The cloud, that misty covering that ofttimes falls upon God's people, is not a blot in God's handwriting. With Jesus, clouds come as a part of His train of glory. Clouds are really not our enemies; they do not hide His face; they are not warnings of an approaching storm. Once you understand that clouds are instruments of divine love, they should no longer be feared.
One thousand years ago, just about this time, the world faced it's darkest hour. According to Miller's Church History, the church was wicked, apostate, and very weak. In fact, it's very life was ebbing away. Mohammedanism was growing rapidly; Europe was being overrun by Hungarians who massacred multitudes; fear and violence were everywhere on earth. All mankind had become desolate and panic-stricken. There were multiplied calamities on all sides — terrible famines — indescribable disasters. Plagues and pestilences had killed countless millions.
I want to talk about a horrible abomination in the house of God that is not being dealt with. I have felt the breathing of God's wrath against this sin in my own life. The Holy Spirit has taken me into the depths of this hideous thing, exposed it to me — and called me to preach about it!
It has to do with the other side of prayer! The dark, evil, sinful side! The abominable kind of prayer! Prayer from the hearts and lips of unconsecrated, unholy Christians.
God's ways seem like paradoxes to the human mind. He says, To live, you must die. To find your life, you must lose it. To become strong, you must first become weak.
One of the greatest paradoxes of all is this — to be truly free you must become bound. To gain the greatest liberty in God one must give up all rights and become a lifelong bondservant to the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a glorious love–slavery that leads to the highest form of freedom and liberty. It is a voluntary surrender born out of love and affection, causing one to consider servitude even greater than sonship.
I stood in the lobby of a hotel recently, watching singles file one by one into a huge banquet hall. The sign outside the hall read: Creative Singles' Party. It was a Sunday evening, supposedly the most depressing day for lonely people.
The Holy Spirit has been prompting me to speak out about suicide. At first, I rebelled against preaching about such a morbid subject, but there was no way I could shake off the urgency to warn young people about the horror of self-destruction. Consequently, for the past few weeks I have been preaching about suicide in all our city-wide crusades.
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As we begin 2017, I believe it would bring great pleasure to the heart of God if we would fall to our knees and ask him what he would desire to see done differently in our church and our own lives.
“And so it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:45-47, NKJV).
As I read Paul’s letters to the Corinthian church, I stop and ponder these words: “My preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4, my italics).
When I was a young minister, I sought the Lord for clear manifestations of his Spirit. I prayed, “Oh, God, fill me with the power of your Spirit and give me a convicting message. Demonstrate your power. Shake the house as you did at Pentecost, so that people run to the altar and fall in reverence before you.”
If you desire to walk righteously before the Lord, rest assured you will be tested. In fact, the deeper your walk with Christ the more intense your testing will be. The Bible makes this clear: “The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits… When they fall, they shall be aided with a little help… And some of those of understanding shall fall, to refine them, purify them, and make them white, until the time of the end; because it is still for the appointed time” (Daniel 11:32, 34-35).
