A Word for the Asbury Revival – “Your Work Shall Be Rewarded!” - Purity 970
Purity 970 02/18/2023 Purity 970 Podcast
Purity 970 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo a quaint decorative well standing upon
a lush green lawn yet shrouded in shadows comes to us from yours truly as I
took this shot while surveying the property at 1788 State Route 9J in
Stuyvesant NY way back on April 17th 2020, approximately 2 months and
5 days before I would sign the final paperwork to make it “my place down by the
River”.
You can’t tell from this photo that we were in the
midst of a global pandemic. The sun still shined, and the grass still grew and
life went on. I didn’t KNOW it at the
time that I would make this property my “River House” when I took this photo of
what became my well, but man was I praying for it and seeking it. And now I can tell you that I was rewarded for
my faithfulness!
While most people were huddle indoors during winter
and spring of 2020, I was out in the “danger zone” working two essential jobs
and trusting the Lord to keep me alive while earned enough money to support my
family and to get a new home for my children and I after a messy divorce. In those times, I went to work for 16 hour
days but I also grounded myself in my daily spiritual practices of Bible Study
and prayer and continually staying in the Lord’s presence. Those were hard and lonely times but the Lord
was with me and He didn’t forsake me because I sought His presence and His will
for my life every day.
So I know that the Lord is a rewarder of those who
diligently seek Him as the word says in:
Hebrews
11:6 (NKJV)
6 … without faith it is
impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He
is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Well, since coming to the Lord in 2010, I have been
seeking the Lord and have been rewarded by Him time and time ever since. One of the prayers that I and many others
have made through all those years of following the Lord is for there to be a
revival of the body of Christ, for the lost to be found and for the hearts of
our nation to be turned to God. I and many
others have prayed that the Lord’s presence would come to our country in a
mighty move that would reap of harvest for His kingdom and it appears that our
prayers may have been answered through the revival that is happening at Asbury
College in Wilmore Kentucky as a chapel service that began on February 8th
has turned into a revival as “students and faculty from 22 schools in Hawaii,
Massachusetts, Illinois, Minnesota, Tennessee, Indiana and other states have
made the trek to Asbury. Ten days later
and the even is still going strong and is expected to continue as “travelers
from as far away as Canada and Singapore are expected to arrive there soon”. (https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2023/02/17/asbury-university-revival-in-kentucky-goes-viral-tiktok/69913997007/).
Yesterday, I texted Arthur Cincotti, my brother in
Christ and the author of our weekly Bible study podcast, encouraging him to
take a road trip to Asbury to join the revival and he confessed that he was
thinking about it as he and his wife Suzanna have been watching it online. Arthur
stated that it was a 12 hour drive and I suggested that could be broken up into
2 six hour shifts and could be done all at once or with a overnight stop in
between. I’m not sure if Arthur or I
will go but we are both excited by what is happening in Asbury.
I’m on vacation this week and already have plans to
go to Williamsburg VA and Myrtle Beach SC. It’s paid for and non-refundable, so
I will be headed south come Sunday.
As of this writing, I am toying with the idea of
diverting my return trek home from Myrtle Beach SC to go to Wilmore on Friday (9
hours) and then come back to NY on Saturday or Sunday (13 hours), but will have
to discern whether or not the Holy Spirit is calling me there. I have experienced the manifest presence of
the Holy Spirit before, more than once, in mighty ways, so it’s not like I have
never experienced an out pouring of His Spirit before and I NEED to chase Him and
the experience of a revival to know the Lord.
So, we will pray and see what happens.
But I would like to send my warmest regards to the
people gathered at Asbury and would offer the following passages of scripture
as a “word” for Asbury if I don’t make the trek there to try to offer it in
person.
This morning’s Bible study brought me to 2 Chronicles
15 and the words of the prophet Azariah.
I know that many a Bible scholar may pile on condemnation for drawing
from an very obscure Old Testament prophet of the kingdom of Judah to encourage
us for today but I found the words that the Lord spoke through Azariah and all
the text of 2 Chronicles 15 to be an appropriate parallel to our present times
and a word for the body of Christ, and those outside the body, for all
times.
I believe
that the prophet Azaria’s words can be used to encourage the revival at Asbury
and all of us in all seasons because they call us to repentance and warn that
we will be forsaken if we don’t seek the Lord. I share the text in it’s
entirety but would ask you to consider whether or not the words spoken to the
kingdom of Israel and Judah could be applied to the nations of the world today
as a challenge to turn to the Lord.
2 Chronicles 15:1-7 (NKJV)
1 Now the Spirit of God came
upon Azariah the son of Oded.
