Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Inner Strength (04/20/06)
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TITLE: Dear Minister | Previous Challenge Entry
By Maria Catterick
04/23/06 -
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ADD TO MY FAVORITES
You have toiled and laboured faithfully among your people. You have seen a number of new converts and have celebrated their growth and their passion for God. You have watched the saints serving one another. These things have brought you satisfaction and pleasure.
However some things have not gone according to plan. There have been those who seem to attend every meeting yet seem to fail to grow and change. There have been others who go up to the altar every time that you invite people forward, yet you see lack of growth.
Most perplexing is the issue that when you hold prayer meetings it is one of the least attended meetings of the week. The coffee mornings and social clubs seem far more popular.
Your heart is to see growth yet the community is still largely unreached. You want your church to make a difference in the city, yet your influence is restricted to those who are believers already.
It is time for the reality check. Unless you are saturated in prayer and are baptised in anguish for your church, for your neighbourhood, for your city then your labour is in vain. Your church is not yours it is God’s and unless you seek God’s vision, agenda and strategy, you will not have the ability to accomplish the kingdom work.
If you have not laid before God and permitted him to break your heart with his burdens for the city with its broken down walls and its gates burned with fire, you are never going to obtain His plan and strategy for its repair. You will toil, you will see some fruit but not the actual potential of what God wants to do through you.
Where is your revivalist heart?
• Where is your ability to cry out to God to ask Him to come down and be amongst us?
• Where is your ability to weep wretchedly for those without hope?
• Where is your ability to wrestle with God so that He would come and bless?
• Where is your ability to cease striving and once and for all lay in the dust on your face before God and say unless you come there is no hope?
But what if God starts changing your church?
• What if you lay down your church on the altar and He says that you are not allowed anywhere near it again?
• What if God takes you seriously and starts paring down your activities so that your ‘favourite’ ones will no longer take place?
• What if fair weathered members of your congregation who also happen to have the biggest tithes, decide to walk?
• What if all the happy messages about God’s love and grace are changed into messages about God’s displeasure at sin in the camp?
• What if He takes a large amount of the singing and worship time away and makes a call to extended times of prayer and fasting?
• What if He asks you to tarry until revival comes?
Would you do it?
The altar is laid. It has always been laid and there is still some space…
Will you not dare to say to God…
• ‘Your kingdom come Your will be done.’
• ‘You are the head of this church.’
• ‘You are the Lord of my life.’
• ‘I repent for attempting to build my church in my way?’
• ‘I repent for my indifference to the lost in my city?’
Consider the possibilities?
• What if multitudes are saved because you obtain God’s strategy?
• What if you breakthrough in prayer and see the power of God in action?
• What if you fast and pray for revival and it comes?
What is your response?
Do you have the courage and inner strength and conviction to go against the flow? Lay down your life and your church upon the altar so that God can bring His power and anointing to change you, your church and even your city…
Signed,
A Saint of Old
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