THE BURDEN OF MY HEART

THE BURDEN OF MY HEART

                I receive dozens of requests from Africa and Pakistan and other places around the globe where either persecution is taking place, or where droughts and famine are taking a horrendous toll.   I correspond with Christians who, having barely enough to feed themselves, are often feeding 5 to 20 orphans as well. Some of them routinely make trips to the garbage dump in search of scraps to eat.

                Among these some are scammers of course, but most are genuine Christians reaching out for help… wondering if anyone knows or cares about them.

                I am currently working on a recording project with my friend Abishai TMG from Zambia. He was adopted by a missionary there and brought to America. He is a tremendously gifted musician, song writer and artist who records songs he writes in both English and his native language to witness to his people back home.  Abashai grew up in a mud hut with a dirt floor where witch doctors ruled the village, but he gave his heart to the Lord and he is a powerfully anointed Christian. It is a great pleasure working on this project with him.

                In Abishai, the plight of the African people is brought to light. Think of all the talent and dreams that are squelched by abject poverty and famine and war and persecution. Sometimes it is all that a person can do just to survive. So when Abishai sings, there is a depth to it… a cry of the human heart for his people and for our world. And yet he is filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

                Shannon, our drummer, I have dubbed Son of encouragement. From my first day as bass player at Clinton Church of God, I had a lot to learn since I had not played my bass for maybe 20 years. Likewise I did not know most of the songs, so everything was new. But Shannon kept encouraging me, telling me I was doing great  (He may lie a little) but his encouragement helped me to catch up so that now I am playing bass and singing harmony as well. This has been a period of growth for me musically since we now play in many audacious keys that I used to avoid, like E flat and A flat and C sharp and every other key in between.

                When Shannon plays the drums, you can feel the intensity of his love and passion for God. He is a youth leader, a prayer warrior, a spiritual leader and a man that is praying for revival in our church and in our community. In the play that the youth recently put on for the community, we saw 42 people come to the Lord and we have a whole new batch of teenagers who are coming to church and worshipping with us with bright happy faces.

                Nathan, our guitarist is a studio quality musician as well. He is laying down tracks on my worship CD. He was baptized in the river this last summer and he is a gentle and kind soul. In his quest for musical excellence he has pretty much mastered everything from Jimmy Hendrix to Chet Atkins and everything in between. He could play pretty much anywhere, but he has chosen to serve the Lord with his music. It is a pleasure to play music and to worship with him.

                His Dad, Bill plays rhythm guitar in our group and he is an excellent musician as well. Bill is a quiet man of God who goes about doing things like providing transportation to those who need a way to church. These musicians make it easy for our worship director Alice Akers because they pick up songs rather quickly and we all have a passion for excellence because our worship is offered up to the Lord. We don’t take our calling lightly and we don’t play lukewarm music… Alice makes sure of that!  She is a 24/7 worshipper. Her zeal and passion for the Lord is infectious.

                Alice is our pastor’s wife and she has a powerful voice. I think she could to well in any studio recording session or concert alike and yet she is dedicated to the Lord’s work in our relatively small church. Alice leads 4 other women, Naomi, Glynda, Sherrie and Dani and so along with my newly added voice we have 3 part harmony and sometimes 4 and the people are blessed by our worship even as we are blessed by theirs. These women of God are anointed with a passion for worship and I am blessed by their ministry as we accompany them with our instruments. We worship as one entity before God.

                But what can we do about the tragedies in this world? What about the hunger and thirst? What about the poverty, sickness and death that plagues our world in so many places. Here we are in America, trying to lose weight even while our brothers and sisters are hunting for scraps of food or lowering their buckets on long ropes trying to reach the last of the muddy water that is drying up.

                Here at home we work with an organization called “Second Harvest.” Once a month they drop off a 53 foot truck load of food which we, along with many in the community pack up into family sized groceries and on Saturdays around 300 people show up for help and we give them each a wagon load of food, along with smiles and prayers and encouragement. Our worship team sings all day in the dining area as we bring in about 40 people at a time to eat while waiting for their number to be called and they get their food.

