“…Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate.  Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:12-13).

A pastor once told me that he appreciated the ministry of Jews for Jesus but could not invite us to speak in his pulpit.  He had what he felt was a good relationship with the rabbi across the street, with an annual pulpit exchange.  “I have an opportunity to be a witness through this pulpit exchange,” he explained.  “By inviting Jews for Jesus, I would be forfeiting that opportunity.”

I carefully pointed out that his opportunity was only an opportunity if he could say something that would truly challenge his Jewish friends to consider Christ.  Further, if anything he said or did ever resulted in a synagogue member coming to faith in Jesus, those pulpit exchanges would probably come to a screeching halt.  Sadly, I don’t think that pastor was willing to give up the notion that friendship with the rabbi was somehow a prerequisite to evangelism and the fulfillment of his Christian duty.

Many Christians today seem to think that gaining the acceptance of unbelieving Jewish people is the way to gain a platform for the gospel.  Unfortunately, things usually do not work out that way.  Some people speak about “earning the right” to witness.  While it seems like a humble thing to say, many people fail to see how that statement contradicts Scripture.  The Bible teaches that proclaiming the gospel is an obligation to be fulfilled, not a right to be earned.  The idea that people must accept us before they can accept Y’shua (Jesus) can actually become a subtle kind of pride that we fail to recognize in ourselves and our fellow believers.

We hear much about relational or “friendship” evangelism, but the Bible says “…Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?  Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4, emphasis added).
I’m not saying we should treat unbelievers like enemies, nor should we be “unrelational,” unfriendly, or rude!  Nevertheless, when we make friendship with unbelievers our first priority, Jesus gets short shrift.  Few Christians intend to shunt Jesus off to the side.  Most who never quite get around to giving a clear cut gospel message don’t even realize they are sacrificing their gospel witness on the altar of human acceptance.

Once, when I was speaking at a church, a woman approached me after the service.  She was pleased to inform me that her roommate and best friend in college was Jewish, and that she had maintained their friendship over many years.  When I asked if she ever talked to her friend about Jesus, she responded, “Oh no, I’d be too afraid of offending her.”  I affirmed her desire to remain friends but suggested, “Perhaps what you fear even more than offending her is the possibility that she might reject you.”  I’m afraid that woman took offense at my suggestion, but I had to do what she was not willing to do:  risk being rejected for the sake of an important truth—a truth more important than my being liked or accepted.

It is easy to allow ourselves to believe that our silence is out of respect for those who might disagree with us.  It is easy to see our motivation as noble, especially when we see our ultimate intention as positioning ourselves to be a better witness.  But unfortunately, too often those intentions come to nothing, and we need to face the truth that sometimes our tact and our long-term intentions are merely masks that cover our natural fear of rejection and our reluctance to position ourselves where God really wants us:  in a place of vulnerability.

We need to be honest about our own hesitation to witness, and we need to be realistic about this matter of offending others.  God wants us to be loving and humble when we tell others about Him.  Yet even the most inoffensive manner cannot guarantee that people will not take offense at what we have to say.  Ultimately, people decide the basis on which they will or will not be offended, and sometimes taking offense is their best defense against the gospel.

–David Brickner, Jews for Jesus, “Outside the Camp,” JFJ Newsletter, Sept. 27, 2010

“…if My people…will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face…” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

