Patience

Mankind wants the tangible…the logical…the easy. In our impatience, humans generally don't want to wait for the good thing, and when it comes right down to it, we really don't like to be different than everyone else. The cliché my mom loved to use is so common because it is so necessary: "would you jump off a bridge because everyone else was doing it!?"…maybe…


In Sept. 2001, God sent our country a massive wake up call. Since then, we have been responding in exactly the wrong way as a nation. Sure, in the first week we prayed and asked for strength to endure, but even this was off-the-mark according to the Bible. When terror touches our shore, there is a reason. When calamity falls on a people it MUST pass through God's approval process. Job's story definitively tells us that nothing happens on this blue and green sphere without God’s permission. I know this is unpopular to say, but it is true, when God allows terror to touch a nation, there is a reason:


Leviticus 26:13-17 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves; I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you walk upright. ‘But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant, I also will do this to you: I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.


Did you get the last sentence of this passage?:


Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.


When 911 happened, we tried our best to act normal, we declared to build bigger and stronger...we weren't going to let this change who we are. BUT, God’s intention WAS that we would change. Change our mind about where we are going....who we have become…what we spent our Friday doing…and how meaningless our Sunday had become. The City on a Hill was well on its way to becoming this:


Revelation 18:2 And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird!


We had ignored, for the most part, the initial evidences of this: a skyrocketing divorce rate, a ramping up abortion crisis...Columbine. None of the evidence of our decline could take our nation's attention off of ourselves…our desire to keep up with everyone around us...like a herd running towards a cliff, with no one looking much farther than the neighbor and his house, or car, or wife…or the weekend. Very few stopped to say "maybe this plastic entertainment, luxury, and “beauty” we are having to chase harder and harder, and compromise more and more to maintain, isn't a sign of God's blessing, but a Venus fly trap."


After 911, we were told to "shop." This was the patriotic duty of every citizen? Go shopping? Really?!


This was the strategy. Let’s show the enemy we aren't affected by this!


But we were SUPPOSED to be affected by it. The country founded on, and protected by...upheld by...God Almighty SHOULD do some soul searching when God Almighty deems it appropriate to allow a taste of terror to come home.


As the economy began heating back up, and amazing gains on real estate wet our appetite for greed once more...surely God was with us again...then the housing crash and subsequent stock market crash, one jubilee to the day after 911. (If you have read The Harbinger, I know this all review, but I am going somewhere)


When the economy unraveled in 2008, we had another opportunity to repent…to agree with God. But we didn't. In fear, even the "conservatives" compromised every thread of sanity, and traded it for the best man-sized plan we had: borrow a trillion dollars from ourselves, when we have no money, and pump it into an economy all at once and hope it makes us rich again before we have to pay it back. Dang, that IS brilliant…We would be too embarrassed to tell anyone that was our plan to avoid a personal bankruptcy, but that is what we all bought into. Then, we went looking for a new king:


I Samuel 8:4-5 Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.”


And this is what God said:


I Samuel 8:7-9 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day—with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also. Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them.”


We have a king that we wanted to fix our problems, and we got one with a very specific plan to fix them. We want to blame the king, but it was US who demanded one. If it wasn’t this king, it would have been some other one we would want to pin our hopes on. It was US who weren’t satisfied with the whole pray and wait on an invisible God thing. In this day and age, no one prays and waits…no one repents…that sounds too religious.


We got the king God promised in Leviticus 26. We got one who agreed with us that the “form” of the country was messed up, not the heart of the people. God is desperately trying to reach our heart, and we keep reaching for someone, anyone, to fix our laws. Tragedy.


The truth is, our king is doing exactly what he promised to do: Fundamentally Transform America. He has been incredibly diligent and successful in upholding his end of the deal. We should, by the news of this week, consider ourselves "transformed." We chose this man with a plan, and he has implemented his plan so effectively that there is little chance of a political solution going forward.


BUT, there is still a much better solution available:


Joel 2:1Blow the trumpet in Zion, And sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; For the day of the Lord is coming, For it is at hand:


9-11 The Lord gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; For strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; Who can endure it? “Now, therefore,” says the Lord:


(ok, here is God’s recipe for this exact situation)


“Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, And leave a blessing behind Him— A grain offering and a drink offering For the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the Lord , Weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, “Spare Your people, O Lord , And do not give Your heritage to reproach, That the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ” Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, And pity His people. The Lord will answer and say to His people, “Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil, And you will be satisfied by them; I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.


Pretending like this isn’t really happening is not part of the plan. Keep on doing the things you have always done and hope someone comes along and fixes it is not the plan laid out here. Waiting out “this guy” and waiting for “your guy” is not part of the plan. Wholehearted…all in, call off dinner, pastors stop what you are doing, brides and grooms put the wedding on hold, kids, old folks, put the basketball and the canasta game away…we have got to get in front of God and tell Him we are really sorry for missing it and ask Him to fix.…agreeing with Jesus with your time, money, and energy…going after God…THIS IS THE ONLY PLAN that works when it is this bad.


Many in the Church want to shout "revival is coming." I believe this is a true word. BUT, revival IS NOT coming without repentance. We are not going to dance our way into revival while holding onto a corrupted American Dream as our dance partner. We really can't "have it all." No one is supposed to have it all:


Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.


The American Dream was never supposed to be that I would stay as comfortable as possible, and God wouldn’t mind if I spent most of my energy trying to have as much as I saw other people have. The original American Dream was to get away from a king and worship God with freedom and obey God with my choices instead of obeying a king. It was supposed to be a blank slate that I could paint my life on in agreement with God…that was the original American Dream. It was never a top down safety net where everyone ended up being owed something by someone, but no one being willing to pay the tab for anyone.


Revival is going to come where revival is agreed with. Revival comes when the people turn to God wholeheartedly in one accord. Revival is always agreed with in repentance…agreeing with God about the first commandment, loving God with all your mind, soul , and strength, being first. Repentance always happens first from those who are closest to God. Daniel was probably the one guy in Babylon who shouldn’t have had to repent, but he is the one who fasted and prayed.


Jesus said the greatest actually serve the most. God has not brought us here to lose, He has brought us here to win. If we are going to win, we are going to have to win like John the Baptist, Paul, John, David, Daniel, Esther...these people all knew that we win by agreeing with God, not by trying to get Him to agree with us.


We say “God, come fix this.” And God says “I look for a man to agree with me about HOW TO fix it”


Ezekiel 22:30 So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.


I’m not sure if ya’ll have seen the news the last couple of weeks, but now, like no other time in history, now is the time for those who will to see the world and our country for what it really is, and do the stuff that God says needs doing.

Jeremiah 23:16-22 Thus says the LORD of hosts: "Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; They speak a vision of their own heart, Not from the mouth of the LORD. (17) They continually say to those who despise Me, 'The LORD has said, "You shall have peace" '; And to everyone who walks according to the dictates of his own heart, they say, 'No evil shall come upon you.' " (18) For who has stood in the counsel of the LORD, And has perceived and heard His word? Who has marked His word and heard it? (19) Behold, a whirlwind of the LORD has gone forth in fury— A violent whirlwind! It will fall violently on the head of the wicked. (20) The anger of the LORD will not turn back Until He has executed and performed the thoughts of His heart. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly. (21) "I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. (22) But if they had stood in My counsel, And had caused My people to hear My words, Then they would have turned them from their evil way And from the evil of their doings.