I am very concerned about our nation. I’m sure you are as well.  I’m not just concerned about the teetering economy, the decline in morality, or the continuing holocaust of abortions in America. I’m not just concerned about God being pushed out of our schools or a culture that is calling evil good and good evil. I’m not just concerned about the blatant corruption in government and lack of truth telling at all levels. If we had to live in the midst of that it would be difficult enough.  What I am most concerned about are the curses that these behaviors and attitudes are about to unleash on America.

A strong thread runs through scripture that is summarized in Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia.  “Do not be deceived.  God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (Gal.6:7-8).  In the Old Testament there are huge sections on “blessing and cursing.”  In Deuteronomy 28, God gives an extensive list of blessings that will come upon Israel if they faithfully serve God and an extensive list of curses that will be released if they reject God.  Nations reap what they sow as well as individuals.

Those curses listed in Deuteronomy include economic disaster, sickly children and blighted crops. They include failure in everything they attempt, diseases that ravage the nation, drought or destructive weather patterns, defeat from enemies, confusion, a man’s hard work being harvested by strangers, oppression of all kinds, and aliens in the land rising up and ruling over native born citizens. These curses sound like the six o’clock news.

In the book of Job, Satan complained to God that he had put a hedge around Job so that Satan could not get at him (Job 1:9). What we see in that chapter is Satan wanting to destroy Job and his family.  God, however, in his goodness and mercy had been restraining the devil because Job was faithful.  When men or nations sow to the flesh long enough, God is compelled by his holiness and our free will (which also chooses our consequences) to turn these men or nations over to their own choices.  When that point is reached, God lifts the restraints and Satan has access to individuals or nations because they have aligned themselves with the enemy.

When curses flood into a person’s life or over a nation, these curses are not something God has conjured up but they are simply what Satan has been wanting to release on that nation, family, or person all along.  Because of God’s love for all men, he restrains the enemy and these disasters until man has sown so much destruction that it must be harvested.  The law of sowing and reaping then kicks in. Here is the sobering part.  The harvest is always greater than the planting.  An acorn produces much more than itself.  A kernel of corn produces dozens of ears of corn.  A man gets back even more than he put in.

That’s good news if you are sowing to the Spirit for God will give you more good things than you sowed.  But if you have been sowing to the flesh, the destruction will far outweigh the evil you have planted.  Many times the destructive results will affect generations.  Children will reap what their fathers sowed. The biblical principle is that the consequences of the sins of the fathers will be passed down to the third and fourth generations of children (Ex. 20:5).

Our nation is mocking God and sowing to the flesh in abundance.  Jesus said, “To whom much is given much is required” (Luke 12:48).  God has given much to America over the last 300 years.  America has not been ignorant of God, his Word, and his ways.  He has blessed us abundantly in our faithfulness but will discipline us abundantly in our rejection of him, his Word, and his ways.

Our hope is in the grace of God and his willingness to forgive and restore when godly sorrow and sincere repentance come from the heart of a man or a nation. But rather than righteousness and repentance flowing out of the church in America I am seeing compromise, going along to get along, a desire to be more acceptable to man in a perverse culture than to God in his holiness.  A few are declaring God’s truth and absorbing the ridicule and accusations of culture but more are being silent.

God’s judgment, which is the release of the enemy to have his way with men who have partnered with Satan, usually comes first in a slow stream giving men the opportunity to recognize what is happening and turn again to God.  Then the stream widens – disasters are greater and more frequent, and then if no repentance comes, God is forced by our own decisions to open the floodgate and let the enemy come in without restraint.  History is full of such lessons.  Curses are not vicious acts by a vengeful God, but rather the harvest of what we have insisted on planting year after year. God takes no pleasure in judging nations or men. His heart for us is to repent so that he can bless us again.  But it is still our choice.

