Encouraging Young Christians

Encouraging Young Christians

I belong to the ‘senior’ generation of those old enough to have experienced life but not necessarily wise enough to have learned over much. I love to see younger people coming through the church – the pastors, evangelists, teachers, and leaders of tomorrow. I was just thumbing through my Bible looking for inspiration when an email arrived. So it is that I owe a big thank you to Apostle Terry Graham of Team Soteria Ministries at www.soteria.org for this text and the inspiration for this blog.

I have, for some time, spoken about honouring our young people. Some of the things I have been saying, to the older generation of the church, are these :-

“Its time to acknowledge and honour the anointing on our young people and allow them to minister & pray too or we risk losing them.”

“Young people do not receive a ‘junior Holy Spirit’ anointing. They receive exactly the same Holy Spirit baptism as us and God uses them too.”

“We may usher in revival but our young people will carry it to millions more than we can even dream of reaching. Mentor them properly.”

What I had omitted, until now, is any word for the younger generation. However, the Apostle Paul wrote this for me some 2000 years ago and the advice holds good even today.

1 Timothy 4:12 NIV – UK

“Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.”

What incredibly wise advice and encouragement this is. As far as I am seeing, the young people in our local churches throughout the world are setting their local worlds on fire by their example. They are leading street evangelism to the partying and good-time youngsters of their own age group; They fearlessly lead public and private prayer teams for healing and repentance; and they are bringing scores into the kingdom that people of my own age group, fervent though we may be, just cannot hope to reach.

Many have ‘pledged’ not to drink nor smoke, not to watch or read unsanctified stuff, and most importantly to keep themselves pure for marriage to a partner of the opposite sex. We may not see many prophetic youngsters but even that is changing as their zeal drives them to seek ALL the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Young Christians, I commend you. I hold you before the Lord and give Him praise and glory for you all. I pledge that I will continue to do all I can to encourage, help, and mentor you, and I will encourage my own peers to do the same. I hope this doesn’t sound patronising nor in any way deprecating. I truly do admire your commitment in today’s perverted and lost world.

As for my own generation, can we please encourage, teach, train, and mentor these youngsters and not try to keep them quiet. If we don’t encourage them, we will lose them – to other churches who will use them or to the world. What a criminal waste that would be.

Joel 2:28-32 NIV - UK

The Day of the LORD

²⁸ And afterwards, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.

²⁹ Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

³⁰ I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke.

³¹ The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.

³² And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the LORD has said, among the survivors whom the LORD calls.

Yesterday Today & Forever

Yesterday, Today, Forever

This morning, as I was reading again those beautiful words in Ecclesiastes 3, the Lord spoke to me. Let me show you what He showed me.

Ecclesiastes 3 (NIV)

A Time for Everything

“ ¹ There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:”

This is one of the great truths of God’s Word. Everything has its season – there is indeed a time to do and a time not to do. This is just the preface of what God was showing me.

“ ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Reminded me of that old Ray Stevens song, “Everything is beautiful, in its own way” and don’t tell me you didn’t start to sing it too!! LOL . . . But the Lord pointed me to the next little bit – the bit about eternity in our hearts. That’s a whole new concept isn’t it? We have eternity in our hearts yet we still cannot understand what God has done for us since time began until the end of time. As I began to think about this, the Lord interrupted me again to point out verse 16,

“ ¹⁶And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment— wickedness was there, in the place of justice— wickedness was there.”

He let me think about this statement for a minute or two, then He said, “This is where corruption begins.” That stopped me and made me think. He went on, “The widow, the orphan, the disadvantaged, and the poor are denied proper judgement and therefore they are denied justice.”

There was a pause so I managed to ask, “How so Lord?”

He said this, “When judgement became a buyable commodity, so justice became the short change given to my people. Show me a place where corruption does not rule and I will show you My Kingdom.” With that the Lord showed me the worlds kings and princes, the rulers and politicians, the big businessmen and those who dictate the marketplace. There was not one who was not corrupted by greed, by the lust for power, or for personal advantage.