                This is really a great experience both in getting acquainted with the community and in the good feelings that come with doing what Jesus told us to do. Real joy is always found in the opposite of self pleasing. It is an interesting phenomenon that those who set out to please themselves often end up felling empty and sad, while those who set out to bless others end up feeling full and blessed. But our efforts seem so small in light of the huge and growing need in our world today

                We have entered into a heartbreaking time when we are seeing unusual tragedies and extreme situations all over the globe. Even in places that used to be blessed, we are seeing tragedy. Southern California is being swallowed up by apocalyptic fires and their problems go deep. They are suffering from extreme drought. California has over 130 million dead trees in their forests due to drought and bark beetles and poor forest management. These fires have left the land denuded and vulnerable so that when they do get rain it results in floods and mudslides and other forms of disaster.

                People say that God’s judgments have arrived on California and while I agree in part, I also know that there are thousands of God’s faithful people in Southern California and also up in Paradise California. If judgment has come; it has hit everyone equally and so it confirms what the bible says… the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Usually the ones that make it to the news are the lunatic fringe, while the rest of the people silently go about their business and pray for better days.

                Right now as it stands there are 44 deaths and about 100 missing in California’s fires. I saw some footage taken by people trying to drive to safety through the blinding maelstrom and it is not surprising that many didnot make it.  Countless numbers of homes and businesses have been wiped out and the entire town of Paradise has been wiped of the map by this fire. Many years ago, my brother in law Steve Borth and I sang for a camp meeting there in Paradise. It was a beautiful place… the kind of place that one might want to live… but now it is no more and the entire town of 30,000 has burned to the ground, its people having escaped elsewhere... hopefully.

                This is why we cry out to God for revival… the kind of revival that will bring in the final harvest and usher in the King of kings and Lord of lords. The suffering of the world and its people is becoming unbearable. Violence and dissention are spreading just like the fires are spreading. Good and evil are making increasingly violent turns in opposite directions… seeking different solutions to the same problems.  And evil always persecutes the good. It is never the other way around. Evil always hates righteousness.

                So I have dealt with two subjects here. One is the joy of serving the Lord in a local church in a local community. It is a church that is emerging from a semi lukewarm condition to one that is crying out for revival and not just any revival, but the one that will bring in the harvest and usher in the Lord. It is like waking up out of a 2000 year slumber and realizing that the alarm clock has been sounding and we have been pushing the snooze button, but we can no longer do so.

                The other side of this story is the tragedy of apocalyptic events that seem to be culminating in a time unprecedented in human history. People will look at this event, or that earthquake, or this violence, or that flood, this fire, or that volcano and they will tell you that it has all happened before and they are right. All of these things have happened before, along with war and persecution and division and all of the rest. But now we are seeing it all coming together at once on a global scale. And not only is it happening on a global scale but on s solar system wide scale as well. The sun, moon and stars are getting in on the act.

                But in the midst of this overwhelming conflagration, we, the church, are called to be lights in the darkness. We are called to provide biblical answers to seemingly impossible questions. We are called to provide prophetic perspective and understanding as to what is happening and what we must do about it. On one hand, we must roll up our sleeves and help our neighbors just as any good neighbor would do, but on the other hand; we have the Gospel of the Kingdom to both preach and demonstrate.

                This time around the message must come with power from on high. No kind of half-baked psycho-babel will provide answers to what we are facing right now. Jesus preached the Gospel of the Kingdom and He demonstrated its power to heal the sick, raise the dead, and cleanse the leper, to restore sight to the blind and to bring peace and salvation to troubled souls. And Jesus has commissioned us to preach this same Gospel and to demonstrate the same power.