Our sincere and constant intercession for our nation, its leaders, its people, and the church is still our hope and can be a powerful weapon to push back the enemy.  The authority of believers needs to be exercised on behalf of a nation and our nation evangelized by the love and power of God once again.   Even this struggle is not against flesh and blood but spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. We are in a state of war and we have been promised the victory – but only if we stand, only if we fight. My prayer is that more than ever before believers in America will rise and fight against the enemy and drive him out of this nation so that the goodness and blessing of God can flourish here again. I hope you will make a decision to go to war today against the dominion of darkness and not stop until the victory is secure. Be blessed today knowing that God goes before those who go in his name.

At our church we are kicking off the winter round of Free Indeed which is the core of our Freedom Ministries.  It is an eight-week study of the transforming power of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven, who we are as followers of Jesus, and spiritual weapons that bring healing and freedom from the oppression of the enemy.  It’s followed by an experiential weekend of healing and deliverance.  We typically have sixty to eighty participants each time we offer Free Indeed. The curriculum used in Free Indeed was the core material from which Born to Be Free was written.

One of our key texts in the study is from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor.10:3-6)

As we start off a new year I would like to spend several blog entries exploring this important passage.  Paul begins with a statement that simply assumes that Christians live in a state of war. Of course, this echoes his letter to the Ephesians in which he says that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces of darkness against which we must take a stand.  In that text he suggests that we need to put on the armor of God every day because we exist in a state of war.

I’ve often mentioned the fact that Adam turned over the dominion God had given him to Satan but with the coming of the second Adam, the Messiah, the kingdom of God was re-established on the earth with a mandate to take back everything that had been stolen by the enemy.   The blood of Christ cancelled any legal claim that the enemy had on the earth so the only thing left was to forcibly evict him from the property.  When Jesus launched his own invasion of the earth, war broke out. We push back the lines of darkness primarily by rescuing captives and establishing the kingdom of God in their hearts.

Of course, Satan does not simply sit and watch his kingdom dissolve. He fights back.  The gates of hell will not prevail against Christ and his church but the enemy doesn’t go away quietly.  In this war, Satan engages every believer on an individual basis in an attempt to kill, steal and destroy.  Some days we hardly sense any interference from the enemy while on other days we experience a full-scale assault against us, our family, and the culture in which we live.  Make no mistake, you have parachuted into enemy territory and he is not only giving up ground grudgingly but is often trying to retake ground he has lost – even in your life.

To ignore the fact that, as a believer, you are at war is perilous.  At the beginning of World War II, certain European nations believed that they had made peace or were in a neutral position with Germany. They simply woke up one day to hear the roar of Nazi tanks in the city streets and the click of hobnail boots on their sidewalks. In there desire to avoid war they ignored the realities around them and rather than mobilize for war they simply woke up as prisoners of the Third Reich.

Paul, then, wants us all to know that we exist in a state if war and should live as soldiers who train, prepare, arm themselves, and take ground or defend ground as it is needed.  The most important things he says, however, is that the weapons of this world are ineffective against spiritual forces.  Jesus has made divine weapons available to us and those weapons are empowered by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.

The church, in recent years, has too often tried to accomplish Christ’s mission on the earth with worldly weapons. The core of the mission is stated in Luke 4 which is quoted from Isaiah 61.  The mission is to preach good news, heal broken hearts, and set captives free. Many churches have accepted the mission but have armed themselves poorly to accomplish it.

First of all, it requires the anointing of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news” (Isa.61:1). A huge chunk of the church has maintained a very limited view of the Holy Spirit and of his anointing on God’s people. In fact, much of the church has adopted a view that desires the Holy Spirit to act in the context of the ordinary rather than the extraordinary or the miraculous.  Instead of going to war with assault rifles and tanks, the church goes to war with BB guns.

In addition, in a effort to fulfill Christ’s mission of healing broken hearts and setting people free from bondage, the church has run to the self-help section of the bookstore and brought into the church weapons of the world – psychology, twelve-step programs, and counselors trained in secular schools.  Each of these offers a level of help and because there is some improvement the church has assumed that “some improvement” is God’s best. In many cases we have simply tried to anoint the weapons of the world with a prayer and some bible verses but that hardly does it.

