We Can’t Orchestrate Revival

Several leaders in this area are seeking to rally the whole city behind various causes and agendas. We have received invitations from various groups, some of whom are very outspoken against one another. That leaves us trying to pick and choose which meetings, rallies and revivals we should connect with in order to restore the city.

We learned a valuable lesson back in our years in St. Louis. Our pastor and church were in a very similar position in our early years of growth. In larger cities, there are hundreds of agendas and efforts being made to revive it, so our pastor was getting invitations from all over the city and even several from around the country with all the rallies to revive America.

Our pastor came to a place where he just stopped trying to respond the invitations and he even stopped trying to rally the whole city to come to our gatherings. Instead, he just began to focus on us, the church family. When he invited out of town guest, he didn’t announce it to the city. The guests (some were high profile) were brought to St. Louis to minister to US. Our pastor stopped attending the major national church conferences and poured everything into his own church family.

The result was that we became a powerful prayer ministry in our city.  We became so associated with prayer that when prominent people approached me and my wife regarding a huge Teen Mania, Acquire the Fire event that was coming to our city, they asked us to lead the intercessory prayer team. Whenever some crisis hit our area, the call would always come for our church to lead out in prayer.

That’s how the Lord is leading us today. God didn’t tell us to come to Harrisburg and try to win, rally or revive the whole city. God sent us to Harrisburg and told us to bring FAMILIES together. That doesn’t mean every family in Harrisburg is being called to attend Urban Life. It just means God has given us a mandate to call families together. God sent us to Harrisburg to share our lives and the Word with very specific people. Our dream is not to reach ALL of Harrisburg. Our dream is to minister to the ONES.

In fact, I think it’s very arrogant of church leaders to attempt to organize and administrate the move of God. Too many pastors and churches are still trying to “get together” to put on events. I’m not down with that. If each of us would just do our assigned task, and just trust that God knows what HE is doing all over this city, we could finally stop the madness of trying to orchestrate a revival.

I trust the Lord enough to actually believe that HE will connect us, and unite us, as HE uses us to do His will. We may never know how it was done. We may not be aware of half of what is happening. That’s a good thing. We don’t need a revival in the spotlight of television and the internet. We need revival in the secret place of our hearts and homes.

Postured to Fight, Positioned to Build

Last year ended with heartbreaking tragedy and loss. Families were hit with such severity that it is still difficult to grasp what thousands, if not millions of people are going through as we entered 2013.

We tend to forget about them because our lives may not have been so devastated or we are going through our own problems and losses. Thousands and thousands are still trying to recover from the various natural disasters that struck our country last year. They did not celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas or the New Year in their own homes. They were in shelters, still living in a hotel, or bunking in with family members. Others, like the people in Newtown, CT, could not celebrate at all. It was just too painful.

We have spent the last seven years laying a foundation upon which we could begin to rebuild, restore and renew our hearts and homes. As we celebrated the start of a new year, our hearts have been stirred with a fresh determination to preach and teach the Word of God like never before.

With so many families struggling to rebuild in the aftermath of literal and spiritual hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, wildfires and droughts, we have sensed a new release from God to take the ministry to the next level.

In 2013 our posture and demeanor will change from teacher/ instructor, to strategist and warriors. That's because, we are now moving out into hostile territory that the enemy of our souls has held for many years.

Last year we laid the groundwork for us to take up our positions in the gaps of the protective walls that are supposed to guard our households. We're going to become a lot more intentional about what we do in 2013.

A lot of people are already talking about dreams coming true and many things breaking through for their families, but many of them are not going to see anything change in their lives. In fact things will get worse. Why? Because they aren't willing to fight for it. In 2013, I strongly believe that we're going to have to fight.

The Word that God gave us for Urban Life is that in 2013, we're going to have to fight for it. Things are not going to just fall in place. Doors are not just going to open. Money is not just going to fall out of the sky. If there's going to be any breakthrough in our households, we're going to have to fight for that breakthrough.

In Nehemiah 4, God's people were being threatened because they were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah rallied the people to protect the gaps in the walls while those who continued with the construction, worked with a weapon in one hand and construction tools in the other. They were postured to fight and positioned to build.

I believe that 2012 was just the beginning of sorrows for America and the Church was not exempt from those sorrows. Many people have a very passive approach to the spiritual battle that is now upon us. That's because they don't understand that what we observe in the natural world, is the result of what has happened in the spiritual realm.

 Therefore, 2013 will be about getting geared up for and engaging in the spiritual battle as well as continuing in the work to restore our families.

It's time to FIGHT for our families. There is no way we're going to sit down and just watch demonic strongholds overwhelm us. It's been happening for so many years that many of us are convinced that there's nothing that we can do about it.

If you've ever watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you have some idea what I’m talking about today. However, for us, this is not a mythological story. This is our real-life conflict. Will we put on the spiritual amour and prepare to fight? Will we pick up the tools and begin to rebuild?

