THE CHURCH'S DESPERATE NEED


THE CHURCH’S DESPERATE NEED

                “Come let us return to the Lord, for He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” Hosea 6:1-3

                In the verse just preceding this one found in Hos. 5:15 God speaks saying:  “I will go away and return to My place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me. “

                Who and what are these verses talking about? Who was it that said: “I go to prepare and place for you and if I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there you may be also?” John 14:1-3

                How is Zechariah talking about in Zech. 12:10 when he says: And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son…”

                And again in Revelation 1:7 it says: “Behold, He is coming with the clouds and every eye will see Him even those who pierced Him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. Even so Amen”

                In all of these verses this is clearly Jesus speaking and He is addressing the Jews, but John expands this thought in the book of Revelation saying: “All the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him.”

                Why is there mourning at the returning of the Lord? We always talk about what a joyful occasion the coming of the Lord will be. How wonderful it will be to finally see Him face to face.

                I think the reason we are going to mourn is that when we finally see Him face to face, it is going to dawn upon us just how little time we spent preparing for this event or telling others about it. We too will look upon the One we have pierced, for even though we had the advantage of Israel’s experience to lay groundwork of understanding for us, we have pierced the Messiah with our sins. We have grieved the Holy Spirit by ignoring His presence in our lives. We have often chosen to live by the flesh rather than by His Holy Spirit. We have fallen short of the glory. See Ephesians 4:30

                So the church as a whole is in desperate need of revival, but not just any revival. We need to engage in a revival that will bring in the final harvest. We need to engage in a revival that will produce a spotless Bride who is adorned for her husband. We need a kind of revival that will produce the sons of God for whom all of creation is waiting in eager anticipation. Romans 8:19

                We have come to the end of the 2nd day and we have entered into the third day. God has healed Israel and has brought them back into their own land. The nations have gathered around Israel to drive them into the sea. Earth’s final battles are about to be engaged. All of the nations are going to mourn over whom they have pierced. Israel will mourn because they rejected their Messiah and we, the church will mourn because we lived half-hearted Christian lives… we did nothing to bring in the lost or to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.

                Many church members will be shocked to discover that they have no oil in their lamps. They have fallen asleep. They have lived mostly for themselves. They had a form of godliness, but no power… not because God wasn’t pouring it out, but because they were unwilling to enter fully into the Lord’s plans… they avoided the altar of sacrifice… the lived in a me-centered gospel… they failed to be conformed to the image of Christ . (Ephesians 4:11-14) They have never really received His DNA and so they do not look like Him… He doesn’t know them. Mt. 25: 1-10, 25:31-35  

                Jesus offered them His body and His blood, but they refused to eat and drink the fullness of salvation into themselves. They claimed to be born again, but they never really lived by the new Spirit that Jesus had put in their hearts.

                So I will close with these two axioms:

1.       No revival can happen unless God pours His Spirit out upon us.

2.       God cannot pour out His Spirit upon us until we have prepared our hearts to receive it.



God has shown us what we must do:

1.       We must repent of our sins and turn away from them.

2.       WE must be truly born again. We must die to self and take up our cross and follow Him.

3.       We must be filled with His Spirit so that the fruit of His spirit is being produced in and through us.

4.       We must be baptized in the Holy Spirit so that we can operate in His power to do His works in the world.

5.       We must daily apply the blood of Christ to our lives.

6.       We must eat all of His flesh, not just the parts we like.

7.       We must now begin to walk in all that Jesus has provided for us in His covenant.      

8.       In order to do this we must learn to live by His Spirit and not by our flesh. Romans 8

                I may sound like a broken record as I repeat some things over and over again, but I tell you with all the passion that I can muster, that this is the church’s greatest need. WE have fallen from our first love and we are back to living in the flesh rather than by His Spirit. WE are virtually powerless because the power is in His Spirit and not in our flesh, or our good intensions or our works or our programs per se.

                There is really only one program and Jesus modeled it for us. He did only what He say the Father doing and said only what He heard the Father saying. He lived every day by divine appointment and His life was lived totally and completely by the Holy Spirit within Him. We must be empowered by the Holy Spirit and we must live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

                God is the same yesterday and today and forever. He hasn’t changed His Plans or ours. “For me to live is Christ.” “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who gave His life for me. It is Christ in you, the hope of glory and us living in that power and not our own.

                We are not talking about some form of legalism here. What I am talking about is that of entering into the infinite power of God so that we can do exceeding abundantly beyond all we have asked or thought through Jesus Christ who strengthens us.

                His seed… His DNA has been planted in us by His Holy Spirit6. Now we need to grow up into the fullness of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” Eph. 4:13

                This is not a game! This is the real thing! It is for keeps and for eternity. It is time to fully engage in the plan! This is our desperate need!

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