Divine weapons require working from an entirely different paradigm and require very different strategies. The New Testament does not paint a picture of people coming to Christ and achieving “some improvement.”  What we see is rebirth, radical transformation, and new creations. That goes way beyond “some improvement.”  Divine weapons can take you there. Weapons of the world can only take you part of the way.

In my next blog we will begin to discuss the concept of strongholds and how divine weapons bring down the enemy even when he has maintained a strong position in the past.  Be blessed and remember that He that is in us is greater than he that is in the world!

We often idealize biblical figures so that we forget their humanity.  We remember David for taking down Goliath but forget his human frailties that surfaced with Bathsheba or his unwillingness to discipline or deal with Absalom.  We remember Elijah taking on the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel but forget that he caved into fear and depression immediately after his victory when Jezebel threatened him. We think of the Apostle Paul as the greatest of the apostles, immovable in faith and writing great chapters about love (1 Cor. 13), but forget that in an ungracious moment he refused to give John Mark a second chance and forever parted ways with Barnabas  – the man who had accepted him into the fellowship of believers after Paul came to Christ.

Being human does not disqualify us from greatness in the kingdom of God, it simply reminds us of our desperate dependence on God to keep those “human moments” to a minimum and to maintain perspectives of faith when we face hardships.  Paul tells us that we “know in part and we prophecy in part” so that we are also operating in the dark at times.  We don’t always have everything revealed to us nor do we always fully understand what has been revealed. Our faith ebbs and flows at times to our own dismay but that is our reality. In Matthew 11, we find John the Baptist in one of those moments.

After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me. (Mt.11:1-6).

I find it amazing that John the Baptist had a moment of doubt about Jesus being the promised Messiah. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a relative of Elizabeth, the mother of John.  Luke tells us that John was about six months older than Jesus. When Mary had become pregnant with Jesus she visited Elizabeth who was carrying John in her womb.  Luke tells us, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk.1:41).  Even in the womb John, by the Spirit, seemed to recognize who Jesus was.  Thirty years later, John was the one who declared that Jesus was the Lamb of God.  He was the one who had baptized Jesus and saw the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus in the form of a dove. John declared that Jesus was the anointed one of God, and that his own ministry had to decrease so that Jesus would increase in the eyes of the Jewish people.

And yet, after his imprisonment, he apparently began to wonder if Jesus were the Messiah or if another one was coming.  John was experiencing our humanity for he also “knew in part and prophesied in part.”  Apparently, John was beginning to doubt who Jesus was because things were not unfolding as he had anticipated.  Jesus frustrated many who believed that Messiah would come with overwhelming glory and power, moving quickly to overthrow Roman oppression and restore Israel to her greatness as in the days of David and Solomon.  But Jesus, although a great teacher and healer, seemed to be anything but a man pushing his way to the top to grab power and glory.  He seemed totally apolitical instead of being politically savvy.  He seemed to resist notoriety rather than embracing it.  He talked about loving enemies rather than destroying oppressors. He talked about turning the other cheek rather than organizing resistance against Rome.

As John languished in prison the “kingdom of God” wasn’t feeling so near or victorious.  And so he asked, “Are you really the one or did I miss it?”  Interestingly, Jesus didn’t send him a theological response or quote Old Testament prophecies that had been recently fulfilled in him.  He simply said, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.” On several occasions, Jesus himself had said that you can know a prophet by his fruits.  Words are easy; actions are more definitive.

Jesus pointed to the miraculous works of heaven that were flowing through his ministry to authenticate who he was.  He also pointed to Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy that John must have known by heart. “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isa.61:1).  Jesus’ ministry of preaching, healing and deliverance fulfilled that prophetic word.  Messiah had come to bring heaven to earth.  The miraculous works of God confirmed that the kingdom had indeed come to earth and in doing so, confirmed that Jesus was and is the anointed one of God – the Christ.

