Devotions

Mother Teresa once stated, “Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are, in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, rejected by society, completely forgotten, completely left alone. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.”

What interests me about chapters 5 through 7 in Matthew is not just Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, but what took place the day after the sermon. This is when the crowd shrinks to the individual. The audience now has a name. We see it immediately in Matthew 8:1-2: “Jesus came down the mountain with the cheers of the crowd still ringing in his ears. Then a leper appeared” (MSG).

Life just got real. The worst disease came after the greatest sermon. You know what I’m talking about. After the singing and the preaching, there is debt, marriage problems, addictions, cancer, diabetes, divorce and abuse.

Chapter 8 is all about what happens on Monday after the great and inspiring Sunday morning worship service. To know the Bible and how to sing Christian songs is important, but that doesn’t translate into making other people’s lives better when we meet them in a tragedy. You can’t be compassionate without people. No one is compassionate alone. Our Calcuttas are right next to us, and they need our compassion.

Every one of us has three resources to show compassion: time, treasure and talents. I heard someone once say, “You can see the priorities of a person’s life by two documents: a checkbook and a calendar.” I would add this question: What is your talent? You have at least one; everybody does. The apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 4:10, “As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” Whether your gifting is loving people, helping people, serving people, giving to people, bringing people to church…it’s always about people. That’s how you show compassion.

Where is your Calcutta? Where does life get real for you? How might you show compassion during your Monday?

_{After pastoring an inner-city congregation in Detroit for thirty years, Pastor Tim served at Brooklyn Tabernacle in NYC for five years and pastored in Lafayette, Louisiana, for five years. He became Senior Pastor of Times Square Church in May of 2020.}

"Then they will look on me whom they have pierced; they will mourn for him" (Zechariah 12:10, NKJV).

This verse originally refers to the Jewish people, but I also see in Zechariah's prophecy an application that has to do with the church. There is soon coming a very personal dealing by the Holy Spirit. The church of Jesus Christ has so blunted sin, whitewashing and overlooking it, that when the Holy Spirit comes down, he will bring a purging as well. There will be weeping, mourning and brokenness, a reckoning with the reality of how our sins grieve the heart of God.

The Holy Spirit is going to move in this way not only in congregations but also in families and individuals. “And the land shall mourn, every family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves” (Zechariah 12:12).

What greater gift could God give his church just before he comes than a powerful, convicting message against sin? He will bring such piercing conviction that we will not be able to tolerate any unholy or unclean thing in ourselves.

In summary, here are the qualifications and marks of the latter-day outpouring of the Spirit: 
1. A focus on the final harvest of souls.
2. A spirit of grace, leading to repentance and godliness.
3. A spirit of supplication, resulting in surrender and an urgency to pray in the Spirit.
4. A yearning for Jesus, a brokenness and weeping with godly sorrow for sin. 

Only after such dealings of the Spirit will the true blessing of joy come! I do not want to miss out on God's last outpouring. I have been praying for him to include me, and I urge you to do the same.

Pray with me now, “Lord, I don't have the discipline needed for your holy work. You have to give it to me. Give me your burden for lost souls; place your weeping Spirit within me. You are my only hope, so I surrender and turn totally to you. I'll do anything you tell me, and I will depend upon you for everything.”

We often hear missionaries speak of great awakenings around the world. In every case, the "spirit of prayer" is tied to the harvest. In Vietnam, China, Siberia, the Amazon, Africa and numerous other places, God's people are praying with fire and fervency, weeping and crying out to God, seeking his face, dealing with sin and turning to righteousness.

You cannot manufacture this kind of inclination to pray. It is the result of the spirit of supplication as God promised in Zechariah 12:10. These believers around the world are already experiencing it!

We have often called for weeks of prayer at Times Square Church, and we have experienced a small taste of this outpouring of the Spirit. Indeed, there is a measure of fire and diligence in prayer throughout this nation, but we have not yet experienced the outpouring of the Spirit of supplication.

God has shown me that even the desire and inclination to pray must come from the Holy Spirit. Now my dilemma is that God has promised to pour out a spirit of supplication on his church, and I want to be a part of the genuine move of God. So how can I make sure I receive this outpouring?