2 And he went out to meet
Asa, and said to him: "Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you while you are
with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He
will forsake you.
3 For a long time Israel has
been without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without law;
4 but when in their
trouble they turned to the LORD
God of Israel, and sought Him, He was found by them.
5 And in those times there
was no peace to the one who went out, nor to the one who came in, but great
turmoil was on all the inhabitants of the lands.
6 So nation was destroyed by
nation, and city by city, for God troubled them with every adversity.
7 But you, be strong and
do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded!"
The world is never without adversity or turmoil
because of sin and the hard hearts of men than refuse to make Jesus the Lord of
their lives and to follow Him in spirit, truth, and repentance.
But I want to echo Azariah’s encouraging words that
insist that if we seek the Lord we will indeed find Him and although the work
we have to undertake when we decide to seek the Lord’s will for our lives may
weary us at times, we can be assured that our work shall be rewarded.
The prayer warriors of our nation have prayed for revival
and that work seems to have been rewarded in Asbury and we should rejoice.
And while I am not sure if I will be called to make
the trip to Asbury to be a part of the rival experience that is happening there,
I know that I am already a part of the mighty moves of God on this earth because
I have experienced my salvation and freedom in Christ and have been repeatedly
revived and rewarded because I have been faithful to continuously seek God and
His will for my life.
So whether you run to the revival experience in Asbury or not, let me encourage you, as I always do, to keep “seeking the Lord” by walking and talking with Him every day and to follow His wisdom and ways with the way you live your life. As the prophet Azariah has encouraged us, when you decide to surrender to, seek and follow the Lord, “you shall be rewarded”.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible
Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verses are:
James 4:6-7 (NLT2)
6 But he gives us even more
grace to stand against such evil desires. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes
the proud but favors the humble.”
7 So humble yourselves before
God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Today’s Bible verses encourage us
that we can overcome our evil desires when we humble ourselves, submit to God
and resist the devil.
The wisdom of today’s verses,
particularly verse 7, are repeatedly used in spiritual warfare teachings because
they speak of the reality of the spiritual forces of darkness that need to be
resisted. The enemy’s tactics are to deceive
and to tempt us and so the word of God teaches us the one-two punch that will
give us success over sin.
We must submit to God, first, and we
must resist the devil.
In order to overcome temptation, to
receive the power and the authority to tell the enemy to take a hike, we first
must become members of God’s royal family by putting our faith in Jesus as Lord
and Savior
AND THEN
Also decide to submit to God in the
ways we live our life. We are to repent
and turn from our former ways and abandon our evil desires.
SO step 1 – submitting to God – is one
thing we must do but there is some false teaching, ignorance, and confusion in
the body of Christ that would teach that repentance is optional – that it is
enough just to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and that repenting
could be done later, if at all, if you want to.
Some poor “Christians” will actually
tell you that they just want to be a “believer” in Jesus and don’t want to be, and
don’t think it is necessary to be, a “disciple”
of Jesus.
So it’s because of attitudes like
this, this easy believe-ism” that can explain why the “body of Christ”
struggles to have victory over the enemy.
They have difficulty resisting the devil because they haven’t completely
submitted to God. You have to do both
to be free.
To fully submit to God and to resist
the devil, I recommend going through the Steps to Freedom in Christ, the tool
that Dr. Neil Anderson has developed that is based on the truth of the word of God
that the Lord has been known to bless as a means to repentance and
freedom.
So be assured that we have the
victory over sin and the devil, but we must be sure that we are both submitting
to God and resisting the devil with the way we live to experience it.
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As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I
always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to
assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink’s “The
Sovereignty of God.”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase A.W. Pink’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
THE
SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
By ARTHUR W. PINK
CHAPTER SEVEN
GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY AND THE HUMAN WILL
“It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good
pleasure” (Phil. 2:13)
Concerning the nature and the power of fallen
man’s will, the greatest confusion prevails today, and the most erroneous views
are held, even by many of God’s children. The popular idea now prevailing, and
which is taught from the great majority of pulpits, is that man has a “free
ill,” and that salvation comes to the sinner through his will co-operating with the Holy Spirit. To deny the “free will” of
man, i.e., his power to choose that which is good, his native ability to accept
Christ, is to bring one into disfavor at once, even before most of those who
profess to be orthodox. And yet Scripture emphatically says, “It is not of him that willeth, nor of
him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy” (Rom. 9:16). Which shall we
believe: God, or the preachers?
But some one may
reply, Did not Joshua say to Israel, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve”?
