2/14/10
Let Hunger Lift You Higher and Closer to Him
I confess to you that if there is a secret that I could leave with you in this book, it is this: Your hunger will take you to places in God that nothing else can. Hunger for Him can take you higher and move His presence closer to you that you ever dreamed. By God's design, He is moved and attracted by the hunger of the human heart (The God Catchers, p. 108).
We are too easily satisfied with stories of someone else's encounter with Him … If you are tired of merely hearing about the God encounters other people had, then start collecting and creating emptiness. The same hunger that drove them into His presence will transport you into His presence too. Is your stomach growling yet? Can you feel the hunger pangs starting to grow in strength and frequency?
Christians hide their hunger just as lepers hide their disfigured limbs. We also disguise our passion with paste-on faces and rigid limbs in fear that our peers will uncover our "dirty secret" and drown us in their self-righteous disapproval. What if the very things we consider demeaning to the Christian faith are actually the fuel of God's fire in our hearts? Release the hunger you are hiding behind your rags of outward righteousness. Remove every false disguise; peel away every layer of fake piety and openly display your passionate desperation for His presence. Focus your thoughts on Him and His holiness; let holy hunger pangs grip your soul and transport you where you've never been before. Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near!
The level of passion is increasing-are you feeling more uncomfortable or more at home as the spiritual temperature rises? Why?
Unlike man, God is more interested in your tears of repentance and cries of desperation than in the sharpness of your creases and the size of your offerings. He delights in mascara-stained faces and elaborate hairdos draped across tear-stained carpets. He rejoices over humbled kings of commerce and brokenhearted barons of business and enterprise. It is only the proud that He ignores.
What will you offer Him? Proud religious accomplishments garnished with proper public piety or tearful cries of repentance and hunger soaked in the fiery sauce of desperation? Which would He accept and which would He reject?
Our churches have been guilty of false representation and false advertising long enough. We've claimed to be the bride of Christ while conducting our business and going our own way as if we were "separated" from Him. It is time to return the supernatural part of God's nature to God's house. If we dare to claim, "God is here!" then better be prepared to do what it takes to back up our claim. In The God Catchers, I said:
For too long the church has trumpeted to the nations, "He's here! He's here!" when there wasn't enough of Him there to make the church discernibly different from the world. Our claims were true in the sense that the omnipresent God was present in our churches, but that is no claim to fame. His omnipresence is everywhere, even in bars and nightclubs. It's His manifest presence that we must become hungry for, those undeniable moments when you know…He's here! (p. 109)
Are you hungry for more of Him than you have every experienced? Will you pay the price to stay in His presence? The world is waiting and hoping that we really will produce evidence of the Real Thing-call upon His name and offer Him your uninhibited, unshackled hunger for His presence.
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Prayer
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Lord, Give me a hunger and a thirst for the more of you.
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2/15/10
No Little Failures
And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, "Oh that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!" So God granted him what he requested. --1 Chronicles 4:10
When Simpson succeeded it was in a big way. When he failed he made great failures. It had to be so. Men of his caliber do not make little mistakes. They fly too high and too far to steer their courses by city maps. They ask not, "What street is that?" but "What continent?" And when they get off of the course for a moment they will be sure to pull up a long way from their goal. Their range and speed make this inevitable. Little men who never get outside of their own yards point to these mistakes with great satisfaction. But history has a way of disposing of these critics by filing them away in quiet anonymity. She cannot be bothered to preserve their names. She is too busy chalking up the great successes and huge failures of her favorites. Wingspread; A. B. Simpson: A Study in Spiritual Altitude, 108-109.
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Prayer
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"Lord, give me the boldness to attempt big things for You-so that whether I succeed or fail it will be in a big way! Amen."
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2/16/10
At Least I’ll Die Moving Forward!
God is looking for people who have nothing to lose. He needs someone who understands what it is to say, “I’ll die if I stay here in my crisis; I’ll die if I try to go back into the mess I came from. So if I’m going to die, at least I’m going to die moving forward!”
The four forgotten lepers who huddled against the wall of a city that rejected them actually had a key role to play in God’s divine drama that day. Everything hinged on their ability and willingness to risk what little they had for what they might gain.
It almost seems as if something inside of those four hopeless lepers resonated with a silent message sent from heaven. Does God send signals of love, purpose, and direction to people who feel as if they are past hope? I think He does. His greatest signal, of course, was to send His only begotten Son.