Jesus often healed and delivered simply out of compassion. Many times he told those he had healed or delivered not to tell anyone who had done that for them.  But he also said that his miracles and the miracles of those who followed him were their credentials documenting their citizenship in heaven.  If John the Baptist needed that concrete evidence, then how much more will unbelievers need that evidence today in a world of empty promises and cynicism?  For the last few centuries, the church has offered theology and explanations of why God no longer acts like God rather than concrete experiences with the Creator. When people ask us if Jesus is really the Son of God and Savior of the world, we need to be able to respond as Jesus responded to John.  “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”  After people experience God we can give them a theology for that experience to stand on.

Experiencing God is not found only in healing or deliverance.  His presence can simply overwhelm people with love or peace. His voice can penetrate unbelief or fear.  Angels can pull people from burning vehicles or he can open up new realities through dreams or visions. Prophetic words can disarm the agnostic and miracles of provision can confirm his care to those who felt alone and helpless. But all of those things are experiences with God.  If God had sent Moses to Egypt with a nicely framed theology instead of demonstrations of power on behalf the Hebrews, the Jewish people would still be serving Egyptians today.

As we pray for people to come to faith, pray that God will arrange an encounter with heaven that they cannot deny. Then share Jesus, the source of every heavenly encounter, with them.  Be blessed today and expect miracles. They point to Jesus.

Have you ever noticed how often Jesus healed on the Sabbath?  In John 9, Jesus healed a man that was born blind.  He had been a beggar and was apparently a fairly well known figure in part of the city.  Jesus spit on the ground, made mud with his saliva and put it on the man’s eyes.  He then instructed the beggar to go the pool of Siloam and wash.  The man was obedient to the command and left the pool seeing for the first time.

Imagine how amazing sight would be for the first time. Suddenly, this man saw only what he had felt and heard all his life.  He had felt water on his skin but as soon as he washed the mud from his eyes he saw water rippling with sunlight sparkling across the surface of the pool.  He saw the faces of familiar voices he had only heard each day as he begged.  He was struck with the endless colors of clothing the crowds were wearing. He suddenly put form and color to the animals he had heard and touched in Jerusalem since childhood. Add to that the shape and colors of buildings, trees, grass, the sky, the sun, and the clouds. The immense amount of new images filling his mind must have been almost overwhelming.  It makes me wonder if part of the miracle was a download of understanding that was imparted to the beggars mind to make sense of what he was seeing.

Of course, as the word of this notable miracle spread, the Pharisees showed up like investigative reporters snooping out a story for the National Inquirer. They remind us that religion devoid of relationship with the Father can be a dangerous thing.  Once again, the Pharisees did not deny the miracle but missed everything about it because it had occurred on the Sabbath. Their response to a blind man who now saw each of their faces was to state that, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

Some questioned the miracle and so his parents were brought forth to confirm that this was their son and that he had indeed been born blind. After doing so, the questions were not about the amazing healing and how it had touched the blind man’s heart and soul, but only were designed to discover whom the man was that had broken the Sabbath by healing someone.  To the formerly blind beggar they said, “Give glory to God, we know this man is a sinner.” His reply, of course, was on target.  “Whether he is a sinner or not I don’t know. One thing I do know, I was blind but now I see.”  This blind beggar went on to state some fairly sound theology. “Now this is remarkable.  You don’t know where he comes from yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinner.  He listens to the godly man who does his will.  Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind.  If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”  The Pharisees responded with their usual grace and scholarship – “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.”

Miracles are signs.  They are realities that point to even greater realities.  A road sign pointing you to Interstate 20 is a reality but it points to something greater and more useful. The sign won’t take you where you want to go, it only points you to that which will.  Miracles are amazing things, but they point you to an even greater reality. Jesus himself said that his miracles testified to his identity as the Son of God and his identity as the Anointed One. The giver of the miracle is always a greater reality than the miracle itself. As we seek the gifts of the Spirit and the supernatural power of God, we should never see those things as an end in themselves but rather road signs that point us to the giver of the gifts which should always be out true pursuit.

