Tag: Church

A.W. Tozer, on Having a Personal Revival

How to Have a Personal Revival,
Serious Repentance and Restitution, and
Steps to Spiritual Growth.

by A.W. Tozer

1) Put yourself in the way of the blessing. 

It is a mistake to look for grace to visit us as a kind of benign magic, or to expect God’s help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. There are plainly marked paths that lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them.  To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.

2) Do a thorough job of repenting. 

Do not hurry to get it over with.  Hasty repentance means shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life.  Let godly sorrow do her healing work. Until we allow the consciousness of sin to wound us, we will never develop a fear of evil. It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.

3) Make restitution whenever possible. 

If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intention to pay, so your honesty will be above question. If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation. As fully as possible make that crooked things straight.

*****

Thought 

Repentance and restitution result when we seriously reflect on what God shows us in His Word. What is it of which we need to repent and is there restitution to be made?

 

Scripture

“Bring forth fruit that is consistent with repentance [let your lives prove your change of heart];”

Matthew 3:8 (Amplified Bible)

Prayer

My tendency, Lord, is not to take seriously my sin that hurts other people and to leave unrepaired the damage I have left in the lives of others. Make me sensitive, Lord!

 

tozer
Aiden Wilson Tozer was born on April 21, 1897, on a small farm in Western Pennsylvania, the third of six children. And although he would inspire millions with his preaching and writing, he was given very little education during his childhood.

A. W. Tozer was 66 when he died of a heart attack on May 12, 1963. Buried in a small cemetery in Akron, his tombstone simply and appropriately reads, “A Man of God.” He left behind many books that continue to give Christians encouragement and guidance. His writings are as fresh today as when he was alive. His honest and colloquial humor has been known to sweep up congregations in gales of laughter. And his wisdom has left them silent and stunned. For almost 50 years Tozer walked with God, and even though he is gone, he continues to minister to those who are eager to experience God.

 

Thinking Without My “Tin Foil Hat”

As we think of mental illness an immediate question arises:  what is “serious” mental illness, and how is it different from the normal issues that are part of everyday life?

Wearing a tin-foil hat is the delusion that those who wear them are some how protected from space rays or conspiracy theories. Crazy, I know. But some believers approach mental illness in this way.
Brother and sister, we’re called to think biblically. Ephesians 6:17 tells us that the “helmet of salvation” is the only head gear we’re called to wear. It tells us that the ‘warriors’ protection is God’s salvation. We are protected by a helmet of truth.
We must educate ourselves, through our community, and knowledgeable Christian leadership, to serve the broken that are in our midst.  This figure includes a wide variety of disorders, these stats are compelling:
  • Severe mental illnesses affect 5.4 percent of adults,
  • Some 22 to 23 percent of the U.S. adult population—or 44 million people-“have diagnosable mental disorders”
  • Such statistics only begin to capture the level of pain many of our fellow believers endure daily.

 One person wrote of the broad reach of mental illness:

“I have a thousand faces, and I am found in all races. Sometimes rich, sometimes poor, sometimes young, sometimes old. I am a person with the disabling pain of a broken brain.”

We must find an acceptable form of understanding about mental illness if we are going to find our way to those who are quite frankly, very definitely lost.

Both Scripture and eldership, (healthy counseling), should be an active component to recovery. The sacrifical sacrifice of Jesus, through His blood must be taught again to the afflicted. Mental disease needs to be as understood in the same context as a physical one (e.g. diabeties or cancer).

Discernment must be sought as the whole person often needs to be taught. Issues like guilt, unforgiveness and pride are a big part of seeing people set free. Issues of past trauma like sexual and phyical abuse are factors as well.

 Your support of Brokenbelievers.com through your prayers and encouragement goes a long way. Linda and I need your help in this. We both need wisdom and a gentle hand on our lives. As we reach out, a ‘tinfoil hat’ is definitely not part of our acceptable head gear. 

The Father’s love embraces the torn and wounded consistently. This is the key to the healing of a broken heart.

Martyrdom Maybe?

martyers

Believers must consider the issues of being salt and light in a pagan culture who refuses to claim Christ as Lord.

The Words of Jesus demand our complete response to the Gospel. The temptation is often reducing the call to something easier and more comfortable. We don’t really want to give up the world’s system for all that the Kingdom of God declares to be true.

It’s imperative as disciples that we fully understand that Jesus is Lord, not a political leader–not a nation or a political party. We’ve become citizen’s of something that is superior to a patriotic physical reality. We don’t fit. (Philippians 3:20 and Ephesians 2:19.)

