Evel

At times we wonder where we or the world is going to end up in a generation or so. Who among us has never thought this? In many ways we are just being human with our frailties and hunger for control. But in another way we are replacing God and wondering if he is in control after all. I stumbled on this article on 'Evel Knievel' the other day and it really in a small way declares the sovereignty of God. I hope you enjoy, as I did.

On Palm Sunday, hundreds responded to Robert "Evel" Knievel's testimony by asking to be baptized on the spot at Crystal Cathedral. Speaking alongside the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, Knievel told the congregation in Orange County, California, how he had refused for 68 years to accept Jesus Christ as Lord. He believed in God, but he couldn't walk away from the gold and the gambling and the booze and the women. "I don't know why I fought it so hard," he said. "I just did." But Knievel knew people were praying for him, including his daughter's church, his ex-wife's church, and the hundreds of people who wrote letters urging him to believe. And then something indescribable happened during Daytona Bike Week this March.

"I don't know what in the world happened. I don't know if it was the power of the prayer or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it just—the power of God in Jesus just grabbed me. … All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ. I did, I believed in him! … I rose up in bed and, I was by myself, and I said, 'Devil, Devil, you bastard you, get away from me. I cast you out of my life.' … I just got on my knees and prayed that God would put his arms around me and never, ever, ever let me go."
Pastor Robert A. Schuller, who took over for his father last year, looked out on the church and noticed most people were sobbing. He couldn't simply continue with the service's script and proceed to the offering. "I went up front, and I said, 'I believe there is somebody who needs to be baptized here. Maybe up on that balcony or by that door or by that wall. So come forward,'" Schuller told CT. "We started singing 'Amazing Grace,' and I started baptizing people, baptizing them as fast as I could. I had a little candy dish of water. 'What's your name? Okay, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit'—crying the whole time and going to the next one."

Schuller continued this for 30 minutes, not realizing that four other pastors were baptizing the convicted just as quickly. During the second service, the response repeated itself. Together, Schuller estimates, between 500 and 800 people committed or rededicated their lives to God.
"I don't want to make grandiose claims; I'm not a prophet," said Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, who spoke with Schuller the next morning. "But I think it is a sign that in God's own sovereign goodness, he sends these moments to remind us that we are all sinners and reaches out to us in surprising ways. This is something the Christian community in general, and particularly the evangelical community, needs to take very seriously."

Revival trade

Mouw also met with couples from Crystal Cathedral who described the spontaneous response as one of the most spiritually significant events they had ever experienced. Historically, religious awakenings have played a significant role in Christianity, particularly evangelicalism. Charles Finney, a leader of the Second Great Awakening, revolutionized revivalism by arguing that churches could incite revivals through faithfulness and diligence.
"Since that point forward at least, it has become a trade; it has become a profession; it has become a series of techniques," said Joel Carpenter, director of the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin College. "It is fair for any discerning Christian, when he hears a revival is happening, to be a little skeptical, not to be cynical, but to ask questions that are meant to help discern what is going on there spiritually."
At historic moments when God seems to be moving mountains, the emotional and physical strain of a revival can be exhausting, said Edith Blumhofer, director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, noting the reaction of missionaries in Korea at the start of the 20th century.
"After it was over, the people said they never wanted to go through a revival again," she said. "It was so agonizing, there was such depth, such conviction for sin, and the things people felt they needed to confess publicly was so difficult."
Blumhofer said that though revivals sometimes are considered evangelistic tools, their real role—whether planned or spontaneous—is to reinvigorate church regulars. "It is a deepening conviction of one's sinfulness, one's need of grace, one's need of God that transforms—and then evangelism flows from that."

Powerful Hour

A Reformed Church in America congregation with no walls and 10,000 windows, Crystal Cathedral was founded in 1955 by Robert H. Schuller. Shaped like a star with its points aimed north, south, east, and west, the church reaches people in more than 100 countries via the Hour of Power, the largest component of Crystal Cathedral Ministries. The video from the Palm Sunday service will be broadcast on April 22.
The ministry, though, has been struggling recently. A week before Christmas 2004, the congregation's longtime orchestra conductor killed himself in a church bathroom. And last year, revenues for Hour of Power, which has a $40 million operating budget, were $3 million short, Schuller said. But he said he and his leaders hadn't been praying for a revival. They simply had been praying—for the congregation and the community, for tragedies and triumphs. Now Schuller is trying to discern God's response.
"It may be too early to call it a revival," Schuller said. "But it was clearly a moving of the Holy Spirit, and everybody has been talking about it. Our congregation and church keeps saying, 'Okay, where do we go from here?' I'm not exactly sure. But I think the Holy Spirit will assist me in the doing the right thing."