God sends signals to us all the time. People who “have ears to hear” and “eyes to see” are sensitive enough in their spirits to hear those signals, but not everybody can perceive them. And many might refuse to act even if they understood the message.
In the physical realm, a wide variety of electromagnetic signals (radio signals) constantly pass through the atmosphere. It’s happening now—right where you sit, radio and television signals are in the air. You can’t see them, but if you have the proper receiver tuned in to the proper frequency, you can detect and decipher messages they are carrying.
If you have a cell phone and someone called you, then you could pick up those signals. If you have the proper radio, then you can pick up and listen to any FM, AM, or satellite radio signal passing by.
God was sending out signals about Israel through His prophets, but certain key people just refused to listen. He was saying, “I want to set the nation free and liberate My people from the Syrian army. I just need somebody to move. That king has a “heart” problem, and his general has a “hearing” problem. They were both set in place to lead and protect—it seems they believe they have too much to lose. Is anyone listening down there?”
Are you listening to the signals that God is sending out? Is your mind telling you that what you have is too important to give up?
Too often we settle for second best when God is ready to give us His best. We like to hold on to the pain instead of giving our hurts to God. God can’t do anything 'till you realize that you have to lay everything you have down in order to have everything you ever dreamed of!
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Prayer
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Lord, I lay it down. What I have already is nothing compared to what You can give me. I have nothing to lose! All I want and need is found in You! My ears are open to hear what You say! I’m willing Lord, tell me the way! AMEN
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2/17/10
If They Kill Me, They Kill Me
When the lepers reached the far outskirts of the vast sea of tents at the Syrian camp, they might have hesitated; half-convinced they would be arrow-shot on sight. They could smell the food cooking on hundreds of different cooking fires.
Perhaps the four chose the youngest and most mobile of the group to sneak up closer to the campfires and give a report. When he finally shuffled back to their hiding spot, he confirmed what their noses and growling bellies already told them.
The Syrians had some meat cooking on the barbecue grill-it looked like they had lamb on the menu that night. Maybe the campfires also had big batches of lentils simmering; the candles were lit to ward off the growing darkness of twilight. "I think everybody is eating right now-maybe they are all in their tents. No one was hanging around the campfires," the scout said.
All four of these lepers were hungry--they hadn't eaten anything in days, and they hadn't eaten well since their diagnosis long ago, much less the seven-year famine. Once the scout made his report, the other three lepers became even more restless.
How long could they stand to stay hidden on the outskirts of the camp, only a matter of a few yards from the feast of their lives? They were at the point of starvation, and finally, they just couldn't take it anymore. One of the lepers tells the others:
You have to admit there are some admirable characteristics about these four lepers. For one thing, those four men came to the point where they said, "Enough is enough!" Now, what will you sacrifice to get closer to your goals? These lepers realized that if they died, they would not be much worse off if they lived. They decided that it was worth the risk of death, in order to get what they needed.
These lepers sacrificed, can you?
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Prayer
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Lord, I will take the leap of faith. I will jump head first into the unknown
if it means I will be closer to You. You are everything. All I have ever
wanted is found in you. Forgive me for searching for it in the comfort of
this world. I take that leap of faith now Lord. AMEN
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2/18/10
Never Underestimate the Power of Four Limping Lepers!
We have heard that as the four lepers walked toward the Syrian camp their enemies heard their steps and thought that it was a large army. How can that happen? How can the bloody feet of crippled lepers scare away a ferocious army?
This is what I suspect happened: God amplified the eight feet of those four determined lepers as they marched. Their path perhaps was marked with bloodstained footprints.
When God turns up the amplifier, He can make eight shuffling feet sound like an army. The enemy hears you coming—even in your weakness—if you have a “nothing-to-lose” attitude! The Bible says, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Your weakness is stronger than your enemy’s strength when God amplifies it!
Can you hear God leaning over the ramparts of heaven and calling to His archangels, Michael and Gabriel:
“Hey boys, take the microphone down there to the road leading out of Samaria. Put it real close to the ground and amplify the sound of those feet. You know the ones, the bloody footprints marching toward My purposes. That rhythmic shuffle pleases Me — it is the music of obedience to Me. Turn it up—more—more! Let the earth shake with the glory of My praise! Let My enemies be scattered with the sound of eight obedient feet moving to do My will.”
