About ten years ago I jotted down a phrase that came to me summarizing the heart of my ministry of the previous 25 plus, now more than 35 years. That phrase, of course, is Revival Yearnings. It says everything I want to say, everything I feel, what I live with day after day, decade after decade. Ongoing, insistent cravings, longings for something lost, something unfulfilled, for an extraordinary movement of the Holy Spirit producing extraordinary results in my life, in the lives of my family, in our churches, in our nation. I have nothing new to say; I am literally a preacher with one message.
And I can’t shake it.
Certainly it doesn’t take any powers of persuasion to convince anyone over 40 that conditions are degenerating rapidly in America. And anyone who has lived through several cycles of national elections knows our hopes are not in 2014 or 2016. America will not return to her ‘good ole days,’ nor should she. But will she ever be restored to spiritual glory?
I don’t know. I just don’t know.
That is not a defeatist answer. I believe it to be the correct answer. I’ve said many times that I am very hopeful. Hopeful because of the promises of God. Hopeful because of God’s gracious history of forgiving and restoring. When Moses pleaded with the Lord to turn His wrath away from His stiff-necked and rebellious people, He ‘relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.’ There is hope for a time. Only He knows how much time.
Imagine the harm of which Omnipotence is capable.
The Lord can harm a nation passively, through abandonment, or actively through aggression. The active judgment of God on a nation can come in the form of natural disasters, economic collapse, disease and pestilence, and attack by hostiles. Passive judgment is when the Lord gives a people over to their lusts and desires, allows them free reign, abandons them. This kind of remedial judgment comes first.
We are somewhere between Stage 1 and 2.
Which would be the worst kind of judgment?
1. The Spirit of God quietly leaving the country, abandoning us unto our own designs?, or
2. A nation wide, devastating, heart rending tragedy, affecting millions?
It is difficult to wake up out of the drugged slumber of the first type of judgment. At least the horrific active judgment would have more possibility of being a real wake up call.
The first is a period of grace, giving us time to re-think our position, to repent before national tragedy. The second is wrath.
The first is discipline. The second, punishment.
The first harm we do to ourselves. The second is harm done by Almighty God. What kind of harm is the Creator able to bring? Some will say, ‘Well, my God would never…’ Don’t give me that. Read your Bible.
The only alternative is repentance. Immediate, radical turning from our wickedness and coming back to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I can only truly repent for myself. But I can intercede for the unrepentant—family member, fellow believer, church, non-believer, nation—out of the brokenness of a heart that won’t accept ‘No!’ for an answer, that gives Heaven no rest, in fact that refuses to go to Heaven without that loved one, beloved church, or cherished nation.
“Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.” Exodus 32
“O Lord, according to all Your righteousness, I pray, let Your anger and Your fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain.” Daniel 9
“I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh.”
Romans 9
You can only repent for yourself.
You can intercede for others, for America. But only out of a broken heart.
Terri and I are on the Gulf Coast ministering to Spanish speakers from several countries.