Integrity

I was recently witness to someone doing an incredibly hard thing, it was not something light but really life altering. The situation faced was indeed not simple. It was a case of the right thing or the easy thing! It's in these moments we find out where our trust really lies. Recently a survey was done in the US and this is what they came up with.

What are you willing to do for $10,000,000?
Two-thirds of Americans polled would agree to at least one, some to several of the following:

• Would abandon their entire family (25%)
• Would abandon their church (25%)
• Would become prostitutes for a week or more (23%)
• Would give up their American citizenships (16%)
• Would leave their spouses (16%)
• Would withhold testimony and let a murderer go free (10%)
• Would kill a stranger (7%)
• Would put their children up for adoption (3%)

You may think that this sounds absurd, but faced with this temptation where would you find yourself standing? Would any of you start to think, "Oh well I can find a new Church!' or "It's only a trial, He will get caught soon enough"? Perhaps not. But take things down to the more base area of life and consider the chance of claiming an extra few dollars on your tax return that is not really true, or even closer to home some of us live a life at home and another within the church or around fellow Christians. We abandon who we are and never face the truth of change. Or should I say the challenge of change?

(Proverbs 11:3) "The integrity of the upright shall guide them; but the crookedness of traitors shall destroy them."

It's so much easier to walk the way of the world and take the easy out, but as the verse above declares our integrity shall guide us. In other words if our ways are fixed on the principles of God our ways are plain, our direction clear and our life sure. If we live this way it's not hard but indeed easy, because our ways are set and fixed. I truely believe that those decisions made in life will cause us to grow or stagnate in our walk with God. It is after all about faith, and whether we really trust God or not.

Well those are my thoughts

Pastor Rob.

God, where are you?

This is from a book (Darlene Deibler Rose, Evidence of Things Not Seen )

Darlene Deibler Rose. Rose was a young American missionary to the jungles of New Guinea who survived four years of captivity in Japanese prison camps during World War II. When Rose tells her story, she describes how a powerful sense of God's loving presence sustained her through beatings, horrible illnesses, the cruelties of her captors, and the death of her husband.
Rose relates an experience that brings the answer to this question into focus. At the time, she was in solitary confinement and severely malnourished. In spite of her outward difficulties, she had continued to feel inner peace. Then, she writes,
"Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I felt enveloped in a spiritual vacuum. 'Lord, where have You gone? Why have You withdrawn Your presence from me? O Father--' in panic I jumped to my feet, my heart frantically searching for a hidden sin, for a careless thought, for any reason why my Lord should have withdrawn his presence from me. My prayers, my expressions of worship, seemed to go no higher than the ceiling; there seemed to be no sounding board. I prayed for forgiveness, for the Holy Spirit to search my heart. To none of my petitions was there any apparent response."Rose spent the night crying out to God, searching for a reason for why He had withdrawn her ability to feel his presence. When no answer came, she prayed:
"Lord, I believe all that the Bible says. I do walk by faith and not by sight. I do not need to feel You near, because your Word says You will never leave me nor forsake me. Lord, I confirm my faith; I believe.

The words of Hebrews 11:1 welled up, unbeckoned, to fill my mind: 'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' ...Evidence not seen--that was what I put my trust in--not in feelings or moments of ecstasy, but in the unchanging Person of Jesus Christ.... In a measure I felt that I understood what Job meant when he declared, 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him' (13:15). Job knew that he could trust God, because Job knew the character of the One in Whom he had put his trust. It was faith stripped of feelings, faith without trappings."I believe that we can feel God's presence, and that we should eagerly seek it. But we cannot base our faith on a foundation of emotional experience. If we base our faith on feelings, when the feelings go, the faith will flee. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Faith is also being sure of what we do not feel. If a commitment to Christ assured us that we would always feel his presence, faith would not be required of us. The story of Darlene Deibler Rose testifies to the reality of the Holy Spirit--the Comforter, who will never leave us nor forsake us. Yet there are those times through her life and through mine where there has been and will be the incredible tangible presence of God.

Its in the hard empty times that our faith grows, and in the times when we cry out the most is when we realise God has called us to grow up into the likeness of the Son. We cannot do that nursing from His side, but walking out in faith and KNOWING in the hard/cold/empty times that He is still there.

Well those are some of my thoughts Pastor Rob