The 1850s in the U.S. were remarkably similar to today.  The nation was divided over the question of slavery [now abortion].  The 1849 gold rush [now oil rush] had created immense wealth for some while leaving many more others impoverished and destitute.  Much greed created a whole host of financial and social problems.  The country had entered a recession.  Unemployment was high.  Morality was in decline.
Just a few decades earlier, the Second Great Awakening had restored religion to a fever pitch, leading some to believe that Jesus was coming back at any time.  The result was many saved souls and redeemed lives.  Novel religious ideas, including Seventh Day Adventism and Christian Science, also began to spring up, but by the 1850s, the religious fervor was already on the wane.
The economic panic of October 14, 1857, saw over 5,000 businesses fail and the stock market fall 66 percent in a five-year period.  The panic spread to other parts of the world as a great Civil War loomed on the horizon.  Economic recovery wouldn’t begin until eight bloody years later.
In the late summer of 1857, the Old Dutch Reformed Church in lower Manhattan, New York City, decided to close its doors.  One of its members, though, Jeremiah Lanphier, didn’t think it would be right to leave that part of the city without a gospel witness, so he went door-to-door to try to convince people to come to the church.  When his plan failed miserably, he decided to do what many Christians do as a last resort when things don’t turn out as hoped or planned:  he decided to pray.
Passing out fliers in the area, he invited people to a one-hour, lunch-time prayer meeting, and at noon on September 23, what became known as the Fulton Street Revival began, with Lanphier the only person in attendance for most of the hour.  But at 12:30, he heard others coming in, and before the meeting was dismissed at one o’clock, six people had shown up to pray.
Undaunted, Lanphier held another meeting the next week and 14 people showed up, and then 23 the week after that, and then 40 the following week.  Encouraged, the prayer warriors soon decided to meet daily and were amazed as the numbers quickly swelled to the thousands at various locations around the city.  The financial crisis turned people to God in droves.  By the end of that October, revival spread northward to Ontario, Canada, and down the eastern seaboard of the U.S. into the South.  By March, 1858, New York City alone witnessed 10,000 businessmen praying regularly in packed churches and halls at lunchtime and in the evening.
Historians estimate that out of a total U.S. population of only 35 million, over a million people were saved during this short-lived period.  If a similar revival was to break out in America, an estimated 9 to 10 million people would be saved.
The long-term results of the Fulton Street Revival?  A veritable Golden Age:  charitable organizations to help the poor and the needy; the start of the YMCA; the beginning of the Sunday School movement; preachers like D.L. Moody and John Wanamaker; Christian standards such as “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” were written, as well as the incredible musical catalogue of Fannie Crosby.
And God used that revival mightily throughout the whole world.  England saw the conversion of a million people; the Salvation Army was formed; the China Inland Mission was founded by Hudson Taylor; Zulu and Banta tribesmen came to Christ in Africa; natives were saved on the South Pacific islands; Muslims were saved in the East Indies; Christian conversions on a large scale occurred in Jamaica and South America.
Can something like this, even on a small scale, happen today?  That depends on you and me.  Are we willing to humble ourselves and pray and seek God’s face?
–The Fulton Street Revival, 1857

http://www.journal-news.net/page/content.detail/id/533910.html?nav=5142

http://www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=239981&format=html

With all the snow we’ve had in the last few weeks which has prevented us from meeting as a Body, I’ve had some interesting conversations with the Lord—mostly while shoveling—and have asked Him to show me the things He wanted me to understand through all of this.  For whatever it’s worth, here are some of things I learned.
First off, and probably the easiest to see, is the fact that no matter how technologically advanced man is, or thinks he is, God can bring things to a paralyzing standstill any time He wants to get our attention.  When He does that, we need to listen and seek Him.
Second, if the snow is not removed down to the bare ground (or blacktop or sidewalk), it gets compacted and freezes and hardens, and then continues to worsen, hardening treacherously more with each subsequent snowfall.  (I’ll let you think about the spiritual applications of those two lessons).
Anyway, in my own personal reading in Numbers 28 & 29, God showed me a direct connection between the snow lessons and our daily walk with Him.  Briefly, here are some of the highlights to encourage you to dig a little deeper on your own or with your family:

*in these two chapters God describes the daily, weekly, and monthly offerings, as well as the offerings He expects on each of the seven Feasts He has appointed for the Jewish people to keep, honor, and celebrate.
*daily, two lamb offerings are to be made every day—morning and evening (this is just to maintain acknowledgement of God and fellowship with Him).
*weekly, two lamb offerings are to be made for the Sabbath.
*monthly, ten animal sacrifices are to be made for the new month, and one goat as a sin offering
*all the sacrifices are to be without blemish, made by fire, as a sweet (pleasant) aroma to the LORD, and made with a grain offering and a drink offering, the grain offering to be made with fine flour mixed with pressed oil (a beautiful picture of Jesus, as the sacrifices themselves are).
*weekly sacrifices total 16; monthly sacrifices total 75.
*specific multiple sacrifices are required for each of the seven Feasts.
*the word “besides” appears 15 times and a goat offering for sin appears 14 times in chapters 28 & 29.