The answer is in Zechariah: “Ask the Lord for rain in the time of the latter rain. The Lord will make flashing clouds; he will give them showers of rain, grass in the field for everyone” (Zechariah 10:1, NKJV).

We must ask the Lord for this spirit of supplication. The flashing clouds in this verse speak of “lightning, thunderstorms” because God has promised to bring us showers. He is telling us in Zechariah, "Ask and I will give you this burden from heaven, but you must seek it from me!"

It is time we started asking the Lord, “O God, pour your Holy Spirit on me that I may learn to pray! Open up the fountain. Let me be a part of your final harvest.” Once this spirit of supplication showers down upon you, you will find yourself praying for holiness, godliness and purity. You will intercede for your lost loved ones and weep over this dying world. You have to ask the Holy Spirit to do it in you and then trust him!

The word “supplication” (see Zechariah 12:10) is never used in the Bible except to denote a cry or prayer that is vocalized. In other words, it is not private or meditative; supplication has to do with the voice.

The Hebrew word for supplication signifies “an olive branch wrapped with wool, or some kind of cloth, waved by a supplicant seeking peace or surrender.” These were called “branches of supplication.” Simply put, they were flags that publicly signified a cry of total, unconditional surrender.

Picture a battle-weary soldier, ragged and worn, tired and overwhelmed, stuck in a foxhole of self-will. He is all alone, weary and haggard, and has come to the end of himself. He breaks a branch off a tree and ties his white undershirt to it, lifts it, and crawls out of his foxhole, crying, “I surrender. I give up!”

That is supplication. It says, “I surrender. I can’t fight this battle anymore. I’m lost and despairing.”

Supplication is not just calling on God to do what you want. It is not begging and pleading with him to assist you in your plans. On the contrary, it is a total giving up of your will and your way.

For centuries, Christians have called on God while full of self-will, begging and crying, “O God, send me here, send me there, give me this, give me that.” In the last days, the Holy Spirit is going to fall with great power to produce a sense of spiritual bankruptcy. We will wake up to the fact that even with all our money, brains, programs, ministries and plans, we have not even touched this world. The truth is that the church has lost ground and become weak and pitiful.

There must be surrender! Our cries must be accompanied by a willingness to give up everything in our life that is unlike Jesus Christ. This following prayer demonstrates what true supplication is all about: “Now therefore, our God, hear the prayer of your servant, and his supplications, and for the Lord’s sake cause your face to shine on your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and hear; open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city which is called by your name; for we do not present our supplications before you because of our righteous deeds, but because of your great mercies” (Daniel 9:17-18, NKJV).

The Bible says the Holy Ghost will be poured out as “…the Spirit of grace and supplication” (Zechariah 12:10, NKJV).

In the book of Titus, we read that grace is given to us as power over sin so that we can live sober, holy lives. “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” <(Titus 2:11-13).

There has been a marvelous measure of this grace in God’s people since Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has sent conviction of sin on all nations, teaching believers of every race and tongue how to forsake ungodliness and worldly lusts. The result has been a people who live soberly and righteously in this present world and who long for the coming of Jesus.

I believe Zechariah 12:10 prophecies that, in the very last hour, the Holy Spirit will fall mightily on God’s people with a spirit of grace that turns them completely from all worldliness. It will produce in them a cry for purity of heart.

A dear brother in the Lord, the head of a ministry, once called to tell me that leaders in his ministry had been gathering to seek the Lord. The Holy Spirit began exposing sin in their midst, and several of the ministry team had to be dismissed. The brother told me, “Now that the Holy Spirit has come down, there is a pressure to do right.”

His phrase struck me, and I couldn’t shake it off: a pressure to do right. When the Holy Spirit comes down and reveals sin, those who have been lukewarm or in compromise become convicted. Ministers will wake up to true “grace preaching,” the kind that convicts people of every hidden thing in their lives.

Beloved, the pressure to forsake sin and to do right is going to become more intense each day in God’s last-day church! May we all be ambassadors of grace to one another.