Herod Feared John

“Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him…” Mk 6:20

If you picked up a newspaper today and saw that John the Baptist was holding revival services at a local church, would you drop everything you’re doing to make it there?  How about Elijah?  or Peter?  Would it be because they are famous?  Or is it because you would expect to hear a man speak with authority in God?

Souls are drawn to men of God who can stand up in the power and authority of God.  Revivals are poured out on anointed vessels to whom people flock to hear the Word of God, and see the amazing outpouring of the Holy Spirit work.  They came to Jesus to be healed, but stayed to listen because He spoke with authority.

We need that authority today.  Actually, we are desperate to see a man of God stand up in that kind of power and authority.  We have a lot of nice preachers, but we don’t have anyone like John the Baptist, Elijah, or Paul.  Why is that?

Search the Scriptures and you will find that the kind of power and authority we are referring to only comes the hard way.  We all read and pray, but how many of us STORM the Throne?  We all fast, but how many of us crucify our flesh?  All this lifts us up to a higher plateau in God, but the real holy boldness, the real strength and power in God, and the genuine authority in God only comes through the fear of the Lord.  That is what gives a man strong confidence, makes his face to shine, gives him that entrance into the presence of God’s power.  Moses’ knees smote together, David’s flesh trembled, the prophet’s spoke of Him being their Dread, Paul feared and trembled.  It is the common attribute for every powerful man with authority in God.  And we need that today.

In the last 20 to 30 years, the message of the Fear of the Lord has been extracted from our pulpits and has been preached out of our hearts to the point that most Christians don’t even believe it anymore.  They’ve been told that “Love” is the most important element.  Read carefully, my friend.  The Love of God is not possible without the Fear of the Lord.  Neither is wisdom, understanding, depth, or power.  And we will not see revival, nor a strong move of God without it.

Lord, raise us up to have the kind of power and authority in You that John had, that we may see the greatest revival of all time.

 

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Answering Machine

Do You Get an Answering Machine When You Pray?

Ever wonder how in the world the Lord can really hear and pay attention to you when you pray?  Let’s face it.  He has got to be pretty busy. He has to pay attention to billions of people, what they do, what they saying, even what they’re thinking.  On top of that, He writes all this stuff down in a Book, and He can’t make any mistakes– people’s souls depend on its absolute accuracy!  If that’s not enough, He has to be mindful of the entire universe.  The rivers, the seasons, the wind and the weather, the animals and plant life, even the stars and galaxies are dependant upon His Word to be held together in order.  And you mean to tell me that He not only knows when a sparrow falls to the ground, but He actually numbers the hairs of your head?  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…  We’re talking busy here!

Is it a small wonder, then, that so many of us don’t expect a personal answer each and every time we go to pray?  When you pray, do you get a personal response, or do you get an answering machine?  “Thank you for praying.  I’m away from the prayer line right now and am either answering another prayer, or not at home right now.  Please leave your prayer at the sound of the beep, or press 0 to talk with one of the angels … Oh, and have a nice day!”

Do you pray with the attitude that you will just leave a message, and somehow, when God gets around to checking His messages, He’ll handle your request?  After all, He is pretty busy and we do have to cut Him a little slack.

Or do you pray expecting an answer?  When you call, do you ring the phone until you get an answer?  When you go to visit, do you hang on that doorbell until He answers the door?  You know He’s at home.  Answer the phone!  Open the door!  You didn’t come just to hear the cute little sound of the bell.  You need an answer!  Right here, right now!

We’ve got a contract with God that is written in Blood, and sealed with the Holy Ghost. That contract gives us rights to the Throne of God.  God is a Jew; He makes deals; and that’s part of the deal!  I’ve got it in writing.  I am not going to be satisfied with some dumb answering machine, or some angel for a secretary, or some saint.  I want the real thing, and I’m stubborn enough to hang in there until I get it.  So was the guy in Luke 11 who harangued his neighbor with his importunity until he got what he wanted.

We need powerful prayer warriors who know how to get answers from God. If there was ever a time the people of God need to stand strong, it is now in these last days. Each and every one of us needs to believe God for a personal answer when we contend before God with effective, prevailing prayers. That’s where you get your strength.  If we don’t learn to pray like that, our souls will become weak and insipid with a lack of faith and will eventually fall prey to the storms of Satan.

Elias was a man of like passions as we, and he stopped up the heavens from rain through prayer, and then he prayed again and it rained.  That’s what I call knowing how to get an answer from God!

“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” (James 5:16)

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A Crack in the Wall

It’s Saturday and I have the day off. The pastors that came to the revival meetings in Bushenyi need today to travel back home and prepare for their Sunday services. So we had 3 services yesterday instead of two. Actually, more like two and a half. I thought we were getting ready to leave after the first service and I was waiting while Peter, my host, was closing the service. Then all of a sudden, he called me up for a short message.

Surprise, surprise. But I am nothing if not ready. So I gave them my Isaiah 58 message about why your prayers and fastings are not being answered. They loved it! It was God’s answer right from the Word of God to a question they have all been wondering about.

In the evening service, I took them on a quick trip to Joel 2:23 to show them the prophesy of the coming revival. Wow were they jazzed at seeing this promise right in the Bible of a 2nd Day of Pentecost coming to their generation that would be even greater than the first one.

ThenI gave them a demonstration of how to make witnessing easy using business cards as invitations. This is the culminating point of the entire revival campaign. First recognize that your church is not in revival right now, then come to repentance for not winning souls like we are commanded, then build a fire in the church, and then go get them! Witnessing is the final step we are trying to achieve. Once they saw how easy this method was, it changed everything for them.

