Tag: last days

Tongues of Fire

Posted on by Dorci

“I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” 
Luke 24:49

Luke records these as some of the last words spoken by Christ before He ascended into heaven.

Other apostles recorded some of the acts Jesus said they would do in their ministries, but they could go nowhere and do nothing until they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And once the Holy Spirit filled them – watch out.

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
Acts 2:1-4

This ragtag group of people who had hid in the upper room, afraid that the soldiers who came after Christ might also come after them, suddenly changed into a group who immediately began speaking “great things of God” in languages from all over the region. 

The sound was so loud that people came to see, and hear, what was happening, and hearing the Lord being glorified each in their own language, they were amazed.

Peter, who had just weeks before claimed he didn’t know Christ as He hung on the cross, now stood as he was filled with the Holy Spirit, “raised his voice and addressed the crowd,” proclaiming the prophecies of Joel, confronting them with putting the Messiah to death, witnessing to His resurrection, speaking the prophecy of David, and declaring that this Man – the Lord – was now at the right hand of God. And because of the power of the Holy Spirit, the people were convicted, and the Church grew by 3000 that day.

That first Pentecost was a small seed of what God would do through the disciples and the early church as they were empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In the Spirit the disciples were one in heart and mind, witnessed boldly, spoke with authority, prayed in faith, saw visions, prophesied, healed the sick, cast out demons, time-warped, performed signs and wonders, gave glory to God, and remained steadfast in their obedience to Him even when faced with jail, flogging, and death.

And when they were punished they entrusted themselves to their Lord.

On at least one occasion while in jail they prayed and sang hymns to God (Acts 16:25), and on another “left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.” (Acts 5:41)

And all these years later, nothing has changed. We still need the empowering and leading of the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s will.

So why don’t we see the magnitude of the miraculous works the early church experienced?

Have we run ahead of the Lord, instead of praying for and relying on the empowering of the Holy Spirit to do His work, His way, and in His time? 

Are we trying to do spiritual things in our own strength, using only talents and human knowledge instead of our Spirit-given gifts and godly wisdom? 

Have we been grieving the Holy Spirit by some ongoing sinful attitude or behavior?

If there’s ever a time we need the Holy Spirit to move in us and among us to do a mighty work, it is now.

On this Pentecost, I pray again for revival of my own heart and for the hearts of all God’s people. That as fellow citizens of the household of God we will recognize the gift we’ve been given in the Holy Spirit and wholeheartedly recommit ourselves to the Lord, praying our way through each day and night, yielding our wills to our Lord and Savior, putting aside the flesh and walking in the power of the Holy Spirit.

That as one we will burn with a Spirit-driven holy passion of faith, trust, and boldness in our witness of Jesus Christ and the hope we have because of Him.

* * *

Heavenly Father, for the sake of the lost and for your glory, we put aside confidence in anything of ourselves, and we give our lives to be walking, breathing manifestations of the Holy Spirit, that we might move, serve, and worship as one body.

* * *

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13

By This Everyone Will Know

Posted on by Dorci

Jesus is reclining at the Passover table with His disciples after Judas leaves. He gives His beloved friends some parting words to prepare them for what’s about to come, and He tells them this:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13: 34-35

He doesn’t tell them everyone will know they are His disciples if they go to church, or memorize scripture, or carry a Bible, or be nice, or any of a million other things. 

He says everyone will know if they love one another as He had loved them. Agape love.  Sacrificial love. All-encompassing, forgiving, loving-kindness love. 

And He didn’t just say other believers will know they are His disciples, but everyone will know.  The world will know. 

He tells them to love one another so profoundly, so boldly, so much so that the world sits up and takes notice and says “Hey, there go those Christians, loving each other again.”

Why does Jesus tell His disciples that?

Well, one, because that’s just how much Christ loves. He loved those around Him so much that everyone knew who He was.  He loved all the way to the cross.  And by extension, through the power of the Holy Spirit living in us, that is how much we’ll love when we’re following Him.

When we’re loving God, we’ll love one another.

And two, because that’s our witness. He says “everyone will know…” We are His ambassadors, and our witness to the world is our love for one another.  The gospel message that lives in and through us is that we have a love that goes beyond a worldly love. We have a divine, supernaturally given, godly love. 

And as that love drew multitudes to Him, that love lived out through us will draw the world to Him.

We want revival, we pray for revival, but are we living out the love Christ called us to in such a way that would be noticed by the world, that would draw them to Him, and lead to revival?

Let’s take a look. Is that what believers are known by? What is our reputation? Does the world look at us and talk about the love we have for one another?  Or do they talk about the way we judge, and criticize, and live hypocritically? 

I would tend to say the latter. Now, I know not all those criticisms are deserved, but maybe if the world doesn’t see who Jesus truly is, the all-encompassing love He offers them, it’s because we haven’t shown them. I know that after walking with Christ for 30 years and experienced what I have, even I don’t always have that view of believers.  And I know I’m not alone.