Again, I’ll let you dig in a little deeper on your own with these picture facts, but what came rising to the surface this time around for me was that even though special offerings were required for the Sabbath, the new moon, and the seven Feasts, the daily offerings were NOT to be neglected (“…you shall be careful to offer to Me at their appointed time”).  Fifteen times God says, “…besides the regular burnt offering.”  He takes our daily walk with Him seriously and expects us and wants us to engage Him personally the first thing every morning and the last thing every night, as well as throughout the day.  We cannot use any excuses, no matter how right they seem, sacrificial we think they might be, or justified we might believe we are in our disobedience, to fail to maintain our daily relationship with God.
Also, 14 times God mentions the required sin offering.  He wants us to be aware of the danger of our sinful nature, not to dwell on our past failures (Philippians 3:13-14), but to be mindful of what our sin cost God.

http://www.journal-news.net/page/content.detail/id/531427.html?nav=5142

January 18 is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, and Thursday, January 22, will mark 36 years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s arguably worst decision—the “right” to abortion. Never before has anyone’s “right” caused so much bloodshed as Roe v. Wade, tallying more than 50 million dead at a present rate of 1.4 million a year, or the death of one baby every 24 seconds.

On January 20, the 44th U.S. President will be inaugurated under the theme, “A New Birth of Freedom,” invoking a line from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “…this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” This historical event, however, will be a study in irony, given the fact that the incoming president is proudly and radically pro-abortion and promised Planned Parenthood that his first act as president will be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which federalizes abortion on demand as a “fundamental right” and annihilates every state law limiting, regulating, or prohibiting abortion, including the ban on partial birth abortion.

The audacity of using themes such as “birth,” “freedom,” and “rights of the powerless” is a mockery of those ideals and should send an Orwellian chill down the spine of every Christian American, because by the end of the day, more than 4,000 innocent fellow citizens will have been slaughtered.

In John 17, Jesus prayed to the Father for His disciples, and, by extension, for all believers in all generations, “Set them apart by Your truth. Your word is truth.” That truth moved America’s Founding Fathers to craft one of the most powerfully moral, religious, and political statements ever penned: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

From beginning to end, God’s Word declares and defends the personhood and sanctity of all human life from conception to the grave, unalienable rights that apply to every U.S. citizen, including the unborn.

While many argue that the social/moral issues are not important, or not as important as the economic and national security issues, the Bible states just the opposite: the morality of a nation is what determines its social, economic, and national success or failure. In that sobering light, then, in a manner similar to the sad state of ancient Israel when they rejected the true and living God for a man who only looked like a king (1 Samuel 8), the election of a man who espouses compassion and concern for the rights of the powerless while blatantly disregarding the most powerless of all—the unborn—may actually be the judgment of God on a divinely blessed nation that has turned its back on Him.

We must persevere, though, with the heart of God on behalf of the unborn as we shout to be heard above the wind—God is the Giver of life, and abortion is murder.

“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17).

All of the world’s religions, even some sects of Christianity, are based on a man-centered premise. Simplified, the assumption is that man is intrinsically good and only need discover his goodness through some sort of self-realization; or that man somehow lost his goodness and must regain it by appeasing God through ritual and self-atoning works; or that man is morally neutral and will eventually become one with the universe.

But true, biblical Christianity begins and ends with God. True Christianity rightly understands and recognizes that man, the highest being in God’s creation, fell from a state of spiritual, physical, and moral perfection when he freely and willfully chose to disobey God. Consequently, with the exception of Jesus, the Son of God, every human who has ever been conceived since that initial fall from grace, including the present generation and continuing through the end of time, is a sinner. That is why we, as humans, sin—because we are sinners. The sins we commit don’t make us sinners; they simply demonstrate that, indeed, we are sinners. And as such, we have absolutely no hope to save ourselves in this life or in the life to come, no matter what religious view we hold (and we all hold one).

