Devotions

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.

The more I pursue God, the more I dive into knowing his nature and character, the more it transforms my life. His glory is enhanced in my life each time I seek him. This isn’t a one-time event; rather, it’s every moment of every day. A member of my staff recently put it this way: “Walking with God is a daily, relentless, lifelong pursuit of him.”

This is what I like to call life-giving theology. It isn’t bookworm theology or lifeless doctrine. Rather, it’s seeking to know the hidden parts of God’s nature; it’s the heart saying, “Who are you, God? I want to know more.”

When you think of a gold mine, what comes to mind? An image of miners in hard hats operating machinery deep underground? A close-up of the glistening vein in the rock, like in the movies? The process is actually much more complex, and the actual extraction is only one step. There is extensive exploration and development, preliminary prospecting, geochemical testing, sample analysis, structural mapping, drilling—it's a long list.

In our journey to know more of God, we sometimes want to go straight to the mother lode, but the richness is in the process. To be sure, Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection guarantee us direct access to the throne of grace and God himself at any time. However, that holy inner court of his presence is just the entrance, the beginning point of a grand spiritual journey into his heart and mind. The pursuit is filled with exploration and development, testing and analysis. Every step reveals more of him, shapes our character, matures our spirit and strengthens our faith.

Writer Jon Bloom of Desiring God says about the Word, “The wonderful thing about this mine is that we often find treasure in unexpected places. God loves to lace and layer revelatory riches in what at first seems like a fairly straightforward historical narrative.” When we see life through God’s eyes, our once-limited view of life is expanded with new ideas and possibilities.

In 1 Corinthians, we read, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9, ESV). Ask the Lord today to open your imagination, to show you how to live in the wonder and adventure of knowing him.

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.}