INTRODUCTION
When I was in elementary
school, I remember the teacher saying, “Stop,
Look and Listen” as she taught us to read. When you were learning to
dive a car, the instructor may have said, “Stop, look and Listen” at all
railroad crossings. Some parents have
said to their children, “Wake Up. Stop what
you are doing. Look at the
consequences. Listen to me.” We live in such a fast-paced, high tech world
that most of us never stop and look at what is going on around us, and we
certainly don’t listen to what God is saying to us in the Bible.
If we looked at the
world around us, we might be tempted to make the same statement David Jerimiah
makes in the title of his recent book, I Never Thought I Would Live to See
the Day. The book was a result of Dr. Jeremiah’s looking at the world
around him and looking at the signs of the times and listening to the
Bible. His conclusion is that the people
in the sinful culture around us are literally going to hell, and we Christians
are doing little about it.
The challenge this
morning is for the men of FBC Clayton to become the strong Christian role models
that our society needs and more importantly, that God demands. The objective: stimulate thinking. My prayer is that God will use these words to
encourage each of us to seriously consider the signs of the times and to wake
up
DAVID’S TESTIMONY
No one would have imagined as recently as five years ago that I
would be standing in a church encouraging men to be a strong Christian
influence. One of the reasons is the influence of Baptists on Mission – formerly
known as Baptist Men - formerly known as
Brotherhood. I attended Baptists on
Mission annual conference last year and earlier this month attended BOM’s
Advisory Council Meeting. You would be
amazed at the opportunities that God has provided through Baptists on Mission
for us to participate in intentional missions outside the walls of the
church.
When God Intervenes
God has a unique plan
for each of us and God has a plan for each church. God intervenes in an individual’s life–Abraham,
Moses and Saul. It is easy to talk about
God calling historical people in the Bible.
This morning I want to be very personal and talk about God intervening
in my life with the prayer that the Holy Spirit may also convict and convince
Christian men to repent and make a full commitment to Him. Wake Up.
Intervention 1. A little
over one year ago, because of the encouragement of a friend, I participated in
my first missions trip ever – to India sponsored by NC Baptists on Mission. For
the first time in my life I witnessed the Holy Spirit at work. The temperature was over 100 degrees on
Sunday morning, the floor of the church was dirt, flies were everywhere, women with
small children sat on one side of the church and men on the other, the musical
instruments included a bongo drum and a keyboard powered by a battery and
played by someone who was just learning how to play. But the Holy Spirit was present.
Beginning on that trip I
began to think about what it would be like to have a New Testament church like
that which existed in the book of Acts. The question that kept coming back was,
“Why aren't our churches in America with all our beautiful buildings and music
and good preachers experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit? I thought, maybe it is just me. Maybe it is just the churches I have been a
part of were not very spiritual. I
thought, “Maybe the Holy Spirit is moving in other denominations in America.”
After returning to
Raleigh and going to the NC Missions Conference in Winston Salem and the Send
North America conference, sponsored by the North /American Mission Board, in
Dallas TX, I learned that India is not the only place God is at work. Add China, South Korea and Brazil to that
list. And the shocker for me: we don’t
see the same evangelical results any place in America. And for that matter, these evangelistic
results are not apparent in any western country. God was beginning to get my attention by
breaking my heart.
Intervention 2. Beginning
about two years before the trip to India, my wife and I began participating in Church Renewal Journey. This initiative apparently originated back in
the 1970’s, but I had never heard of it.
The initiative is headed by Boy Foy who is a NAM missionary based and
sponsored by Baptists on Mission. CRJ is
one of the eighteen ministries by Baptists on Mission. The intent of these weekends is to provide
the spark that leads to church revitalization.
I have now been in almost 20 churches (NC, VA, WVA, TX and OH) and the
impact on my life has been similar to the India experience: What is God up to or not up in America? What does India have to do with church
renewal in America? Why aren’t our
churches in America thriving? Why are
some of the churches that in years past were the leading churches of our
denomination now closing their doors and in at least one case, auctioning their
property? You probably have heard or
read the statistics:
·
65/65. 65% of those over 65 are active members of a
local church in America and attend church most Sunday’s unless they are sick or
out of town. On the other hand, less
than 1 in 5 of the young people in the millennial generation is in church this
morning. America’s churches have lost a generation. These people have opted out; and if this
trend continues, our country will be similar to Europe. Today, there is no presence of any of European
country calling itself a Christian nation.
