Once you've been there, you are bestowed with a burden, a restless and increasingly tiresome voice, which is not decipherable until it is so overwhelming that it becomes unbearable to a point where you can't see, hear or feel anything but the voice itself.

Any true artist knows and sometimes admits that a particular expression of art -- whether it be good music, a beautiful painting, a lovely poem or even a warm smile, a tight hug or a tear drop -- doesn't really belong to him. He is just the means, the way between here and there, between that which seems to be and that which really is. And then, if he's really been faithful and successful in revealing what he touched in those fleeting moments of amazement and awe, then he'll offer a chance for everyone else to break free from the surrounding shadows of this world and see reality, gaze into its existence and hope that one day we'll no longer have shadows blinding our eyes. The gate will be forever open and we'll be able to call that reality!

A quote from DL, so true for me too!

“People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?

Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice.

Say rather a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, when foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waiver, the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I have never made a sacrifice!”

- David Livingstone, missionary in Africa

Today x Eternal

One thing I am sure about God and that is that He is too interested in eternal real things to give in to any manipulation in temporary matters! Not that He does not care or see little things, because He does and even more than we can imagine! But He has a more priviledged sight of things and takes more in consideration than our momentary situation and what we can see and expect.

An Answer to Prayer

"The old man who wanted to married Deta left to Chimoio. The whole thing is canceled!"

This one was Simo telling me after coming from Massandza one Sunday.
Deta is a fourteen year old girl who is part of the youth group in Massandza and had always been very participative at the church until her family decided she was old enough to marry and accepted "lobolo" from the guy who own the store where her uncle often got drunk. He already had a wife but that is the least of things in that area.
Simo had tried to convince him in every possible way to not take such a small child and actually not take a second wife at all. He had finally decided he would send the first one away and keep only Deta. Not a good solution for us.
And so we prayed. We wrote in our newsletters last month about it and I heard from a few people who were also praying about it.
And guess what? God answered. All of the sudden, the guy changed his mind, moved to Chimoio and the whole deal was canceled!

How can we doubt the power of prayer!? Simo and I were very happy and encouraged by that.