Wake Up Church! Arise!

Wake Up Church! Arise!                                                                                             6 Apr 11

Saints, 

What does the Father think about the church? She is lukewarm. She is too distracted with busyness and business. She has lost her first Love. Friends, we desperately need more of God. Most of us would admit that as we read the scriptures with honesty and humility we see a difference between the Christianity in God’s Word and the Christianity we find ourselves immersed in.

You may be thinking, “Well, Steve that is a bold thought. What do you mean?”

Before you read on, today, please take a moment to pray a specific prayer. This is not an easy prayer for even as I write this the tears are flowing. Dear brothers and sisters I am so convicted about this—it hurts. It hurts because the father has graciously shown me more clearly what some Christ-followers have meant when they say, “Following Christ can cost you.” I am beginning to see this more clearly now. Even so, I am sure that there remains much more to learn. Yes, Lord Jesus, bring it on! “Father, if it means others might come to you and drink of Your living water…bring it on.”

Let me explain a little better. Many of you know about Babak, our Iranian friend who suffered persecution for choosing faith in Christ. Also, I am sure that many of you have heard of Brother Yun, our Chinese brother who suffered much persecution to follow Christ. The Father has shown me that these two men and men and women like them are not the rare exception in Christianity as I once thought. No, friends, truly, following Christ will cost us. Many of us shy away from going deeper with God, because we are afraid. Yes, even as I write this, I sense within me a twinge of fear about what following our dear Savior might mean for me and my family. So, we come to the main point today. I want you to pray with complete humility and honesty the following prayer,

“Father, I am Your servant. Please use me as You see fit to impact Your kingdom and glorify your name!”

Why does this prayer seem difficult to truly pray? I submit to you that we don’t like the idea that our comfortable life-style or “steady-state” might be disrupted. Isn’t this true? Yes, it is. As we look at Christ followers whom God has graciously used both in the Scriptures and throughout history, we see this common thread—humble and complete submission to God.  Let’s take Mary, the Mother of Jesus for example.

Yes, this prayer is a lot like what Mary said to Gabriel, after Gabriel explained that she would become pregnant. As we look at the Christmas story every year, at least in the American culture, we tend to picture a nice comfortable warm glow around the manger scene. Everyone is smiling and a sense of amazing peace abounds. Let’s take a moment, however, to go back to the night Gabriel appeared to Mary.

Brother Yun explains this well on page 55 of his book Living Water, 

“When Mary said, ““May it be to me as you said,”” do you think she expected her submission to God’s will would be easy? I don’t think so. She knew that becoming pregnant outside of marriage would result in being misunderstood and rejected by society. Mary was undoubtedly aware that she might be accused of adultery and stoned to death, as the Jewish law demanded. She knew people would mock and despise her.”

This is the point that we don’t want to grapple with. We are comfortable. We like our lives the way they are. We feel in control. We sense (though often a false sense) peace and well-being. I submit to you that for many of us, we aggressively pursue our own comfort and do whatever we must to maintain it even if we must resist God’s will to follow Him in change.  So, what am I saying?

I am saying that many of us in American culture Christianity have somehow allowed ourselves to be duped by the enemy. Yes, I mean duped. We, like the church at Sardis, sleep. We embrace a form of Christianity which is not Christianity at all—a comfortable, easy, share-your-faith-once-a-year, pray-once-a-week, imitation of what God designed. Dear brothers and sisters, these thoughts hurt, I know. But we must face them. We must right now, nail down a stake in our lives. No more--no more watered down, fluffy, soft, comfortable, easy Christianity—it is not real. It does not exist.

Let’s look at this issue from another angle. If you are like me, you have thought that the “kind” of Christianity we see in India, Pakistan, Iran or Asia is rare and unfortunate. I mean, that it is unfortunate that those poor Christians have to live with such harsh persecution. We envision a scale of Christianity with the style of faith we have as the goal. We envision comfortable buildings, many programs, and a comfortable amount of baptisms per year and think, “This is where those “poor” believers need to be—like us.” Dear friends, no, if that is how we think, we are thinking backwards. We desperately need our minds to be further transformed by the renewing of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit. We need to see clearly the Christianity that God designed, not our comfortable revision of it. The fact of the matter is that we do not live for now. If we are truly Christ-followers, we live for eternity. Now is a moment--eternity is forever. Mary knew this! Babak knows this! Brother Yun knows this! We must know this!

Let’s look at a description of our Asian brothers and sisters as Brother Yun compares the Asian believers to some other believers. Don’t look at these and think, “Those poor believers.” No friends, we need to see them as the true example of Christ-followers. In reality, we are the ones who need missionaries such as these to come to us and wake us up! 

Brother Yun describes His Asian brothers and sisters on page 232,

“Many Christians today are deceived. Somehow they think that being saved means they can sit back and enjoy the Lord and do nothing else while they wait for Him to come again. This attitude is so strange to me that I find it astonishing. In Asia, all the Christians I know are busy working for the Lord, preaching the gospel to people nearby and those far away, teaching and encouraging the saints and generally doing all they can to advance the kingdom. In Asia, every believer is an evangelist.”

Brother Yun continues on pg 56,

“Our loving heavenly Father is looking for people who are willing to become pregnant with His presence, vision, and power. Don’t make any more excuses. Don’t say you are too young or too old, for God wants to work in you and through you in a mighty way.”

Friends, we need the Father to renew our minds—to reconstruct our Christian DNA. We are not what we should be!

Church, Awake! Chase after the Father! Drop everything that is not given you from God. We do not have time to play church. We must engage in the battle roaring all around us. If someone must call you out—may God call you out! Arise! Storm the gates of hell as you were designed and as you are empowered. Pray! Pray! Pray! Jesus promised to answer prayer in His name-pray! Paul made it clear after you have donned all of the spiritual armor…PRAY! (Ephesians 6: 10-19) Our enemy is not flesh and blood. We must stand firm--we must pray. Church, wake up. Our primary objective is not to merely affect the United States—our primary objective is to spread the gospel to the world, make disciples, and be Jesus’ witnesses. If you are a pastor, please do not open your mouth without a fresh Word from God for your flock, empowered by the Holy Spirit—don’t presume to use a “canned” sermon from years ago because it is simpler that way. No, pastor, fall to your knees. Pray over your flock. Receive the message from the Father. Boldly proclaim God’s word, not yours! Ask God to fill you with the Holy Spirit like He filled Peter at Pentecost.

If you are a hearer of the Word, Arise, hear God’s message—live it. Become it. Don’t hear God’s Word and walk away unchanged. Wake up church! Now! We don’t have time to sleep in a lukewarm comma.

I am writing this as carefully and as graciously as possible. I write these words first and foremost to me!

Compelled to pray and desperate for God, Steve