·
We can’t point our finger at other denominations
and say they are the problem. We know
that 70-75% of SBC churches have plateaued or are dying, based on information
from Lifeway. Each year, these churches are
baptizing less people than the number of church members who are dying. Did you know that more than 2000 SBC churches
in NC did not baptize a single person in the last church year? These dying churches are giving less than 10%
to missions and ministries outside the church, and the demographics of the dying
church’s membership is significantly different from that of its community.
Intervention 3. About
nine months ago, I downloaded a prayer guide written by a pastor in KY, John
Franklin, whom I did not know, to use in a short-term daily devotion. One of the verses used by John in the prayer guide is 2 Chronicles 7:14. "If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my presence and repent from their sins, then I will hear from heaven and answer their prayer and heal their land. Some
verses in the Bible do not register with me, but this one did. My late mother would say, “It stands out like
a sore thumb.” And I can’t turn it
loose.
Now listen to this. About three months ago, I participated in a
church renewal weekend in OH, and the teacher was: you guessed it, John
Franklin – the same person who wrote the prayer guide. He expanded the thoughts in his prayer guide
and zeroed in on 2
Chronicles 7:14. He spent three hours arguing for his premise that
God is not blessing America, but on the contrary, God is punishing us because
those of us who call ourselves Christians, and particularly men, are not living
the lives that God demands. The initial
reaction was, “My God would never punish Christians because He loves us.” Or, “I'm going to heaven and don’t have to
worry about anything” The delayed reaction was, “Is America really broken; does
America need to be healed? Could many of
our secular problems – economy, political, natural disasters, and terrorism,
which we are experiencing actually be God saying, “Wake Up” to his churches?”
That weekend was as
powerful and emotional as any I have ever experienced because here is how the
Holy Spirit convicted me: “David,
the problems of America are not the fault of science or education or of the
president or congress or governor or legislature or anyone else you have been
blaming. They are the result of your
disobedience and sin.” And then a voice – Holy Spirit, inside of me,
asked a simple question, “Could
it be that John Franklin is right?” “What
if his message is directly from God?” The realization hit me a couple of days later. I believe John Franklin is right; God is
trying to wake up his sleeping churches. I totally broke down, and I could only pray, “What do I do?”
Intervention 4. God
created me with a very logical mind; “If”
/ “Then” statements make sense to me. I think like an engineer in the truest sense
of the stereotype. And, I am an amateur futurist – one who reads and studies
the signs of the times in areas like demographics, economics, politics,
technology and spirituality to predict trends.
Have you already detected this story about God intervening in David’s
life is headed? I’ll continue.
The same week I broke
down crying “What do I do?” Bob Foy emailed and said, “I want you to be
prepared to teach the Awaken Plus weekend using the verse 2 Chronicles 7:14.” I believe with all my heart that God created
me with abilities and interests and spiritual gifts and now a passion to answer
the question, “What
do I do?”
Of course, the answer is
found in the same verse, 2 Chronicles
7:14, which I will paraphrase:
”If Christian men will
humble themselves and pray and seek my presence and repent of their sins,. . . . Logic teaches us that if all components
of the ‘If” statement are true, then
all statements of the “Then”
statement are true. Even better, the
Bible teaches us that God always does what He says He will do! “then
I will hear from heaven and answer their prayer and heal their land.”
Nest weekend, I will
teach this lesson at an Awaken Plus weekend in Seabrook TX.
I keep thinking that
this is the last intervention by God in my life. But I know that is not the case. As long as He leaves me here on earth, He
will intervene because He loves me and because mercy trumps judgment.
This morning, the
challenge to men is Wake
Up. Is the Holy Spirit convicting and convincing
you of something you need to do or change in your life? If the answer is no, then good for you. But, if your heart is beating a little
faster, respond using the secular expression, “Stand up like a man!” (I think
that phrase is found in the book of Job.) Respond to the tugging of the Holy
Spirit.
Closing Prayer.
