My friend the evangelist Nicky Cruz calls the church a Holy Ghost hospital. I couldn’t agree more. The church is and should be a place of healing. In my decades as a pastor, I’ve counseled a lot of people who needed restoration after lifelong heartbreak.
Is your life a spark or a torch? When it comes to our walk with Christ, the Bible shows us there is a crucial difference between the two, and that difference determines whether our walk is pleasing to him. We see this difference in the lives of Saul and David.
“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17).
Most Christians know what the Bible says about God's great love for his children. Yet even after years of walking faithfully with Jesus, many have never learned to appropriate that great love. Sadly, there are dedicated servants of God who have never enjoyed the glorious experience and benefits of knowing the Father's love. And nothing saddens God's heart more.
In my years of ministry I have identified three main hindrances that keep Christians from entering fully into the special love our Father has for us.
For years, I have been faithfully warning of a soon-to-come worldwide economic holocaust. Right now, we are seeing this coming to pass around the globe. I have warned that Christians are going to suffer, that there will be great loss and hardship, and already this is happening. Multitudes of precious saints all over the word are now enduring great financial and mental stress.
As awful as these things are, none of them should be the focus of our energies and ministry. Rather, we must continue proclaiming the love of God the Father and the tender mercy of our Savior Jesus for us.
If you are a Christian who seeks God with your whole heart, you are a target.
This message is for believers who are experiencing a season of severe testing. I’m speaking to those who endure deep trials and are worn out mentally, physically and spiritually. We live in a time of great stress, when trials can come upon us suddenly and leave us overwhelmed, weary and confused.
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).
“But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
“And be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23).
These are all exhortations from the apostle Paul. He’s telling the people of God, “Let the mind that is in Christ — the very thinking of Jesus — be your thinking also. His mindset is the one we all are to seek.”
When I read about the exploits of godly men in the Old Testament, my heart burns. These servants were so burdened for the cause of God’s name, they did powerful works that baffle the minds of most Christians today.
I know of one Bible scholar who has discovered more than a hundred ways in which Joseph was a type of Jesus Christ. Yet, as much as I believe Joseph was a type of Christ, I also believe He was a type of last-day remnant — a people whom God is raising up right now to show His church how to break out of its spiritual famine!
After seventy years of captivity, the Jewish people heard the prophet's cry: "Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye" (Isaiah 48:20).
Jeremiah came forth preaching, "In those days, and in that time...the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward...remove out of the midst of Babylon" (Jeremiah 50:4-5,8). "Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniquity" (Jeremiah 51:6).