If we want to see the promised victory, then let's get prepared because THE BATTLE'S ON!

Can’t stop crying inside

Who would have thought that another date would be burned into our national conscious? Not since 9/11 has an event completely halted our nation. Our president was visibly moved and all of us parents cringed as our hearts melted with the horrible revelations of what had taken place while we were going about our busy little lives.... on 12/14/12........

You can tract back through my blogs and that is the only proof that I have been saying that something terrible is about to happen. I could feel it and I’ve been praying ever since.

When the hurricane devastated New Jersey and New York, I still somehow knew that this was only the beginning. I kept praying and kept calling our church family to pray.

Now we have 27 more reasons to pray. A lot of the joy has been taken out of the upcoming holiday season. Although it will be a little bit more meaningful for those who still have their loved ones around them.

I called a special ‘Processing and Healing’ prayer gathering last Sunday so we could work through this together as a church family. I wanted to give everyone permission to mourn in their own way. Then we gathered all of our broken pieces and worshipped God together.

It was not a spectacular moment, but it was a real one.

For my family, the whole year has been like the last weekend. We lost a dear, dear, spiritual son. My brother had a heart attack. My mother had a mild stroke. My sister had an episode with her heart.

I’m thankful and I’m grateful. At the same time, I’m very somber. I feel there’s more to come if we don’t engage in this spiritual battle and pray.

How many will join with us and pray? How many will wait until it strikes close to home before they pray?

I can’t stop crying inside. My heart is overwhelmed.

Positioned for Victory

If you ever played chess and you were victorious in a match, you will understand what I mean in this blog. There is a moment when you realize you have successfully maneuvered around the board to trap your opponent in a no-win situation. The match is over and it’s only a matter of time before you can declare it.

Right now I’m referring to that moment just before you declare check mate. You have strategically given up pawns and various pieces, baiting your opponent to move their pieces to positions that will benefit you in various moves that you have already played out in your head.

Right now, that’s how it feels regarding my family and the Urban Life Church ministry in Harrisburg.

For more than eight long years, God has been moving us, and shifting pieces, sacrificing the plans and strategies that we once held dear, to position us for the right place, with the right people, and the right time to reveal His glory and touch this community in the ways He revealed to us so many years ago.

There is a gleam of delight in the eyes of the Lord because his opponent has moved his pieces in the exact places that HE desired. God allowed His opponent to capture various pieces that seemed like painful losses to us, but the Lord had a greater victory in mind.

God was so many steps ahead of His opponent that this entire match was already won from the first move.

I feel something deep in my spirit right now. Our nation sits at a fiscal cliff. People’s hearts are failing because of fear. Discouraging news roars loudly every day and night on television and in cyber space.

Yet, the Lord is moving us and all of His people into key positions. We will find ourselves in the perfect position for the Lord to declare, “Checkmate!” as He makes His final move.

I’m so glad to be on the winning side.

Writing for a Generation That Doesn’t Read

I must admit that I was very discouraged a couple of years ago because I found myself in the position where my purpose seemed meaningless. I woke up to the realization that I was a writer in a generation that hardly ever reads.

Imagine the defeat in my heart. All my life, all I wanted to do was write. Then when the time of life arrived to fulfill that dream, I woke up to a world where it’s all about the visual, the sound byte and the mind-blowing special effects.

First, the Lord had to encourage me by telling me something that I will never forget. These words came to my heart, "EVEN IF NO ONE READS YOUR BOOKS, THAT STILL DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE NOT A WRITER. You are still a writer even if no one reads another thing that you write. You would still be a prophet if no one listened to or believed you. You would still be a preacher if no one attended the church."

God let me marinate on that one for a few months.

The next word of encouragement involved a simple change in strategy. Instead of trying to put all that I write in books, the Lord sent the wisdom to put my writings within my weekly teachings and then video record the teaching sessions.

With that in mind, I began embedding more visuals and graphics into the teachings by incorporating Power Point presentations for the sermons.

We worked through several months and taught from our Nuggets of Wisdom book and divided the recordings into nearly 100 video clips. My wife and I methodically paced through several months and taught from our marriage and family book. This produced almost 40 video clips.

That's how I successfully expanded my expressions beyond books. To date, we have posted well over 600 video clips and we now have a steady stream of video clips going out to cyberspace almost daily. Every clip represents, in some way, a small piece of the writings we have been publishing over the past three years.

Yes, there are still quite a few people around who will actually pick up our books and physically read them. We truly appreciate them. We make most of our reading material available, FREE of charge, on our ministry website. However, the majority of our audience have connected with us through the visuals and the short sound-bytes.

It’s amazing how a change of strategy followed my change of heart. God had to remind me that a writer is a writer regardless of public response. However, as a writer in a new era, I had to change the way I was trying to reach my audience.

This was a valuable lesson and I hope it inspires someone else who may be wondering what they must do to reach people in this technology-driven, cyber space oriented generation.