Rom 15:5-7
5 May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  -ESV

Last weekend was spent at a men’s retreat up at Big Bear, CA. I always look forward to the time spent together with other men from my home church- VCC Laguna Niguel as a high point of every year and was not disappointed.

The best part is the encouragement that I always receive and the clarity of vision for ministry that I usually come away with.

Pastor Dave gave the keynote talk and the scripture above was one of the references. Interestingly at least twice when he was pointing out the importance of supporting one another with endurance and encouragement he mistakenly (?) combined the two words together and said- ‘enduragement’. It became a running joke for the weekend. However, I found the new word to be especially helpful in remembering and applying the message. Now I am not all that sure it was really so much of a mistake.

The best part of the weekend was when we got into small groups and prayed over each other’s families, jobs, and ministries and the Holy Spirit fell on everyone there. There is nothing like having other brothers pray with you over the most important and intimate things of your life. Then feeling and receiving not only support from brothers in the faith but also encouragement to endure and live out your faith in such a way that it actually makes the world around you a better place to live.

So I submit this to you:  I pray that all of you will receive the same kind of ‘enduragement’ that I received last weekend from my brothers in Christ. If so, then Revival could become a reality in your everyday experience of living.

Come Holy Spirit and bring new vision and enduragement to all who read this and let them be touched with fresh fire that ignites their lives and touches everything and everyone they come in contact with- families, neighbors, workers, store clerks. Let the light of the Holy Spirit in them leap out and touch everyone. Let it be a surprise and let it be revival- not in tents or churches but everywhere.   

This morning at the Marketplace Prayer Group the Holy Spirit showed me a picture of the Lord slaying giants.

The theme of the morning was ‘crossing over Jordan’. there was a sense that many of us there this morning were on the bring of being able to cross over into ‘the promise land’ in our jobs, businesses, and ministries.

The vision originally came in response to one particular brother who had been experiencing health and financial issues and at the same time had received miraculous provision.

However also during that time he had received numerous words that seemed almost ridiculous in the face of what he was currently facing yet the lord this morning was confirming the validity of all of the incredible words for future business and ministry he had received.

While meditating on the vision I believe that the Lord told me that it was also for everyone there and the American church in general.

Many of us have been facing ‘giants’ standing in the way of fulfilling the visions and calling that the Lord has given us over the years. Sometimes those words seem almost ridiculous in the face of all of the challenges that we are personally facing.

Many of us have been looking for and praying for revival in America. Now is the time to cross over and receive it. Now is the time to step forward in faith. It is time to stop looking at all of the ‘giants in the land’ and the reasons it can’t be done. The Lord himself is slaying all of the giants standing in the way. Praise God! 

Here’s another prophetic word by R. Loren Sandford:  “Recovering Our Lost Influence“(Link NLA).

Loren has some right-on counsel for the church here and points out that Christians lost their political and cultural influence in America because of hypocrisy in high places(failing Christian leaders) and because of a ‘religious’ pharisaic attitude towards unbelievers:

I don’t see judgment falling on the nation yet but rather on the church—God’s people—and it has only just begun. 1 Peter 4:17 clearly indicates that judgment begins with the house of God.

The first stage of judgment—already in motion—is that we have lost both our power as a voting block and our cultural influence. We have lost these things (1) because we have presented ourselves to the nation in the religious spirit rather than the Spirit of Christ and (2) because our integrity in high places has been badly compromised.

The second stage of judgment on the church in days to come is that the culture of this nation will continue in the direction it has been choosing to take for the last 40 years. The judgment is that we can do nothing to stop this slide into lawlessness and immorality because we’ve sacrificed our moral authority.

Sandford ends with good counsel for the American church

(Image via Wikipedia)

Found this on Monday Morning Insight-an article on Guy Muse’s blog: “How to Change Traditional Churches into New Testament Churches”

Here’s a list of 15 suggestions that does certainly sound like the NT church alright –some of which may be the direction that the American church needs to go in the future or maybe not:

1. Replace professional clergy with Priesthood of all Believers with authority to baptize, break bread and equip fishers of men. (1 Peter 2:9)

2. Replace Church building with “House of Peace.” (Luke 10:5-9; Matt. 10:11-13)

3. Replace programmed Sunday service with daily informal gatherings. The Bride of Christ must have intimacy with her Lord every day and not just for a couple of hours a week lest she become unfaithful. (Acts 2:46-47; Hebrew 3:13) Continue reading →

(Image by tillwe via Flickr)

I have been addressing this for several month now—Has God pushed a big ‘reset’ button? Some prophetic folks believe that God has grabbed the entire world system by the jaws and turned it upside down to position it for the very last days or as Grady says—hit a big ‘reset button’. Regardless, no matter how painful it is—God is definitely at work here. All the systems of the world have been thrown up in the air and where they land only God knows for sure.

The American church is particularly vulnerable because it was so tied to the old cultural and economic system of America that is now being tested and transformed. Change is ahead whether we want it or not, for better or worse. If the church tries to hang on to the old world system it will be changed into something that is clearly not Biblical.

Those churches that continue to be guided by the Holy Spirit and uphold Biblical teaching and principles will be transformed in a positive way—but not in the eyes of the world. The dominant American culture from now on will be increasingly critical and adversarial with those who are faithful to ‘Biblical’ Christianity.

(Dr. Mohler via Wikipedia)

All sorts of articles, polls, and publications have sounded the warning trumpet lately—calling attention to the ‘decline of Christianity in America. What we really are experiencing is the death of ‘cultural Christianity’—the kind that I talked about before– in the 50’s growing up with everyone in my neighborhood identifying themselves as Christians except the Jewish family down the street but they believed in the same Biblical morality as every other American.

Times have changed indeed—the culture wars are basically over and the church has substantially lost—even among a whole lot of folk who identify themselves as ‘Christian’. Here is a recent quote of Dr. Albert Mohler addressing the new cultural environment that the American church could soon be facing:

“We are going to discover that cultural Christianity is what eventually disappears in a secularized age.

Cultural Christianity has been so much a part of the environment of our ministry and of the expectation of our churches that it’s going to be a very different situation for the pastor of the First Baptist Church to worry about being arrested rather than to worry about whether he’s going to get the first seat in the restaurant.

… When you start looking at a lot of the logic of what is becoming endemic in the culture toward the future, we’re going to be in a very different situation than we’ve ever faced before.

And we’re going to discover that we are not as many as we thought we were.

… We’ve got to prepare students to be ready for that and to be able to lead churches to be able to understand what it means to be the church when we no longer have the cultural supports that we had counted on, wrongly, I think, all these years.”

—Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr. [Baptist Press, 4/23/09]