I stood in the lobby of a hotel recently, watching singles file one by one into a huge banquet hall. The sign outside the hall read: Creative Singles' Party. It was a Sunday evening, supposedly the most depressing day for lonely people.
The Holy Spirit has been prompting me to speak out about suicide. At first, I rebelled against preaching about such a morbid subject, but there was no way I could shake off the urgency to warn young people about the horror of self-destruction. Consequently, for the past few weeks I have been preaching about suicide in all our city-wide crusades.
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As we begin 2017, I believe it would bring great pleasure to the heart of God if we would fall to our knees and ask him what he would desire to see done differently in our church and our own lives.
“And so it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:45-47, NKJV).
As I read Paul’s letters to the Corinthian church, I stop and ponder these words: “My preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4, my italics).
When I was a young minister, I sought the Lord for clear manifestations of his Spirit. I prayed, “Oh, God, fill me with the power of your Spirit and give me a convicting message. Demonstrate your power. Shake the house as you did at Pentecost, so that people run to the altar and fall in reverence before you.”
If you desire to walk righteously before the Lord, rest assured you will be tested. In fact, the deeper your walk with Christ the more intense your testing will be. The Bible makes this clear: “The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits… When they fall, they shall be aided with a little help… And some of those of understanding shall fall, to refine them, purify them, and make them white, until the time of the end; because it is still for the appointed time” (Daniel 11:32, 34-35).
Throughout the Bible we hear these wonderful words spoken by many of God's servants: "Your God is merciful, kind, gracious, anxious to forgive, full of lovingkindness, slow to anger" (see Exodus 34:6, Deuteronomy 4:31, Jonah 4:2, Joel 2:13, Romans 2:4). These words about God's lovingkindness are recited again and again by such men as Moses, Jonah, David, the prophets and the apostle Paul.
Scripture says a day will come when God shakes everything that can be shaken. The only thing that will remain after this great shaking is that which can’t be shaken. What is it that can’t be shaken by God’s judgment? It is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I have been saying that I believe the present shaking in America and throughout the world is a manifestation of God’s wrath. The Lord is laying bare all the foundations that men have so trusted. The Psalms speak of this:
“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3).
The prophet Isaiah warns us that in the last days God is going to “turn the world upside down.” He declares, “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down” (Isaiah 24:1).
According to this prophecy, sudden judgment is coming upon the earth, and it will change everything in a single hour. Within that short span, the whole world will witness fast-falling destruction upon a city and a nation, and the world will never be the same.
In Psalm 27, David beseeches God in an urgent, intense prayer. He pleads in verse 7, “Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me.” His prayer is focused on one desire, one ambition, something that has become all consuming for him: “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after” (27:4).
David is testifying, “I have one prayer, Lord, one request. It is my single most important goal in life, my constant prayer, the one thing I desire. And I will seek after it with all that’s in me. This one thing consumes me as my continual goal.”