Steps to faithful living as we seperate ourselves from the World’s way of doing things really must be considered:

In order to do this must make the choice:

  • To be true. Endure. Continue to pray and witness. Be faithful to Him.
  • To be prayerful. At least working on it. I know prayer is supremely powerful, linking my inadequacy with God’s capability.
  •  To be joyful. Sing often. Thanksgiving all the time. Our tormentors hate joyful hearts. It seems to disturb the darkness that is part of sin and rebellion.
  • To be real. Being faithful to Jesus. No lies, no illusions. Every aspect of our lives is to be the truth. We understand that Jesus is alive, and He is Lord.
  • To be giving. Time or talent, it’s a stringent test of a believer’s maturity. Money is secondary. We serve Jesus with an open hand.
  • To be convinced. We need to become fully convinced of the message of the gospel, and to be sure of His love. Not easy, but always needful. 

In the time of ancient Rome, Christians were in the limelight, it seems, but only as martyrs. Believers made a definite decison to die rather than renounce their faith. Often faithfulness was especially hard–one had to count a cost to follow.

It’s good to understand the world never burned a casual Christian at the stake.

The lions in the Coliseum made quick work of the Christian’s faith. Thousands of believers were burned at the stake. But these martyrs succeeded in reaching many by their witness, and a pagan empire was brought to Christ, en masse!

Someone said that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Perhaps martyrdom will be our path to reach America with the Gospel.  The New Testament word for “witness” is martyr.  It very well may be that our blood will be the seed for a new generation of believers. It should come as no surprise. 

martyrdomI preached once on the UC Berkeley campus.  It’s a  challenging place; a condensed stronghold of a godless ‘intellectualism’ (if you can imagine that).  There is always a few people that for the most part bright and engaging. 

But as I got ready to leave, I met a university professor.  He looked at me in his tweed jacket and sweater vest and said something I will never forget.  “Too bad we can’t feed you to the lions”.  That’s all he said. When he spoke to me it was was a flat-calm statement–terse, cold and frightening–it was eerie and quite weird– mostly because I knew he meant it. 

In this ‘enlightened’ campus, there was a coldness–a hatred that I never encountered in the areas of inner San Francisco–Polk Street. or the Tenderloin’ where I preached also.

True, the Haight/Ashbury neighborhood in SF can be a little ‘rough’ at times, I once was punched in the face while preaching by an angry ex-believer, but to be honest, nothing compared to ‘Berzerkeley‘ (that’s what we called it.)

In three years of full-time evangelism I never met another man that was as hateful to the gospel of Jesus Christ as this professor in Berkeley. This incident was a brazen and deliberate calculation against the Gospel. Perhaps persecution by hardcore intellectuals will become the catalyst for our martyrdom to come. (?!).

No matter what happens. We are in God’s hands. Period. 

Our obedience to Jesus should be a decision we must make right now.  We can’t just hope to stand, or hope to be faithful. We must actively plan for persecution. This could very well be our time. It’s coming. And please get ready, you must watch and pray.

“But others trusted God and were beaten to death, preferring to die rather than turn from God and be free—trusting that they would rise to a better life afterwards.”

Hebrews 11:35

 

Post art “The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer,”  by Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904)

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A Mother’s Love for You

“I will comfort you there

   like a mother

   comforting her child.” 

Isaiah 66:13

Israel has questioned God’s treatment of them. 

They’ve determined that God has acted capriciously and that He can’t be trusted.  They’ve concluded that He’s uncaring and hard to reach.  People build up these misconceptions and ideas, and it seems that nothing can set it right.  And certainly Satan, our accuser, emphasizes this

The tender imagery of a mother holding a child is something we can visualize and understand.  It has an universal wallop.   God specifically chooses that image to communicate what His true feelings are.  He chooses an example that’ll convey the burdens and thoughts of His heart.

God loves people. 

We often misinterpret or misconstrue His dealings and attitudes.  But God points to the imagery of a mom with a child to say, “That’s me with you”. This particular verse speak of “comforting”.  The word carries the connotation of  “soothing” or “cooing, calming, quieting”.  When a young one is agitated or upset, a mother is typically the only one who can make a difference.

We live in a world that has distorted and belittled God and the church. 

We have satanic influences that disturb and defraud many.  They’re many ugly misconceptions and fears that confuse the truth.  Many feel that Christianity is a hokey-sham with little to commend it to the real needs of man.  I know for certain that this is not true!

Brokenbeliever, let God remake Himself in your thinking, reading and worship.  Learn to see from His perspective.  Redo and remodel your thoughts and perceptions.  He is waiting with His motherly arms, to sooth and to calm you. 

He can be trusted.