Jesus, Himself, tells us that God the Father did not send Him to condemn the world because the world is already self-condemned by man’s act of disobedience (John 3:17-19). God sent Jesus to save the world—that whoever would exercise trusting faith in His life, death, and resurrection would not be lost eternally but would have eternal life in and with Him. The scenario can be likened to condemned humanity floating helplessly, and in many cases, ignorantly, downstream towards a Niagara Falls of eternal punishment. While many promising flotation devices are continually being tossed into the moving current, only one preserver is able to securely rescue someone out of that deadly flow. The choice, though, is up to each individual to reach out and grasp that life preserver. Refusal to do so is to surely perish. No one else can be blamed.

In every other religion, man finds himself trying to do something for God, or the gods, in order to save himself. Only in true Christianity has God Himself done all to save man. Nineteenth century British minister J.C. Ryle put it this way, “Although man’s salvation is entirely of God, his ruin, if he is lost, will be entirely from himself.”

Sadly, too many refuse God’s offer of life. “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). The roar of the falls is getting louder with each passing day. Reach out today for the only life preserver that can save—Jesus Christ (John 3:16).

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…God saw everything He had made, and indeed it was very good…(Genesis 1:1, 31).

God made man in His own image on the sixth day of Creation. With tender precision and biological perfection, He sculpted man from dirt, breathed physical, emotional, and spiritual life into him, and gave him the intelligence and ability to communicate. God also gifted him with something apart from every other created being—a free will—the capacity to choose right from wrong, good from evil. What a magnificent specimen of a living soul in an untainted personal relationship with his Creator.

But what wrong or evil was there in the idyllic garden setting in which God placed him? All creation in some way had been fashioned for man’s benefit and pleasure. God even created a helper for man who possessed the same attributes, abilities, and capacities, yet who was satisfyingly different in complementary ways. Man was given free reign in the garden with only one prohibition: Don’t eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.”

Since God had proclaimed all His creation to be good, this tree and its fruit were not evil. The tree was simply the test of man’s free will. It was man’s own self-determination that would be evil and which would bring death. So, given a perfect state in a perfect environment, man willfully committed an act so simple, yet so eternally profound, that it instantly and irreversibly infected the entire universe, separating man from his Creator for all future generations. The warning had become prophecy with the choice to disobey, which was, in essence, the first realization or knowledge of evil. It resulted in the severed personal God-man relationship that no fig leaves, towers of Babel, or animal sacrifices could ever restore. That it was impossible for sinful man to approach a sinless God became humanity’s ultimate dilemma.

God would require a blood sacrifice for the punishment of that sin, but man could never meet the requirement, because the blood of all earthly sacrifices was tainted by the very same sin. With God, though, all things are possible. His personal intervention on man’s behalf in the original garden by providing animal skins for man’s shame was a clue to His divine solution: He Himself, untainted by sin, would graciously step out of eternity and onto the cross to become the acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the world. This incomparable demonstration of God’s unfathomable love (John 3:16) is the only satisfaction to the deep yearning in man’s soul to get back to the garden. No other way will work.

“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17).  That, indeed, is good news.  And every generation has had the same choice–still simple and still eternally profound.

“Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have give Me, that they may be one as We are…I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me…And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:11, 20-23).

The more I seek the Lord Jesus Christ, the more I hear His voice.

The more I hear His voice, the more opportunities I have to obey Him.

The more I obey Him, the more I learn, grow, and mature in His Spirit, in His Word, and in His knowledge.

The more I learn, grow, and mature in Him, the more I am transformed into the image of Christ.

The more I am transformed into His image, the more I understand and see people and the world from God’s eternal perspective.

The more I understand and see people and the world from God’s eternal perspective, the more I am a conduit of His great love, grace, and mercy.

The more I am a conduit of God’s love, grace, and mercy, the more I am one with Him.

The more I am one with Him, the less I am of myself.

His sight becomes my sight.

His thoughts become my thoughts.

His actions become my actions.

His will becomes my will.

What He speaks to me, He speaks to His Spirit in me.

He increases; I decrease.

The Father and I become one as Jesus and the Father are one.