Having said that, how did the Pharisees miss the point of the healings time after time?  These were learned men who had memorized the first five books of the Bible as a beginning step.  They discussed and debated the Torah over and over. These were men of prayer who had devoted themselves to the knowledge of God.  Jesus himself acknowledged that they searched the scriptures diligently but they missed him.  The scriptures were signs pointing to the greater reality but they missed the reality. Somehow they never grasped the onramp to a personal relationship with God the Father.

God is pouring out a great measure of power and miracles on his church today.  These miracles can again become a divide just as they were in the days of Jesus. The problem will not be in the miracles but in the hearts of those who witness the miracles or who refuse to witness the miracles.  Miracles will come because God is a God of miracles who is still pointing to his Son. He is also a God of compassion and his miracles for healing, freedom and provision still flow out of a heart that is burdened for the brokenness and suffering of his people.

As in the days of Jesus, there will be different responses to the miracles. The best, of course, is belief in Jesus as the one true Son of God.  Some will see the signs and understand the destination. They will absolutely know that Jesus is the singular road to the Father.  Others will get caught up in the gifts themselves and never conform to the image of Jesus Christ in spirit or character.  These men may abuse the gifts or use them for their own ends.  They will tend to discredit the faith.

Still others will deny the reality of the miracles or declare, as the Pharisees declared, that these contemporary miracles are deceptions from the enemy. I believe Jesus healed often on the Sabbath because the Sabbath laws had become a stronghold of religion.  Men had taken it on themselves to closely define the things that constituted “work” on the Sabbath and in doing so violated the spirit of the Sabbath all together.  Jesus declared that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  The very thing that God had given to bless man with rest and a focus on the love and faithfulness of God became an instrument of victimization.  To deny healing and deliverance on the Sabbath was to deny the powerful expression of God’s love on the Sabbath. In doing so, God was viewed as a God of rules rather than relationship.

Some will do the same today.  In the name of orthodoxy and biblical scholarship, some will deny the heart of God by denying that he still wants to intervene in the suffering of his people and the lost condition of men through displays of power. In the name of scholarship and intellect, men will declare that the signs that once pointed men to Jesus now point men to the devil.  Won’t there be counterfeit signs and wonders in the last days?  Yes, there will be the counterfeit but there will also be the authentic.  Those with the Spirit of Christ who ask the Spirit to lead them into all truth will know the difference.

As Jesus said, “By their fruits you will know them.”  If miracles draw people to Jesus, promote righteousness, heal broken hearts and set captives free, they are from God by every biblical standard.  Those who deny that God still works in power and miracles will simply forfeit the field to the enemy.  People hunger for the miraculous because they hunger for heaven where the miracles of God flood the atmosphere.

When a holy church operates in the true power of God for healing and freedom, then there is a standard against which the counterfeit signs and wonders of the enemy can be measured. Without that, he will be fielding the only team.  The church must seek the gifts but seek the giver even more. Signs are important but point to a greater reality and although signs may be misread, it’s hard to find the interstate without them.  Be blessed.

Jesus continues to fascinate me as John presents him in his gospel.  His capacity to see past the superficial and the obvious is a gift we all need from the Holy Spirit. In Chapter 4, Jesus has his famous encounter with the Samaritan woman.  Just outside of Sychar he stopped to rest at a well dug by Jacob centuries earlier. Sitting there alone while his disciples went for food, Jesus may have though about Jacob with a smile.  After all, they knew each other well.  For most of his life Jacob had been a swindler until he had an encounter with the living God.  After a night of ‘wrestling with God,” Jacob became the patriarch God had always wanted him to be.  He was named Israel and became the Father of the twelve tribes of Israel. His was another story of transformation in the Kingdom of God.

