Awake, Brothers and Sisters in Christ!
Pray Without Ceasing!
I awoke at two in the morning, as I am often prone to do
these days in my later years. I was
filled with a since of urgency to pray for my children, yet not just for
them. I thought of our church family and
our prayer chain where many pour out their requests for those in need of
prayer. More often than not, these
prayers are understandably for those in need of healing. Even so, my thoughts were drawn to the
unspoken prayers that I’m sure are in the hearts of so many Moms and Dads,
grandparents, relatives, and friends that are being raised unto the Lord as
they see the damage, destruction and heartache that is taking its toll upon
families due to the rampant doubt and unbelief of our times. I feel for each of us as we cry out to the
Lord for His intervention in the lives of our loved ones. We see them sinking
deeper and deeper into the mire of secularism, humanism, intellectualism, and
shackled by the chains of sin in their lives.
The scripture that so aptly describes the lives of too many today is
captured in the scripture, “Ever learning, and never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth.”(Tim. 3:7)
“Satan roams too and fro seeking whom he may devour.” And yet, if we were to look at our society
with eyes opened wide, you’d think that the whole world is completely oblivious
to Satan, as if he and hell did not even exist.
We have gone so far away from God that we don’t even realize there is a
battle going on for our very souls.
Satan is still deceiving and destroying us with his same old question of
“hath God really said?,” for he still tricks and deceives many with his lies
that we aren’t really responsible for listening to and obeying God. People are standing in our churches repeating
the creed saying the words, “I believe in the virgin birth of our Jesus Christ,
etc,’ and yet in their hearts they don’t believe one word of it. Churches have become a place to come together
to celebrate unity with community and mankind, while the people have not one
idea of what it means to be united in the faith of our Lord- “having a form of
godliness, but denying the power thereof.
Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also ‘resist the
truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.” (Tim. 3: 5, 8)
In stead of concentrating on our Lord as a God of judgment
and love, we are focusing more often on the love part of God’s character and
ignoring the judgment part of His character.
We are wallowing in the pigpen of a ‘feel good’ message that espouses a
sickening sentimental message of ‘let’s just love one another’ and set aside
the fact that we serve a just and holy God that ‘will not strive with man
forever.” If anyone tries to give a
message on God’s expectations of us to turn from sin, a loud cry too often
swells up warning “judge not lest ye be judged” providing a smoke screen to
cover the reality of our disobedient and rebellious hearts, for no one wants to
be confronted with sin in our lives these days.
Hell is no longer presented as a part of reality, but just a figment of
someone’s imagination. Universalism, the
belief that all are going to heaven regardless of in whom or what one believes,
is even being proclaimed by the Pope and many other church leaders, and the people
are following right along in line with
the footsteps of these false teachers.
We are drowning in the attitude of ‘just tell me what I want to hear’
and ‘don’t bother me with the facts of what I need to hear.’ God is full of
mercy and grace towards us, but He also requires our obedience to Him and His
Word. We rejoice in words that tickle
our ears, and yet spurn the words that should lead us unto conviction and
repentance for our sins. We turn away from His efforts to draw our hearts back
to Him, the One True Living God, who desires to correct our ways and plant our
feet back on the straight and narrow path.
Fellow believers, we must join in one accord, not only to
pray for the sick but also to pray for God’s intervention in the lives of so
many of our loved ones who have seemingly come to the decision and belief that
they can get along quite well without God the Father. His Son Jesus, if He
exists at all, is seen as good man who may have taught a few good things, but
His deity and resurrection is merely a myth of man’s making to use as a crutch
in life by those who are weak. Their attitude
has become that a trip to the ‘old rugged cross’ is wasted time and a needless
effort, for we are our own god, having no need of a Savior. And as for the Holy Spirit, He might as well
be a figment of one’s imagination too for we not only deny His power but His
very existence. In addition, God’s word
is no more truth than that which is found in the book of “The Wizard of Oz.” The absolute truth of God
is non existent, for whatever you or I say or believe is deemed as right, and
there is no wrong. There is no one way
to God. You follow your own ‘light’ and
I’ll follow mine, and we will all meet together in the end, or when we die that
is the end and there is no after life, so all this God stuff doesn’t matter
anyway. Who needs to trust in God when I
can trust completely in logic, reason, history revised by man, and any other
manmade attribute? You and I, who
believe in Christ as Savior and Lord, know these are lies straight from the
devil. But they are truth and reality to
more of our loved ones than we would like to believe.
Time is short. We
can tell others about Christ, but we can not control their response. Our greatest weapon in defense against the
fiery darts and onslaught of Satan, his demons, the powers and principalities
of the darkness of this world, is God’s Word and the effectual prayers of a
righteous man. We have been asleep or
dormant for far too long. We must put on
the full armor of God and prepare to do battle for the sake of our own souls
and the sake of our loved ones that we may bring glory and honor to the Lord
our God, who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As the Word says, “Let us shout unto God with
the voice of triumph. Praise Him, Praise
Him! Shout unto God with the voice of
praise. Greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. Wake up, pray
without ceasing, and let not our voices be silent any longer.
As we go before the Lord to present out supplications unto
Him let us remember and hold fast to the truth of the words in that wonderful
old hymn:
“How Great Thou Art”
“O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, My Savior God to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Savior God to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!”
“With God, all things are possible!”
Matthew 19:26
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