New Year's Transformational Thoughts

I suppose I will jump on the bandwagon of New Years blogging. But perhaps my New Years thoughts might be a little different from most.... so hang on !

There are two streams of thought here, and in some ways they reflect the two "fires" that are communicated in the Sentinel DVD, "Approaching Fire." The first is the fact that, despite all the secular and church hype, we are not getting any better. Sure there is a lot of "churchy" activity around. We again have a plethora of prophetic pronouncements about the New Year and the new decade, but it all seems to be wrapped in the same old wrappings of "ministry," and for all that has been spoken in the past decade, I personally do not see that we as the Church, here in the West have advanced. We continue to promote our ministries and we continue to be as ineffective as before. We have some who call a small step, "transformation" when it is little more than what we can achieve from our own human efforts. There is little or no societal transformation on the scale that we see in other places in the world. And so far, the trend seems to be that we will continue in the old patterns. I see us in the period of Hosea 5:13 - 15 - Where Israel saw and recognized her "sores" yet turned to human means to try to get healing. We are continuing to do this under the guise of "ministry initiatives." So the Lord basically says, "OK, that's not going to heal you, but while you are finding that out, I'll be over here waiting for you to cry out to me in desperation." I do not think we have yet come to that place of genuine desperation where we are eager to give up our own ideas, solutions, fall backs, and initiatives, and fall on our faces and cry out to Him. So, until we come to that place, I believe the Lord will continue to allow us to drink from our own cisterns that hold no water (Jeremiah 2).

On the other hand, we find places and people who have come to that place of desperation and the end of their own efforts, and are experiencing TRUE transforming revival. The past decade saw a rise in such occurrences from 8 in 1998 to over 800 in 2009. Transforming revival is exploding in other parts of the world, and I believe it will continue. There are those who are embracing the invitation of Hosea 6:1-3, returning to the Lord, leaving behind all the former "techniques" and simply crying out for Him, for His presence (vs. 2). Those who come to that place are finding out the reality of God's promise that as surely as the sun rises, He will come to us, vs. 3. As the sun rises on January 1, 2010, it is a testimony to the faithfulness of this promise from our Faithful God.

Am I hopeful? Absolutely!! Not because I believe we will get there by all our initiatives and efforts, but because even as God will allow us to go deeper into despair, injury and pain, it is because He desires for us to come to that ultimate place of total abandoned desperation for His presence alone. Let's stop pretending we are doing so well. Let's stop pretending that if we just do this program or initiative we will persuade Him... He will respond to our sincerely broken, contrite, and desperate hearts (Isa. 66:2). This will be a challenge to every church, every ministry who feels pressure to "survive" by continuing to come up with appeals, programs, initiatives and "religious efforts." but if we GIVE UP, we will find Him waiting with open arms.

May 2010 be the year we come to that realization.