While Jesus was, perhaps, reflecting on that bit of history, a Samaritan woman came to the well at mid-day for water.  As every good evangelist does, Jesus began a conversation.  This time he simply asked for a drink of water. The woman was a bit taken back because Jews did not speak to Samaritans at all because of the animosity between the Jews and Samaritans.  The cultural atmosphere  probably carried the flavor of the United States immediately after the Civil War.  There was a legal peace and some business took place, but for most people you were either a hated Yankee or Rebel and it was best just to avoid much interaction while wounds from the former conflict were healing.

You know the story. Jesus asks for water. She questions why he would even bother to ask.  He begins to speak almost mysteriously about a gift of living water that he might give her – water that would quench her thirst forever.  She’s not sure what he’s talking about but she is intrigued enough to continue the conversation.  When she asks to view the product, Jesus tells her to go after her husband.  She tells him that she is not married.

Jesus goes on to commend her for her honest response and tells hers that she has been married five times before and now is just living with her boyfriend.  His words were simply a statement of fact but apparently carried no tone of condemnation or even judgment because the woman took no offense.  She simply was drawn in further by this “word of knowledge” so that she began to talk about spiritual matters. Finally, Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah they were expecting and she, a woman of no reputation at all, became the first president of the Samaritan Evangelistic Association. At her testimony, the entire town turned out and many believed.

So what is our takeaway from this moment with Jesus?  Hearing about five husbands and a “live-in” doesn’t shock us, but for the first century that was quite an eyebrow raiser.  Yet Jesus didn’t focus on her lifestyle.  He didn’t rebuke her behaviors and call for repentance to begin or even end this conversation.  Jesus knew that until there was a change of heart there would be no lasting change of behaviors.  Too often, we focus on behaviors and habits as the things God is most concerned about. But over and over, he points us to the heart.

Jesus simply knew that the multiple marriages and the cohabiting were symptoms of a broken heart and a broken person.  Somewhere in her soul was a thirst to be loved, to belong, and to feel significant to the world.  That hole in her soul had to be filled before she could give up the “medications” she had been taking her whole life to numb the pain. He pointed her to a love and a relationship that could do just that. Our approach to transformation has not always been the best.  We have called people to change their behaviors without filling the void in their soul and in their hearts – give up this and give up that and then come to Jesus. It must be the reverse of that.  Come to Jesus first, taste of living water, and then you can let go of the props you have been hanging onto for years.

Isaiah and Luke both said that Jesus came to preach the good news, heal the brokenhearted, and to set captives free.  It pretty much has to be in that order.  Let people know first that there is living water – there is something to satisfy their longings and to calm their fears; let Jesus touch their hearts for healing; and then pry them lose from addictions and bondage. Without the love of Jesus and the Spirit of Christ in them, letting go of the relationships, the substances, and the sin they have clung to will simply put them in free fall.

Do behaviors need to change?  Does sin need to be repented of? Sure. But that comes after Jesus, not before.  When we face people in the grip of addictions, sexual immorality, broken relationships, etc. we need to scan their hearts and their spiritual needs before focusing on behaviors.  Before calling out the homosexual community for its lifestyle or the promiscuous girl for her many lovers or the guy with the drinking problem, we must offer a better solution for their emptiness, fear, and brokenness. Lets start that conversation first – because that’s what Jesus would do. He’s so smart!

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Mt. 28:18-20).

Anyone who has spent any time at all in evangelical churches should be familiar with “The Great Commission.”  This was Christ’s final command to the church before his ascension and has been the fuel behind world missions for centuries. It is called a co-mission because Jesus works with us to fulfill the mission. It is something we do together.

However, it seems to me that in most of the last hundred years we have missed the mark on this to a great degree in the U.S.   Jesus said to make disciples of nations.  To disciple an entire nation is a daunting thought but God said, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession” (Ps.2:7-8).  In giving the “Great Commission” to his church wasn’t Jesus asking his Father for the nations?