There are entire books written on how to heal after being hurt by those in the church, by people who have chosen to treat their brothers and sisters in ways that are far from loving.  Even Anne Graham Lotz talks about her own experience being hurt by Christians in her book Wounded by God’s People. And she also freely admits at times she’s been the one to wound. 

We all have. 

What we need to do right now, though, is regroup, repent, claim Christ’s commandment, and start loving one another. 

Jesus tell us in Matthew 5, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.”

And in Mark 11, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

We don’t know how long we have here before Christ returns.  Right now we may be experiencing a time when God is speaking to us, desiring that revival among His people first, preparing us, completing us, fully maturing us before He takes us up with Him, and also desiring revival throughout the world, the salvation of as many souls as possible before that time.  

We need to start the revival through our own repentance, forgiveness, and commitment, through Christ, to love one another as Christ loves the Church.

And then maybe, just maybe, the world will sit up and take notice of our love for one another. And in their desperate need for that kind of love, will be drawn to Christ, and repent, and forgive, be saved, and through Him, begin loving one another. 

Let’s Make Like a Tree…

Posted on by Dorci

I love trees, and today in the U.S. it’s Arbor Day, a day marked for celebration of trees (traditionally by planting a tree) and all the good they do for the environment around them. 

God uses trees throughout His Word, beginning and ending with the Tree of Life, and many other references throughout.

Today, though, I thought about how God tells us, in the Psalms and in Jeremiah, how we can be like a tree, sustained and fruitful even in hard times. 

Jeremiah records God’s word to His people:

“This is what the Lord says:

‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in Him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.’”
Jeremiah 17:5-8

At one point in history, God’s people demanded Samuel appoint them a king instead of looking to God as their King. The first king they put their trust in was Saul, and we know how that ended.  And for hundreds of years God’s people put their trust in, and were ruled by kings.

Even today, a lot of people (sometimes even God’s people) are trusting in men and women in office to fix things, to make bad situations good, to make wrong situations right.  And there seems to be no shortage of people willing to promise to do those things. 

But that never ends as well as we’d like because people are just people, and the world’s system is not God’s. Let the world have the world.

We have God, a Savior, a Lord, who can do much more – He can make our hearts right.

Jesus tells us “’Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive.” John 7:37-39

So, we might not be able to plant a tree today, but let’s be a tree and leave the world’s ways (sorry, I couldn’t help it!).

Let’s plant ourselves by the living water by putting our faith in Christ and Him alone and receive from Him rivers of living water, the Holy Spirit, continually moving through us, nourishing us, sustaining us, and producing in us fruit and all kinds of good things to benefit us and those around us, no matter the circumstances, with no end to its abundance.

Don’t Give Up!

Posted on by Dorci

A lot of Christians have given up on church.  Many have been hurt by the church; many feel like it’s a waste of time, that they’re not learning anything anyway; and many believe their faith is strictly between them and God so they don’t need church.

I get it.  I get all of those. 

And I’ve read a lot of reasons why we should go to church.

But I want to tell you why we must go. Why we need to go.

When I read in Isaiah 53 that the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world, Jesus, is “despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” I understand. Granted, to a far lesser degree, but I understand living a life like that. I fully understand living a life of rejection and sorrow, and I understand grief being a very close acquaintance.

By the time I came to know Jesus as my Savior when I was 26, I had already lived a lifetime, a very long and painful one. I knew Grief better than anything else, including love. 

And for the next 14 years after I was saved and going to church, I knew God loved me, but God knew much of that was head knowledge. He knew Grief was still a closer acquaintance. And, oddly enough, He was about to increase the pain.

And yes, I know that doesn’t sound very appealing, but His plan was something far greater than I could have anticipated.

So for the next 15 years, through sickness and so many things that can come with it, I became even more acquainted with Grief, yet, at the same time more acquainted with the God of love in that grief.

Because that description of the Savior in Isaiah is not of a God in the heavens, far-removed or oblivious to our human suffering. He is not a God who is unfeeling or detached. In fact, the letter to the Hebrews tells us that “we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”  (Hebrews 4:15)

This is a God-Man who understands my pain.

He is a God who is “near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.”  (Psalm 34:18)

That word contrite means “crushed (literally powder, or figuratively contrite): – contrite, destruction.” And the root word of contrite is daka which means “to crumble; to bruise, to beat to pieces, break in pieces, destroy, humble, oppress, smite.”

Brokenhearted. Reduced to powder. Crumbled, bruised, beaten to pieces.  Yeah, I understand that.  Maybe you do, too. But in my brokenness God was closer to me than I could have imagined. He was faithful to not only keep my faith in tact, but to grow it.

Still, during this 15 year period, being attacked from within and without, with no understandable cause or reason, led me to desperately need to feel God’s love. I needed it to move that impossibly long distance from my head to my heart.  I needed it to become my beloved companion in place of the old acquaintance.

