It
is now 4am, but I woke up an hour ago having had a dream. It had a
powerful message for me. In it, I was in the midst of many people, and
swirling
around everywhere was much going on. On one hand, the perilous and
deadly viruses and diseases that were in the news every day, with
reports of people dying by the thousands in such horrible ways, without
any hope. Then thousands being slaughtered by Satan’s evil forces
everywhere.
But push all of that aside---and I saw
something else: Things pretty much as usual....ball games to watch,
shopping to do, special events and invitations to
attend, running here and there with errands and attending this meeting and that meeting.
So
as I was thinking of these things the Lord kind of laid it out to
me....where are we (Christian as a whole) in all of this? We may know
the scriptures pretty well, and make sure we go here and there to church
and support lots of different things. But we are not giving ourselves
to prayer and fasting, shutting
out the world to spend time
with Him in prayer to combat these horrible circumstances our country
and our world is experiencing right now.
I know we
have our schedules and obligations. Yes, we have to read the mail and
pay our bills, visit the sick. attend church meetings. and keep up with
family
and friends. But how will the forces of evil now enveloping our world
feel any opposition unless God’s people suddenly turn away from “normal”
life
and seek Him for the answers? Not a little time and a short prayer,
but a shutting aside the things of this world to envelope ourselves in
His Spirit.
I live here in Alaska in a
little house God gave me....my little “cottage on the hill”. And in
hours like this, I commune with Him and it is so glorious. I know there
are saints of God with the same experiences. But it seems like to me,
that I wish I could somehow make a difference in things. Yet what else
can an 80 year old woman do but spend these precious times trying to
learn to walk in obedience and pray for the things He puts on my heart?
How
do we change things? I sometimes spend 5-6 hours studying the Word to
write articles to send out via email, visiting with those who need
fellowship,
but it accomplishing so little it seems. I feel like I’m bursting inside with this burden.
I
thought about China. I had recently read of Jonathan Goforth, who had
literally shaken that country with the Gospel a hundred years ago.
China was Christianized! But then I recalled when I went there myself a
few years ago with some others to try to smuggle in Bibles....but we
were like spies doing work undercover.
Forgive me
for laying this out, but I had been doing some study about Paul, when he
went to Athens and saw all the idolatry there and noticed one altar
‘TO
THE UNKNOWN GOD”. And I thought about the message he gave on Mars hill
when he answered the question of who the unknown God really was.
His
answer is still the only answer: IN HIM WE LIVE, WE MOVE, AND HAVE OUR
BEING---a living God who knows even our thoughts before they become
words out of our mouths---a powerful, all knowing and loving God! Our
problem is that we DONT LIVE IN HIM, WE DON’T MOVE IN HIM, AND WE DON’T
HAVE OUR BEING IN HIM. We live in our ipads, our televisions, our plans
for vacations, our desires for worldly things. And that is why, for
all the effects of our efforts to take the Gospel into all the world, we
now see China as Communist instead of the powerful Christian nation it
once was, and our America fast losing the zeal for God it brought to our
shores 400 years ago.
I pray we will not forget
that answer Paul explained to the Athenians. If we were to be honest
about it, we ourselves can be religious, worshipping our idols, but
haven’t yet figured out who God is, nor sought to know Him. And sadly,
we ourselves—just in case we didn’t cover all the bases and
inadvertently missed one, have erected church buildings as altars to the
“unknown God” just as the Athenians did 2,000 years ago.
Dark
clouds surround us, even as we try to dismiss them and pretend it is
all just a passing thunderstorm. We can be in denial and presumptious of
our “righteousness” and His mantle of Grace and head for the
beaches...unaware that a powerful tsunami is heading our way.
Until
we seek for Him and find Him and move in Him, we have no flame of Holy
Spirit fire to save this country. It is our only hope.
MARY E ADAMS