[27 May 2011 | Friday]

This is Our Finest Hour

I learned this week that taking time to back away from a project is both rewarding and reinvigorating. New vision stirs up. Strength arises. Excitement takes place. And when you put your hand to the plough once again God begins to work new ideas and dreams inside. It’s not that I have lost a dream or a vision, but it is always rewarding to step back and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit on another dimension than the one I was on.

As many of you are aware my wife and I have undertaken a great project in the city of Corsicana, Texas. The assignment that has been given us by the Holy Spirit is that of raising up a congregation within a community that has dozens of congregations already. Many of them are great ones. For example, the one called Lifeline who is pastored by Ricky and Dorothy Walters. Pastor Ricky has been at the helm of this congregation for 17 years. It is a great group of people, and Pastor Ricky is a dynamic pastor with a lot on the ball. There are others in this city that are doing a great work equally as well. My wife and I over the past six weeks have driven though out this city and chuckled to our self wondering “why did God assign us this place with so many congregations already with a lot on the ball”? But, I am glad we have obeyed. Last week I read a prophetic word by Pastor Loren Sandford, pastor of New Song Fellowship in Denver, Colorado that said, “God will not permit churches to continue thriving where His laws, standards, morality, Word and nature are not honored and His Spirit cannot move. On the other hand, where these things are honored, churches will thrive as desperate people, broken by the destructive effects of sin, seek real answers and as those who desire a genuine experience of God find the places where that experience can be found...”

 Have you ever stopped long enough to calculate why church congregation’s decline and some even close their doors? Just this week across the wire came the news that Crystal Cathedral that once was under the leadership of Robert Schuler is on the market to be sold. The debt load was simply too great to handle.

 The following points are not mine, I borrowed them, but they tell a chilling reason why congregations all across America are seeing their doors closed. Perry Noble, pastor in South Carolina listed some of the reasons. They stretch me, challenge me, and move me to action as I make sure these termites do not eat their way into the fabric of my life and cause me to go off course.  Here they are:

Ø  Laziness

Ø  Fear of Man

Ø  Pride

Ø  Loss of Focus

Ø  Disobedience

Ø  (Remember, these can also be a congregations problem as well)

I’m glad the Holy Spirit has given my wife and me this new assignment. It is humbling, yet rewarding. Mind-boggling, yet soul stretching. We will honor God’s word. The Holy Spirit will have room to move. We will make sure that we guard the gates.

I am a firm believer that anointing does not come from the congregation to the leadership of a church, but the other way around. These are exciting days. The church body the Holy Spirit is raising up in the city of Corsicana will be a safe place. It will be a place where love will flow, the word of God will be showcased, the Holy Spirit will be allowed to work, and people can use their gifts and talents all for the glory of God. These are exciting days. These are anointed days. These are days where I decree the fire of God shall fall, broken lives will be restored, sick bodies will be healed, empty vessels will be filled, the power of God will display and the enemy will be defeated!!!!!!!!!!