In 2010, churches in the Untied States sent out 120,000 missionaries to countries around the globe. At the same time, 1500 pastors are leaving their ministries each month in American churches. In addition, although there are 4000 church plants in this country each year, 7000 churches close their doors. As a nation we are heading in the wrong direction.  It is clear that the American church is failing to make a disciple of this nation.

In order to disciple a nation two things must happen.  First of all, the kingdom of God must be planted in the hearts of the nation’s people.  Jesus said that the kingdom is within.  Faith and righteousness cannot be legislated in the hearts of a nation’s people. If it could, America would be drug free and the Prohibition era of the 1920’s would have wiped out alcoholism.  The kingdom must first bear fruit in the hearts of people.  But as the Holy Spirit does his work of transformation, the kingdom of God begins to manifest in the exterior life of the disciple.  The salt and light principle then begins to touch culture and when enough culture has been touched, a nation is discipled.

The founding fathers were very clear in their writings that this American experiment could only stand if the people persisted in faith and the morality that comes from faith. A great start does not guarantee a great finish.  Although we began as “one nation under God,” we may have forgotten that every new generation must be evangelized and discipled as well.  There have been seasons in the past fifty years where there have been upticks in evangelism.  The Billy Graham crusades, Campus Crusade, the third wave of the Holy Spirit, Promise Keepers, etc. and we celebrate every person who received Jesus Christ as Lord.  But there is a huge difference between being saved and being discipled, between salvation and sanctification.

Salvation separates us from darkness and brings us under the umbrella of God’s grace but sanctification shapes our entire life so that the kingdom of heaven is reflected in all that we do.  When that happens Jesus touches other people and culture through us.  The culture of heaven then begins to flow through us to our family, to our friends, to business, education, media, recreation and politics. What we see in America today is that the devil has been much more effective at making disciples and touching culture than the church has been.

Part of that is because the church has led significant numbers to Christ but has stopped short of discipling those who have come. Discipleship takes time, energy and an extended commitment to a new Christian. As Americans, we are far too busy to make those kinds of commitments and so we outsource our discipleship to the 700 Club, Sunday School, and community Bible studies.  We even do that with our children rather than taking personal responsibility to disciple them through both teaching and modeling. The model Jesus used was the Rabbinical model of choosing a few promising students and then doing life together – teaching, modeling, handing off responsibilities, etc. It still takes that.

There really is a war raging in the heavenlies over the soul of America. The disciples of the enemy have chipped away at the culture of heaven in our country until we are truly at a tipping point. Millions of unborn children have died at the hands of those who swore first “to do no harm.”  Prayer and God’s word have been ejected from schools where this generation of children is being discipled by a secular culture.  The media has effectively normalized sin and made it “cute” or acceptable so that evil is called good and good is called evil.  From the enemy’s perspective, America is strategic.  If America falls into darkness who stands with Israel?  Who exports the gospel through missions all over the world?  Who feeds the hungry in starving nations? Who stands against Sharia Law that will make faith in Jesus a capital crime?

Jesus has asked his Father for the nations and God has commissioned his church to bring those to the Son. America is sliding away and Satan has ramped up the attack. Will the church respond or continue to compromise and secularize itself for the sake of being “accepted and relevant.” When we are accepted by a secular culture we are no longer reflecting Christ because the world has always hated Christ. Can the nation be turned around? If not the entire world loses.

It can be turned around just as every nation can be brought to Jesus. We are to make disciples of all nations but that means not just saving but also discipling the citizens of that nation so that God’s love, values, and righteousness begin to permeate the cultural landscape once again. Every mature believer has that mandate. Go and make a disciple. I know many mature believer but very few are intentionally mentoring or discipling those who are young in the faith. Very few are intentionally taking a believer from the waters of baptism to a submitted like in Christ that is impacting everything it touches with the life of Jesus. Let me encourage you today to ask God to give you one or two believers to do life with and to disciple so that they can disciple others and take back a nation for whom Jesus died. It takes time, energy, commitment and a lot if inconvenience.  But the Great Commission was not just a great suggestion.