Devotions

On the surface, Paul was a broken and finished man at the end of his ministry, lying deep in a foul-smelling underground cell, surrounded by the worst criminals. It was there that he wrote, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now” (Philippians 1:3-5, ESV).

Despite everything, from the depths of Paul’s solitude and the deep darkness around him, a light would emerge that still illuminates us today. It was all because Paul remembered what obedience to God had produced. Imagine for a moment all that could have been missed or lost forever if he had not listened to God’s promises, if he had not believed in this dream of a church, if he had not had that heart that seeks and responds.

When the whisper of God spoke to his heart, Paul refused the unbelief that could have limited him and chose to obey. I shudder to think of how much could have been lost if Paul, as many of us too often do, had hid behind a self-justifying argument that God had failed him and the seemingly logical reasoning that his divinely inspired dream could never be achieved.

Even today, God speaks to our hearts and minds. Immense blessings can emerge from even the smallest appearing acts of obedience to callings that seem mundane or trivial. God's whispers can become miraculous moments and movements.

Although being confined in the depths of a prison, Paul was able to rise above his circumstances and encourage himself by replaying in his heart all the memories of the miraculous work accomplished at Philippi. Paul realized and then embodied the extraordinary potential for peace and joy that lies dormant in each of us; It can be released when we choose obedience and faith, and when we believe in the dream that God has placed within us. By encouraging himself, Paul challenged us to believe, listen and invest further in God’s thoughts and dreams for us.

Now the question is what dream has been sleeping inside you for years? As you regularly read his Word and spend time in prayer, choosing to put aside Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, YouTube and others, what is the call that keeps coming to you?

^{Claude Houde is the lead pastor of Eglise Nouvelle Vie (New Life Church) in Montreal, Canada. Under his leadership New Life Church has grown from a handful of people to more than 3500 in a part of Canada with few successful Protestant churches.}

God’s people in Judah had a problem; they doubted his willingness and power to redeem people entrenched in apostasy and idolatry. “They said, ‘That is hopeless! So we will walk according to our own plans, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart’” (Jeremiah 18:12, NKJV). Judah thought, “We’ve gone too far and there is no going back. We have left the Lord, mocked him, cast him aside and abused him. It’s too late. Not even God can bring us back.”

After all my years in ministry, I still have to fight this kind of thinking. You may feel the same. Maybe someone you love is an atheist, mean and godless. You’ve convinced yourself that they’re beyond saving.

The Lord said to Judah, “Is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem?” (Isaiah 50:2). To shorten means to “chop off.” God was saying, “Tell me, has the enemy chopped off my mighty arm? Have I lost my power to save? No! My mighty arm dried up the Red Sea. It clothed the heavens with blackness. It opened blind eyes. You have seen that I will save to the uttermost. So how can you think I have lost my power to redeem you?”

When did God lose his power to save the vilest sinner on earth? When did he lose his willingness to deliver lost, hopeless people even when nobody was praying for them? Would God somehow decide not to save your family members, for whom you have fasted and prayed faithfully? Absolutely not. We must cry out to him in faith, “Oh, Lord, you can save Wall Street. You can deliver sinners and criminals in New York City or Boise, Idaho . You can redeem unbelievers in every nation, and you can save any member of my family. Your arm is not too short. You can save anybody!”

Don’t believe God’s hand has been chopped off. Instead, believe him for the impossible. Hold onto a vision of his love and mercy, of his mighty outstretched arm, all-powerful to save. We are to pray and be patient and he will gather in our loved ones, one at a time!

“‘Return, O backsliding children,’ says the Lord; ‘for I am married to you. I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion’” (Jeremiah 3:14).

When I first began this ministry, I spoke in churches all over America, warning of the moral landslide to come. I told people in Iowa, Oklahoma and all the Southern states that drugs would strike even the smallest hamlet. Dealers would appear in schools and on playgrounds, not just in dark alleys. I warned of blatant homosexuality with nude parades taking place in our cities, and I prophesied that nudity and sexual acts would air on prime-time television.