Since salvation I’d settled for the belief that love was as close to me as it would ever get, and knowing Christ as my Savior, it was indeed closer than it ever was before. I had been content with the head knowledge, but the increased pain and suffering meant the head knowledge wasn’t enough anymore. I needed to feel God’s love.

So I began to pray just that – that God would let me feel His love. It wasn’t just a desire or a hope, but a need.  I needed His love to survive.  I needed Love to knock grief to the ground and live with me as my constant, Beloved Companion. 

I prayed and prayed that prayer over the course of several months. 

And gradually God began to lay on my heart “…if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36)  More and more those words filled my mind, and honestly, I didn’t connect them with my prayer at all.  I believed God was going to do something, but I thought maybe it had to do with a family member or a friend.

During this same time I started going to a women’s Bible study at our church.  I hadn’t been to one in years and I was excited to connect with women over the study of God’s Word again. 

After every Bible study I’d drive home and catch myself smiling and full of joy.  These women were so kind, so loving and accepting, and they had no idea they were being used by God to answer my prayers.  They just loved Jesus and because of that, they loved me. 

And then one day, as I stood there talking and waiting for the study to start, two of the women walked in with bunch of flowers for my birthday, and the group sang Happy Birthday.  That was the day grief (and his buddies rejection and sorrow) took a backseat to Love.  

God did a miraculous work of forgiveness in my heart, and suddenly the past was in the past. Both my mind and my heart were renewed, and I felt like a new, new creation.

Jesus used those precious women to show me how much He loved me, and bring to life in my heart those words “…if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”  And so I was.

That is why the letter to the Hebrews goes on to exhort all of us “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another-and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”  (Hebrews 10:24-25)

God has built into us a need to gather together with other believers to meet spiritual needs. That’s the way He’s chosen to operate in and through our lives. But when we don’t fulfill that need in the highest, God-given way, we find a million other counterfeit ways of trying to fill that need to meet together as friends, even as friends close enough to consider themselves family – social media, causes, clubs, bars, stadiums, gangs. But they will always leave us unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

We need each other. But we need to feed our souls and our faith, not just our flesh. We need a setting with other Jesus-loving, Spirit-filled believers, our family in the faith, to love us (and us, them), to encourage one another in our daily walks with Christ, to keep us focused and moving into an even deeper walk with Him, the Savior of our souls, the one who understands our pain, and is there again and again to rescue us, to heal us, even more than we can imagine. And with our ever-renewing hearts, glorify Him with the good works He’s prepared for us to do. And the darker it gets out there, the more we need it. 

Now, does that mean my life is perfect? No. Grief doesn’t like to be knocked down, and when it’s found a comfy place to live for a long time it doesn’t give up that place easily (and satan doesn’t like it a whole lot either).

It tries to get up, again and again, and that’s why I need to keep going back, to be surrounded by my brothers and sisters in Christ, and encourage one another in love so we can then take that love on the road with good deeds, like my Jesus-loving friends did. Their love and good deeds in Christ changed a life, glorifying Him, and that’s what this life is all about.

And yes, I know it’s not always easy to find a Spirit-filled, Bible-believing/teaching church. Political correctness and a desire to be liked, among other things, don’t stop at the front door of every church.

Just pray. God knows your heart and He will answer your prayers for a body of believers who worship in Spirit and in Truth, a body that will accept you in the love of Christ.

Don’t give up.  We need you. 

* * *

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the body of Christ, the family you’ve given us where your love and joy can come alive, where we can join hearts and worship you in spirit and in truth. I pray for each person reading this. For those who need a good spiritual home, I pray you would lead them to one. I pray you would remove any fears, grant forgiveness for past pains, and help them to step out in faith. For those who have one, I pray you would use them in the church homes you’ve placed them to show your love in tangible, Christ-honoring ways. For churches who may be a little stuffy and not used to acts of love, oh Lord, may you fill them with your Spirit, and lead them to a better way, where giving and receiving your love is as common as breathing. May you bring revival in the Body, and throughout the world.  In Jesus’ holy and precious name I pray, amen. 

Sunday Praise and a Prayer for Focus

Posted on by Dorci

“But no one who belonged to Christ’s churches in Judea
had ever seen me (Paul the apostle) in person.
They had only heard that the one who had been cruel
to them was now preaching the message that he had
once tried to destroy. And because of me,
they praised God.”
Galatians 1:22-24

 

Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you.  We praise you for revealing yourself to us, for putting your Spirit in us and for giving us new hearts. You’ve replaced our hearts of stone and given us hearts of flesh, all for the sake of your holy name.  Lord, forgive me for the times I’ve let my heart get stony again. Please continually remind us to live in a way that reveals the new hearts of love you’ve given us so we might encourage, build up, and comfort our brothers and sisters, that they might praise your name, and so the world can see our hearts reflecting your love that they might turn, repent, believe in you, and praise your name.  Help us live lives worthy of your calling, to remember our purpose and stay focused on you so that through us you might bring peace to a broken and hurting world, and praise to your name.  In your name and for your glory, Lord Jesus, amen.