The past few weeks have been a spiritual boxing match going on in my mind. In one of the later rounds, the men of the Grace Church pastoral staff traveled nearly five hours on Monday morning to Cedarville University in Ohio for a conference on "Building a Life of Integrity: Evangelism for a New Day." Earlier in the bout however, God was doing some heavy reconstruction work in my heart and mind, preparing me for such an explosive conference experience.
A few weeks ago, I felt a bit disconnected from God. I felt my prayers were hollow, I felt my messages were dry, and I felt my walk was slowing to a halt (which we all knows means I was sliding backwards). After several failed attempts at figuring out the situation myself, I went to where I should have gone far sooner. I turned to God and flat out asked him, "What in the world is going on?!" His answer made me regret asking the question as he simply pointed behind me, into my past.
In the past month since asking God this question, I have been peppered with the subject of why I felt distant from the Lord. Check this out:
1) The day after the question, a man I very much admire spoke at the halftime of our Men's Basketball League night on the precise subject that I was struggling with.
2) The next four podcasts that downloaded themselves onto my iTunes were step-by-step sermons on the exact area in which I felt lost.
3) Two weeks ago, and two weeks after the question a young man approached me with advice about a way to help him with a similar problem. And finally,
4) My pastor felt called to spend not just one, but two full Sundays discussing the subject.
Alright God, I catch the drift! Haha.
So late last week I addressed the subject head on. I spoke with a man I very much admire and asked for his help as a mentor. I also spoke with a colleague whom I equally admire and asked for his help as an accountability partner and prayer warrior. Other than the moment when I knew that my soul would live eternally, I have never felt such freedom!!! And this freedom was such a feeling that God wanted me to have entering this conference.
So there we are; 5 men, 1 van, and a whole bunch of stories. I love my job and the people I work with, but it was simply amazing to spend that kind of quality time with each other. We sat there talking, encouraging, confessing...the list goes on! I knew that God was working in that van and preparing us for two days of renovation, rejuvenation, and revolution!
I have a feeling that I'll be speaking about this conference for a few more entries, but I want to share with you a thought that came to me while John Avant was speaking about Revival, such as the Fulton St. Revival in 1857 NYC. He made a few comments and it made me realize that now in 2007, we are at a Revolutionary Crossroads. This means one thing...we have a choice to make. You see, revival is out there waiting for us to come to it. As much as we talk about it though, I don't feel like we really want it. We're really comfy with our lives and don't feel up for much sin confession/admission.
Well here's the crossroad, because if we want it, and I mean truly want it, we can start a revival bigger than anything the world has every seen. Tens of millions of people could truly meet Christ for the first time! We are so close and we don't even realize it. But we're close to the other end of the spectrum, too. We are raising up a generation of apathetic people, and if we don't change and put a charge into this apathy, we will end up just like Europe, where the churches of the Great Awakening are now shops for pornography and other worldly goods, and Christianity is simply a religion of the past. I am not willing to stand aside and see this happen here. I will stand and I will speak and more importantly, I will pray for revival.
Please God, work in your wondrous ways
