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