This campaign in Uganda is over. Each service has been on fire. They are on top of the messages. They “get it”. We have seen several miraculous healings, including two people who were blind and three that were deaf. And the closing prayers and altar calls have been overwhelming, sometimes lasting 30 to 45 minutes long. That’s a LONG time to pray at that level of intensity! They are really lit up here! And yet, something’s got to break. I have seen this kind of intensity in meeting after meeting, village after village across Africa for 16 years. If I hadn’t seen the vision of me dropping a match into the field of dry grass and watching the fire explode, I might be wondering if I had made a mistake. But I heard the voice of the Lord tell me that the field of harvest was His people in Kenya, and because it stretched across Africa from Kenya to Nigeria, that meant all of Africa was going to see this explosion of holy fire.

Revival is coming according to Joel 2:23 and Isaiah 32, with hints in several other places, and I believe it will start here in Africa. No where else have I seen the intense hunger to hear the Word of God. The question is, do they have the desperate willingness to pay the price that a true revival requires, and do I have enough steam to see it to the end? Revival is not free, and neither is it cheap.

There was another vision that the Lord reminded me of that I had almost 20 years ago. I was hammering at a great stone wall with a sledge hammer. The wall was about 10 feet tall and was dark and solid. I kept hammering and hammering until I was completely worn out, wondering if the wall would ever crack. I was about to give up when finally on my last stroke there appeared a tiny crack at the top of the stone.

I am at that point. These last few trips have completely worn me out to where I can barely climb a flight of stairs much less deliver the intensity and passion that I pour into these messages. The responses are always great wherever I go, but where, oh where, is the outbreak of the Great African Revival? When will that crack begin to splinter that great stone wall?

Maybe on this next swing.

“Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” Jeremiah 23:29

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She Ran!

It has been almost a week since I have written about this trip. It has been explosive every day, and each day I try to write, but the days are so exhausting that all I can do is put if off until tomorrow. Or the day after. And now, its a week later.

On the 2nd day at the rural town of Ruburizi, we had a parade! That’s right, a parade.

It was at the start of the 2nd service when there was a disturbance in the back of the room. People were moving out of the way and there was a banging noise coming this way. And then I saw a contingent of Ugandan Army soldiers, complete with drums, trumpets, trombones and an old beat-up tuba, marching through the crowd toward the pulpit.

Yeah, I’m a little shocked. That’s not quite the word to describe it, but you can just imagine.

They marched right up to the front and began to play a gospel song, and then led the entire congregation, 300 to 400 strong, out into the streets to march through the entire town with everyone from the church following. What a scene! I have never in my 70 years ever seen anything like it.

Obviously, we started the evening service late, but no one seemed to care. After the parade, everyone filed back into the church. As a matter of fact, we may have picked up a few strays. I don’t remember how late the services lasted, but the intensity was now set. This was not a polite, accommodating crowd; this was a loud, hands raised, hallelujah-shouting, boisterous crowd. Just the way I like it. This was about revival, parade or no parade, and these people were excited with a message that not only clearly described what revival really is, but also what must be done to get one.

I find that many Americans do not realize how well Africans understand deeply spiritual issues. They understand better than many Western preachers that revival is not free. The soft messages they get from Americans of “Come to Jesus”, “God is going to bless His people”, and Jesus Loves You” make for fine services to encourage everyone, but they will not bring real serious change. Only a true message of repentance will do that. I have heard Africans tell me so many times that Americans no longer bring the same message that they brought 50 years ago. We have slid into a kinder, gentler message of grace, love, and blessings. Sounds nice, but they know better. The message that both Jesus and John the Baptist brought is what brings the revolution that spawns any true revival.

We closed the revival meetings on the third day. The place was packed. I guess the parade did its work and made enough of an impact to bring even more people. There must have been 500 people packed into this huge open building. It was great, as if the momentum was still building and this was the culmination.

And then, as we were done, a woman came up with problems in her legs. I got on my knees and laid hands upon her hands where the pain was and prayed. Gone. Just Ike always. She believed God, and He heard her and healed her.

And then there was another. And another. I looked up and saw a dozen or so people heading my way. Oh boy, here it comes. Normally, once the healing starts, it is like an oil that flows. You can sense it flowing (it’s hard to describe what that feels like), and once it starts flowing, everybody starts coming up to get healed. It usually means another hour or two before we will be done. But not this time. Only a couple dozen came to the front while most everyone else was heading out the back.

And then here came the blind girl, led by hand by her caretaker. Now, I have prayed over six blind people and seen each of them healed. Amazing, incredible miracles. But I have to tell you, I am still intimidated by the prospect of praying for such an monumental miracle of God. Yes, i realize it is God doing the miracle and I am just an instrument of His power, but Jesus didn’t tell us to ask the Father to do the healing; He told us to do it.

So I did what I always do — I laid hands on her eyes and I took power and dominion over all sickness, all pain, all darkness, and all blindness and I commanded the blindness to depart and claimed the healing power of God.

She just stood there. Did it work? Can you see? If not, we will pray again.

“How many fingers to I have up?”

“Three”

Bingo! She was healed! Not only did God heal her blindness, but I found out later she was also deaf, and God healed her deafness at the same time. How cool is that?

Later on, when my host, Pastor Peter, went back to the church, she ran out of the church to meet him, looking for me. No longer was she being led by the hand as she carefully stumbled over the rough ground. No, she ran!

Each time that I have seen the blind healed, I get choked up when I hear that cry, “I can see!”. It strikes me that this is what revival is all about. The church, like Lazarus, coming out of darkness into the Light of God’s Word to bring life, light, and salvation to a world that is lost in the dark.

I hope I never lose that feeling.

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