Yes, he did; but why not complete his sentence?—“whether the god that your fathers served which were on the other
side of the flood, or gods of the
Amorites, in whose land ye dwell” (Josh. 24:15)! But why attempt to pit
scripture against scripture? The Word
of God never contradicts itself, and the Word expressly declares, “There is none that seeketh after God” (Rom.
3:11). Did not Christ say to the men of His day “Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40)? Yes, but
some did “come” to Him, some did receive Him. True and who were they?
John 1:12, 13 tells us: “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to
become the sons of God, to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God”!
But does not
Scripture say, “Whosoever will may come”? It does, but does this signify that
everybody has the will to come? What
of those who won’t come? “Whosoever
will may come” no more implies that fallen man has the power (in himself) to come, than “Stretch forth thine hand”
implied that the man with the withered arm had ability (in himself) to comply.
In and of himself the natural man has power to reject Christ; but in and of
himself he has not the power to receive Christ. And why? Because he has a mind
that is “enmity against” Him (Rom. 8:7); because he has a heart that hates Him
(John 15:18). Man chooses that which is according to his nature, and therefore
before he will ever choose or prefer that which is Divine and spiritual a new
nature must be imparted to him; in other words, he must be born again.
Should it be asked,
But does not the Holy Spirit overcome
a man’s enmity and hatred when He convicts the sinner of his sins and his need
of Christ; and does not the Spirit of God produce such conviction in many that
perish? Such language betrays confusion of thought: were such a man’s enmity really “overcome,” then he would readily turn to Christ; that he
does not come to the Saviour demonstrates that his enmity is not overcome. But
that many are, through the preaching of the Word, convicted by the Holy Spirit,
who nevertheless die in unbelief, is solemnly true. Yet, it is a fact which
must not be lost sight of that the Holy Spirit does something more in each of God’s elect than He does in the
non-elect: He works in them “both to will and to do of God’s good pleasure”
(Phil. 2:13).
In reply to what we
have said above, Arminians would answer, No; the Spirit’s work of conviction is
the same both in the converted and in unconverted, that which distinguishes the
one class from the other is that the former yielded
to His strivings whereas the latter resist
them. But if this were the case then the Christian would have ground for
boasting and self-glorying over his
co-operation with the Spirit; but this would flatly contradict Eph. 2:8, “For
by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”
Let us appeal to the
actual experience of the Christian reader. Was there not a time (may the
remembrance of it bow each of us into the dust) when you were unwilling to come
to Christ? There was. Since then you have
come to Him. Are you now prepared to give Him all the glory for that (Psa. 115:1)? Do you not acknowledge you
came to Christ because the Holy Spirit brought you from unwillingness to
willingness? You do. Then is it not also a patent fact that the Holy Spirit has
not done in many others what He has
in you! Granting that many others have heard the Gospel, been shown their need
of Christ, yet, they are still unwilling to come to Him. Thus He has wrought more in you than in them. Do
you answer, Yet I remember well the time when the Great Issue was presented to
me, and my consciousness testifies that my
will acted and that I yielded to the claims of Christ upon me. Quite true. But before you “yielded” the Holy Spirit
overcame the native enmity of your mind against God, and this “enmity” He does
not overcome in all. Should it be said, That is because they are unwilling for
their enmity to be overcome. Ah! none are thus “willing” till He has put forth
His all-mighty power and wrought a
miracle of grace in the heart.
But let us now
inquire, What is the human Will? Is
it a self-determining agent, or is it, in turn, determined by something else?
Is it sovereign or servant? Is the will superior to every other faculty of our
being so that it governs them, or is it moved by their impulses and subject to
their pleasure? Does the will rule the mind, or does the mind control the will?
Is the will free to do as it pleases, or is it under the necessity of rendering
obedience to something outside of itself? “Does the will stand apart from the
other great faculties or powers of the soul, a man within a man, who can reverse the man and fly against the man
and split him into segments, as a glass snake breaks in pieces? Or, is the will
connected with the other faculties, as the tail of the serpent is with his
body, and that again with his head, so that where the head goes, the whole
creature goes, and, as a man thinketh
in his heart, so is he? First
thought, then heart (desire or aversion), and then act. Is it this way, the dog
wags the tail? Or, is it the will, the tail, wags the dog? Is the will the
first and chief thing in man, or is it the last thing—to be kept subordinate,
and in its place beneath the other faculties? and, is the true philosophy of
moral action and its process that of Gen. 3:6: ‘And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food’ (sense-perception, intelligence), ‘and a tree to be desired’
(affections), ‘she took and ate thereof’ (the will).” (George S. Bishop). These
are questions of more than academical interest. They are of practical
importance. We believe that we do not go too far when we affirm that the answer
returned to these questions is a fundamental test of doctrinal soundness.[1]
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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
