Awakening without Repentance?
I hear so many calling for prayers for an end of Covid19 pandemic. I hear others calling this the devils way of keeping the harvest from being brought in.
From the first time I heard people calling for God to end the Covid19pandemic, I was revolted in my spirit, not because I wouldn’t want this pandemic to end, for I surely do and grieve over the loss of lives and livelihoods it has brought by our human response to it. Yet…consider…without repentance, without yielding our lives to the power of the Lord Jesus Christ and learning to live out of His Life that comes to dwell in us, forsaking our idols of various kinds, what would lie in store for this nation?
Is it possible to have a great “revival” without repentance? Is it possible to have a great revival without the “good news of the Kingdom of God” which begins with repentance from dead works…all the things we do to please God and “do right” as if to be righteous apart from Him was being preached? Without repentance from the arrogance of this century’s achievements and our immorality what will be the end? My past life is testimony to what a professing Christian can do without letting the Lord deal with root issues of lust and desire rooted in the control of our own lives. And the price is very high though God’s grace is more abundant!.
What will happen to this nation if we go through this pandemic and the “Church” doesn’t clean house? If the “church”, we called out ones into the Kingdom of God from the way of the world, don’t repent of our fleshly lusts that proliferate in our overeating, our sexual immorality, repent of our desires to achieve and accumulate and be valued, and repent of our desire to be in control of our own lives and using others for a variety of self centered goals and purposes, what lies ahead?
I hear a few voices calling out to the masses of believers. …Repent…let the Lord clean your houses, bring new mindsets to your thinking that align with Him, prepare your heart as you prepare the ground for summer harvest. Plow up your fallow ground so the early and the latter rains can bring forth a harvest of souls.
At the same time, over and over I hear scriptures being preached and spoken from mouths of believers…..pieces of, portions of scriptures out of context! Ps. 91’s promises without the condition of “abiding in Him” and other scriptures dependent upon our taking up “our cross”…recognizing our paths lead to crucifixion and follow Him even as he took up his cross and conquered death allowing us to Live in Him, by Him, from Him.
I am chief among sinners and am learning these lessons AT GREAT EXPENSE myself.
I am learning today to walk in freedom, having cast aside my former ways in recognition that they were “sin”, death producing, self-satisfying ways that brought destruction into my life. How grateful that God’s grace is greater than the consequences those years that continue to produce ungodly results throughout segments of my life.
God will go with us as “believers” even though we maintain a life of immorality, even though we might bully fellow believers, we might tolerate immoral behavior among our fellow Christians without speaking Truth to them. But there is a price to be paid when Satan has an opening in our lives. And all the positive confessions won’t affect an inner change until we repent and allow His sanctifying work to cleanse our lives.
A great awakening is prophesied to be coming forth …..and will the awakening be accompanied by repentance? Signs and wonders will abound, miracles will happen, but will it change the heart of America? Will we let the Lord take the place of our dependence on what is now a global economy, and government paychecks, and viruses that know no borders among nations that have no borders?
Will the nation itself rise up and deal with its Asherah poles and other idols and thrones in the high places of our lives carrying a variety of different names of aberrant behaviors and deal with the offering of our children to the gods of self-desire and expediency? How can the nation rise up when these things proliferate in the house of the Lord and no repentance is being preached? It’s not a message of repent or go to Hell…which may be true, but the GOOD NEWS is that Jesus paid the price for our freedom from our self centered life styles and mindsets, and offers a new way of life IN HIM by HIS SPIRIT….requiring a “turning from” the way of thinking such old behavior is based on and receiving the indwelling life of the Lord Jesus and learning to walk with Him in ongoing fellowship.
It only takes a cursory reading of the prophets in the Old Testament to see how God deals with nations He has used, that He has richly blessed like the USA who turn from Him to their own self centered ways, drawing from sources of strength other than Himself.
For too long the “church” has preached a personal salvation…while the great commission was about nations. Only a repentant “church” that is growing in the sanctifying work of Jesus Christ is secure enough in Him to have a message to this nation or any other nation.
May it be so.
