“With all thy getting, get understanding!”-Pr.4:7
“It is the conviction of the author that the trouble we face is more profound than we normally suppose and that the solution of our difficulties will likewise lie along deeper lines than we normally suppose. Anyone who attempts to think seriously about the matter knows that the positive answer is far more difficult than is the analysis of the problem.” -E. Trueblood
We need to “understand the times & know what God’s people ought to do.” I believe the time has come for Christians to begin moving beyond diagnosis to cures and solutions…our main emphasis must now be placed on prescription. While our culture is rejecting essential truths and vital virtues, it is paving the way for acceptance of damaging and deficient ideologies. “Deep within my own spirit I am convinced that unless we are to have the war of wars that will usher us into the night of nights and judgment of judgments, we must have the revival of revivals” (L.Ravenhill). We must, under God’s grace and for His glory, find ways in which the spirit and mind of man can be renewed and tragedy averted…there must be a way to recovery and revival.
Possibly the first thing we need to understand is the great virtue of humility and the great sin of pride. We live in a day when humility is either lacking or wrongly placed. Modesty was meant to be applied to personal ambition rather than convictions. But, “Nowadays, the part of a man that men assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert=himself. Conversely, the part he ought not doubt is doubted=reality and Divine reason…Man was meant to doubt himself, but be undoubting of the truth” (G.K.C.). It’s my desire that as Christians, we would once again humble ourselves before God, and embrace the call to both win souls and save minds…to prioritize the spiritual and take our intellectual mandate seriously.
We have now entered a season when “heart” versus “head” is a false choice. We can no longer separate pietistic from activist Christianity…we need the root and fruit, devotion and service. The Spirit of power-love-and sound mind is raising up a standard against fear and its’ myriad of cohorts. This is no time for separating the great commandment and commission, the fruit from the gifts of the Spirit, or for truth to be pitted against power or love. We must now “hold to a vision of Christian truth (and life) that displays wholeness and integration, that can be faithful to the Lordship of Christ and to the intellectual challenges of today’s world…This thinking and acting Christianly in the blizzard of modern information (misinformation) and change requires the courage of a prophet, the wisdom of a sage, and the character (spiritual devotion) of a saint” (O.Guinness). These are characteristic of a forerunner ministry, and it is imperative that we embrace all 3 of these, and consciously endeavor to see these connected and cultivated throughout the body of Christ.
Our role is crucial, we are endowed with mind and spirit…we can think, pray, imagine, discern and dream. The most needful thing at this hour is to focus our prayers and concentrate our best thinking on both the conditions necessary for revival and the world’s most difficult-unanswered questions. We need to think and pray about the most pressing questions, that don’t have obvious or easy answers. Eph.3:20 promises, “God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think.” However, we need to ask it and think it first!
I now want to think and stimulate thinking in others…to pray and inspire prayer by others…about what seems to be hugely important questions and obviously missing essentials related to revival and reformation. I want to spend this next phase of my life trying to understand both the
We seek wholeness and a way of life that possesses compassion, intellectual integrity and reverence. We are contending for a great awakening and it will require all of us…heart, soul, mind and strength. We espouse humility in the midst of pride, and are committed to a life of sacrificial love and sensitivity in an age of selfishness. We reject Laodicean indifference, and prioritize intimacy and prayer in a passionate pursuit of God. We believe thanks and praise is the highest form of thought…and worship in the face of impossibilities. We remain dependent on grace and teachable in the face of arrogant self-sufficiency. We see the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom, and embrace the intellectual life and Christian thinking as integral to our calling…and most of all, we know that “the Knowledge of the Holy One is our Understanding!”
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