Many people who heard me preach thought I had come from Mars. Pastors berated me, and sincere Christians came to me saying, “No way! God will never let that happen in America.” Today, some of those people are grandparents. They sit before their TVs watching the R-rated movies I prophesied of, and their grandchildren are addicted to drugs and alcohol. The darkness I warned about has arrived. Can you imagine how dark it will be decades from now, should the Lord delay his coming?

It seems like the darkness will surely be impenetrable. However, I ask, “As you see the darkness deepening on all sides, do you believe it will exceed the light of the gospel? Are you afraid the darkness is going to snuff it out?”

God’s people must never be intimidated by the darkness and fury of the enemy. The Bible says Jesus is going to rise and shine in the darkness no matter how dark the world becomes. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined” (Isaiah 9:2).

We live in a time of widespread death and darkness, but God says that in such times he will shine his light the brightest. “I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, and not forsake them” (Isaiah 42:16).

No darkness will ever stop God’s light! So get your eyes off the darkness, off the sin, off the fury of violent people, and believe the Lord for the bursting forth of his shining, effusing light.

Can we be ready for revival if we believe that all hope is gone, that we have sinned away our day of grace and nothing is left but judgment? We cannot have faith for a revival until we are convinced that God still wants to pour out his Spirit upon us.

People ask, “Why hasn’t America been judged? Why hasn’t Jesus come yet?” It is because there is still a great harvest ahead and God is “. . . not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, NKJV)?

We see the Lord’s great mercy in Isaiah where God instructed the prophet to tell Judah,  “Where is the certificate of your mother’s divorce, whom I have put away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? For your iniquities you have sold yourselves, and for your transgressions your mother has been put away. Why, when I came, was there no man? Why, when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver?” (Isaiah 50:1-2).

God had already turned from Israel, giving them “. . . a certificate of divorce” (Jeremiah 3:8). His attention was now on Judah, a people who had cheated on him and walked away. God was still reaching out, though; he went to Judah to see the certificate of divorce (see Isaiah 50:1). He was saying, “Show me your divorce papers! Prove that I ever put you away. You walked away from me. I did nothing to grieve or hurt you. I have loved you the entire time.”

This is what I see God doing with us. He is saying, “Show me that I walked away from you. I haven’t yet removed my Holy Spirit. Rather, I am still at work in every nation, still wooing, calling and coming to you!”

The Lord is speaking this in pulpits across America and indeed throughout the world. He is speaking it through godly men and women who spend precious time seeking him. He is calling us back to repentance, back to his own heart. We must understand that there is still time, still hope, and that while we are praying, the Spirit is at work in all levels of society, calling and wooing people to himself.

The planting and harvest seasons in ancient Israel were different than what we might expect in the West. The first rains that softened the ground lasted from October through December, just before the planting season. The last rains ripened the harvest between March and April, just prior to reaping. The prophet Zechariah used the rains as a metaphor for God’s intentions for Israel.

“It shall be in that day that…I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on me whom they have pierced; they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:9-10, NKJV).

Here we see Zechariah foretelling an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the last days. A similar deluge is described in Joel 2, which I believe to be Pentecost. “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions; and also on my menservants and on my maidservants I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (Joel 2:28-29).

This is exactly what happened on the day of Pentecost! The Holy Spirit poured like a flood into the Upper Room in Jerusalem, and it has steadily continued throughout the centuries. God’s people have been daily refreshed by it for nearly 2,000 years. Isaiah refers to it as “a vineyard of red wine! I, the Lord, keep it, I water it every moment; lest any hurt it, I keep it night and day” (Isaiah 27:2-3).

The two outpourings in Zechariah and Joel are the first (former) and last (latter) rains: “And it shall be that if you diligently obey my commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil” (Deuteronomy 11:13-14).

The Spirit’s work is always focused on the harvest of precious souls. Down through the generations, God’s desire is to redeem us back to him, as many as will come.