I protested that there are many good Christians in these positions but the Lord pointed out that all of them, without exception, was somehow made to “toe the party line”. This was all very gloomy and depressing but the Lord is merciful and He took me back to His Words in Ecclesiastes 3. As I read them again, He spoke to me about the time to do everything.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”

I asked Him what message I should put out with all of this and He said this – “Every season is called at My command. There is nothing that happens that I do not know about and which I do not control. I am the Lord God Almighty and I am He who was before time; who is now; and who will be when time is no more. For those who are lost, there will soon be no more hope but for those I call My children, there is hope eternal. I have My hand on each one of you and on every situation. Do not give up on Me now for there is a season of great harvest coming and every single one who does the least little thing for My Kingdom shall be honoured. I was, I am, and I always will be the Hope of My people.”

Finally the Lord drew my attention to Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Is our God not a wonderful caring and loving God?

A Time for Everything

A Time to Plant

Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,”

The Lord gave me this word for my local church which is relevant and, I think, worth sharing – albeit modified a little.

It is time to plant. Many of you have sowed and sowed and then cultivated and grown. Now there comes a time to harvest but it’s not the usual harvest that most of us expect. Rather it is a harvest in preparation for the coming great harvest. It is time to plant new churches, and new ministries, and the Lord is waiting to bless your planting just as He has blessed your sowing.

There are many places where the Gospel is rarely, if ever, heard. Joshua 13:1 says, “When Joshua was old and well advanced in years, the LORD said to him, You are very old, and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over.” ‘There are still large areas of land to be taken over’ – interesting phrase for these times. I see the church at long last leaving the safety of its own four walls and going out into the market places to gather the harvest in.

The example for us is in Matthew 22:1-10 – “Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.' But they paid no attention and went off— one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, ill-treated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

The clue is in verses 8-10 where the servants were told to ‘go to the street corners . . . .’ Another translation says for the servants to ‘go to the highways . . .’ This is our clue to leave the church building and get out to where the people are. For too long we have said, “All are welcome” - but hardly anybody ever comes. So, like the king in the parable, we need to go to the highways, the by-ways, and the street corners and invite people in.

I believe with all my heart that the Lord is calling us, His church and His Bride, out of the safety and sanctuary of our buildings and calling us on to the streets with the message of salvation through His precious Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. He is telling us to drop our smug sanctimony and adopt His servanthood – to get up off our comfortable seats and get out into the harvest fields – to begin to be the servant church that He has always called us to be. We need to heed His call to us or we will miss much of the harvest.

If that happens, how will you explain to Him why you didn’t do it?

Its better than fighting God

Gamaliel’s Law

I have, for some time, savoured the wisdom of Gamaliel. Remember him? He’s the chap in Acts 5:34-39 addressed the Sanhedrin. This “Jewish High Court” was debating what to do with Peter and the Apostles. Gamaliel had the wisdom to advise the Sanhedrin thus in Acts 5:34-39

“But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honoured by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them: Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered. Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

What wisdom ! What wise advice !! What he was saying, in effect, was “Don’t waste your time trying to change something that you don’t understand. You may end up in trouble a lot worse than anything you currently perceive.” He added the important caveat though, that if what you see is unimportant it will die off anyway. Against this he also said that if God was behind it then they would be fighting the very one whose honour they were thinking to defend.

What wonderful advice for us today. There are more wars fought over totally unimportant trivia, both inside the church and outside, than over the truly important things. We war and split over the gifts of the Holy Spirit without any consideration of whatever the Word of God says about it. We ostracise prophets because we don’t understand prophecy. We insist that all prayer for healing is only carried out by those who are “trained” to do so. We veto moves to form an organised youth group because it doesn’t fit with OUR plans – but what about God’s plans?? All these things can, I suppose, be grouped under the heading of ‘quenching the Holy Spirit’. All the same, in very many places, no consideration is given to whether or not this or that activity is of God or not. It all has to fit in with our own plans.

We need to spend much more time before the Lord in prayer seeking His will before we stop anything. Even then we need perhaps to operate Gamaliel’s Law - Leave them alone and if they are not of God, they will fade away like all the other dross. Acts 5:34-39

Why fight each other when we can fight God and do Satan’s job for him? On the other hand, why do Satan’s job for him when you can spend your time better by advancing God’s Kingdom?

That is surely better than fighting with God ???