The four lepers didn’t have a clue about the power of fear being loosed on the enemy. Step after step they moved toward God’s purposes. Soon they would witness its aftermath.
Will you allow God to amplify your obedient steps against your enemies? Obedience and submission to God is a weapon. If you surrender all to Him, you have nothing to lose and only territory to gain!
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Prayer
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Lord, I am not my own. I no longer want to do what I want, but rather what you want. I ask that you amplify my steps so that my enemies will flee. I surrender to you. I have nothing to lose, and only victory in You! AMEN
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2/19/10
Samson's Grow-back Triggered His Comeback!
His internal desire became external strength with eternal consequence.
Samson sinned against God, he failed his nation, and he brought disrespect to his family. Now, day after day, even the lowest specimens of Philistine culture taunted and mocked the blind captive without fear. Unknown to his overconfident captors, the God who does His best work in secret heard Samson's humble cries of repentance. A surprise comeback had already been launched from heaven the day that hair began to grow back on the head of Israel's Nazarite champion. Samson's grow-back triggered his comeback! What was once dead in your soul can grow back.
As Samson's hair grew longer and time grew shorter, a surprise comeback was rising underneath the Philistines' noses. Samson's inner man was growing stronger than the outer man.
Finally, on what looked to be the worst day of a long unbroken string of bad days, Samson cried out to God in repentance. Three thousand Philistines gathered for a great feast and blind Samson was the entertainment for the lords and leaders of Philistine. They all pointed as they began to mock him and revel in their abuse of this once-feared Israelite warrior.
Perhaps no one but God noticed that when the Philistines chained Samson into position between the pillars, their old enemy looked much as he did in his heyday of power. Blind, but with his hair now fully grown, Samson rededicated himself to the Lord.
The stage was now set for a comeback!
When Samson said, “Let me feel for the pillars…,” the internal desire became external strength with eternal consequence. You have to feel it internally before you can do it externally.
While others may have given up and assumed that “ what had been ” would define “ what would be ,” Samson prayed a prayer of faith and humble desperation. After living a life of self-absorption and self-gratification, Samson was now totally focused on destroying the enemies of his people. If it cost him his life, it meant nothing.
It reminds me of something someone else said one time, someone who became a champion of God: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
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Prayer
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Lord, what I have been in my past is not what I will be in the future. In you all things are made new. I want to live in the fullness of what You have for me. If I live for You, and people around me don't like it, it is still for my gain. At least I have You. You are a rock that never fails. AMEN
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2/20/10
The Anointing of God
“Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.'”-1 Cor. 15:33
How does God provide restoration for an ultimate comeback? Although, we may not know everything, we do know something. God restores the inward person before the outward person.
Let’s take a look at Samson.
Samson had all of the outward characteristics of a hero and leader. He started his career spectacularly and regularly humiliated his enemies, the Philistines. He made mockery of their best warriors and most elaborate plots to entrap him. Yet, from God's viewpoint, Samson was outwardly strong, but inwardly weak. Outward strength wasn't enough; He wanted to restore Samson's inward man.
Samson's weakness of character betrayed his God-given gift and derailed his spiritual calling. He dismissed God's warnings and freely crossed boundaries of safety and propriety. When Delilah betrayed him and cut off the seven locks of his long hair, it caused him to fall into the cruel hands of his enemies.
By some accounts, Delilah means “delicate.” I should add, “delicate, but dangerous.” Samson was a he-man with a she-weakness. A man's strong hands could not bring him down, but the “weak” hands of a woman trapped him.
When your outward talent is greater than your inward character, there is often a crash. Samson's crash was spectacular, but so was his restoration. We learn from his story that God restores the “inward man” before there is outward evidence.
His goes for you too! Your ultimate comeback begins inwardly before evidence is seen outwardly. Character is essential to living a successful life. The anointing of God can take you where you need to be, but your character will be what keeps you there. God is waiting for you to offer him everything—not just your problems. He wants to give you His best.
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Prayer
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Lord, I want to live a righteous life with a clear conscience. I ask that You do an internal work in me. Lord, I know that I need Your anointing, but I have to know what to do with it. Lord, help me work on my lifestyle so I can become a person of true character. AMEN
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