                So even though I thoroughly enjoy being a part of our worship team and a part of the local Body of Christ… I instinctively understand that we must pray for more now. And while we faithfully perform our duties as God has called us in the local Body of believers, we must also have a vision… a broader vision… a vision that can only be fulfilled if we receive the same power that Jesus operated under. We must do His works and even greater works, because we have come to the end of the age and to a harvest that can only be done by the power of the Lord.

                It is time to pray diligently for that greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit that will brighten the whole world with His glory. We cannot be satisfied with the joy of mere fellowship. It is so easy to settle into the routines of church and its various programs and that is good; but we must also see that yesterday’s programs must begin to give way to Holy Spirit power and a Holy Spirit program that refuses to be controlled by a church bulletin any longer.

                Honestly we need church services that last until midnight as we worship and cry out to God for the light to come and or the glory of the Lord to arise upon us. (Isa. 60) We are told that if we will humble ourselves and pray and seek His face, He will hear from heaven and He will heal our land.

                Well, if we are entering the time I think we are; then God can no longer heal our land. The nations of the world have crossed over into judgment. What we must therefore pray for right now is that God will draw us into the secret place of the Most High, under the shadow of the Almighty and that He will empower us to bring many thousands into this place of safety that God alone can give.

                “After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven having great authority and the earth was illumined with his glory. And he cried out with a mighty voice, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! And she has become the dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird. And I heard another voice from heaven saying,        “Come out of her My people, that you may not participate in her sins and that you may not receive of her plagues.” Rev 18: 1, 2, 4.

                God will have a harvest with us or without us. Indeed, Jesus told us in Mt. 13:39 that the reapers would be the angels. In His parable of the seed, Jesus said, “…the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels.”

                In a real sense then our job is to become sons and daughters of God, being born again into His kingdom, adopted into His royal family, filled with His Spirit and in every way conforming to the image of Christ, for we are called to be His brethren and to inherit the kingdom and to reign with Him for 1000 years.

                We can see the lines being drawn between these two kingdoms right now and we instinctively understand that all of this is way over our heads. We are not going to win the day with our present man made programs… and yet neither can we effectively step out of those programs until another power has taken over. The harvest will not be made of better programs. It will be made up of power from on high.

                Therefore, even as we go about doing what God has put into our hearts to do; we must pray for that greater anointing, that greater power and harvest that is coming.  It is a Refiner’s fire that will separate wheat from tares and barley from its husks.

                It is interesting that the barley harvest comes first for the word “Bar” means son, as in “Bar mitzvah or Simon bar Jonah… (Son of Jonah) And coincidently we are told that all of creation is eagerly waiting for the revealing of these sons of God… (Romans 8:19-23) and that is why I spend so much time in Romans 8, because that is where we are told how sons are made.

                So why be satisfied to be wheat that must be violently threshed to separate it from its chaff, when we can be Barley (Sons and daughters) and first fruits of the harvest that are gently winnowed by the wind of the Holy Spirit? Think on these things and think about your own role in your own church as well as that greater anointing and role that we are being called to prepare for and to pray for.

                And by all means, try to attend a church where they are praying for the harvest and the revival that must come with it. Don’t waste time in a dead church that has no vision of the harvest… no prophetic understanding and no Holy Spirit and fire. Pray that God will guide you to a place where you can be a member of the living church, the Philadelphia church rather than the church of Laodicea.

                God has blessed Bonnie and me with two living churches in recent years. Our Messianic congregation in Vancouver and our Spirit filled church here in Tennessee. And for that we are very thankful. He called us out of a very big church and into intimate fellowship with like- minded believers and He has taught us so much over the past 5 or 6 years. So if you will ask the Lord to teach you His ways, He will and He doesn’t recognize all of the lines and walls that we have drawn between each other. He only sees His Body in the world… those who are called by His name and live by His Spirit and His Word.

                Chances are it will not be a mega church. (Although there are exceptions) But the time has come to move from being members to being sons and daughters of the King… empowered by His Holy Spirit and fire, for that is what Jesus came to bring. John baptized with water, but Jesus baptized us with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Let us pray to be included in it.