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How many gifts will come with instructions that begin with “start here.” Our journey with Christ in 2012 needs to start here.

The English revivalist Gypsy Smith challenged his listeners to take a piece of chalk and draw a circle on the ground. Once the circle was complete, get inside the circle and pray, “Lord God, send revival and begin it right here in this circle!”

We desperately need a movement of God’s Spirit in our day. As individuals, churches and a culture, we have insurmountable problems that our best human ingenuity cannot fix. We need the Lord to sweep into our churches in a fresh way. We need a great spiritual awakening to blaze through our communities and our culture.

No one can make God do anything. Local church and Convention leaders cannot launch a program to cure what ails us. We need the fresh wind of God’s Spirit and a fresh fire burning in our hearts.

How can we get in a position for God to powerfully move? We know from the Scriptures that God wills to do more through His people than any of us could ever imagine. How do we cooperate with Him for a movement of His Holy Spirit? We know every work of God in history was preceded by the work of the Holy Spirit in individual lives through prayer.

So, on our knees we must go! We must meet Him inside the circle of His presence. There we have a powerful opportunity for healing to come to broken lives, fractured families, addicted captives and cold, hardened hearts.

It is time for us to call out to the Lord, “Begin Your reviving work right here in this circle, right now, for Your glory. Lord, start a spiritual awakening right now in this circle, in me!”

At the first of the year, Missouri Baptists, Southern Baptists have a huge opportunity to join with countless others across the nation in a humble journey of 21 days of prayer and fasting. Such an exercise is a powerful discipline that sets the tone for an entire year of seeking the Lord. I would recommend starting on January 2 and completing the guide on January 23.

If the Lord were to choose to visit His people who were consecrated to Him in a fresh way, can you imagine the outcomes? Historically, we’ve heard of what happens when the Holy Spirit is released through God’s people. You have read as I have about the Layman’s Revival (1856-58) that led to over one million people surrendering their lives to Christ.

As a young seminary student, I heard C. L. Culpepper testify about the movement of God in a remote province of China. Today there are remnants of the Shantung Revival continuing to impact China with the Gospel witness. It is amazing what God will do through people who seek Him with all their hearts.

I saw with my own eyes the movement of God healing a racial divide in a Louisiana community. Racial tensions exploded in this small community in rural Louisiana. One day over 17,000 people from all over the nation arrived and accelerated the animosity with words of hatred and bitterness from state and national spokespersons.

There was a remnant that realized all the promoting, unrest and profiteering was not right and they sought God’s face. After a few months of contrition and repentance, the Lord graciously moved. It all started in one church with public confession and asking one another for forgiveness.

Then for nine weeks, evangelical pastors and churches of every stripe, every racial background met and sought God’s face. To accommodate all the people coming, the evening meetings moved from the church building to the local high school gym. People from hundreds of miles away drove to be part of what God would do next. Hundreds of people were born again.

Where once a community was ripped by hatred and prejudice and resentment, the Lord transformed the culture of this central Louisiana community. Generations will tell the story of God moving in their lives and community.

It’s time to be honest before the Lord. It’s time to repent. It’s time for us to realign our lives with the Word of God. It’s time for our lives to be awakened to what matters the most to our God.

To assist, MBC has posted at www.MoBaptist.org/prayer a free downloadable 21-day devotional guide. Awaken was written by Claude King who was also co-author with Henry Blackaby in Experiencing God. I had the honor to assist with the editing of this guide and believe it could powerfully position our lives for an amazing work of God. Join me in the journey, a 21-day journey of prayer and fasting.

“O Lord, awaken our souls to You in a fresh way. Begin in my surrendered heart a fresh work that consumes my thoughts and captivates my words. Start right here in me.”

It is sorta like a new marriage. The bride and groom think they know one another but its not until they publically covenant together (they get married) that they start their life together and discover the differences that actually exist with different personalities becoming one.

Sharon and I are breakfast people. As newlyweds, the first breakfast Sharon prepared for us was illustrative. I worked the night before at the General Motors plant and before I headed to class at Dallas Baptist University, Sharon made breakfast. She knocked on the door to tell me the pancakes were ready. So, I have visions of a stack of flapjacks, butter and sorghum syrup dripping off the sides of the golden brown delicacies.

I take the short walk from our bedroom to the eat-in kitchen. Sharon flops this huge plate-sized pancake in front of me. It was as big as the skillet. It was huge and thick–so thick that when I cut into the pancake, the uncooked batter oozed out on to the table.
I love my wife but as a 20 year old, I didn’t know how to respond to the situation other than to say, “Yuk. This is not done!” Dumb, Dumb and Dumber. Major mistake. Sharon’s response was to begin crying. She worked hard to please me and my response was less than loving. The early adjustment didn’t go well.

The good news is that we have learned to listen, to work with each other, and to guard our words so that we encourage one another with what we say. Our relationship has matured and grown deeper. We are far more effective together than either of us would be alone. Our passion is to honor the Lord with our marriage relationship.

I am deeply honored by the new role the Lord has given me with Missouri Baptists. In the early stages of this relationship (while we are getting to know one another), it is important that I communicate my vision for our future. The search committee asked me a similar question—“What do you want to see happen in the next few years?”

Here’s what I shared with them:
First-That the Lord would pour out His Spirit in a fresh way through our personal lives and our churches resulting in a great harvest of souls in the Midwest.
Second-That trust would be restored in such a fashion that the churches, the business community, the education community, the legal community and the medical community marvel at our integrity and passion to serve one another.
Third-That the churches, associations and convention function as collaborating partners for evangelism, discipleship and church planting and that our churches regain the vision for the Cooperative Program as the primary missions funding methodology. How many churches can give one percent more this next year to CP?
Fourth-That our churches sense that God has His hand on our cooperative Acts 1:8 effort with an exponential increase in churches planting churches in Missouri, the nation and the world.
Fifth-That the Convention’s leadership reflects a shift in demographic thinking with more participation from younger people, people of color and linguistic diversity.
Sixth-That bi-vocational church leaders sense that their contribution to our cooperative ministry is highly valued.
Seventh-That every church has at least one volunteer engaged in a cooperative ministry related to the MBC (Disaster Relief, social ministries, chaplaincy, coordinated prayer ministry, Christian Life Commission activism and Cooperative Program advocacy, etc.)

I hope these questions and responses encourage you and your church to join with other Missouri Baptists to embrace the Kingdom work the Lord is doing through us at such a time as this. May our cooperative relationship flourish and be a pleasant aroma to the Lord.

The December 7 devotion from My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers is a word that needs to be shouted from the rooftops. The peril of Western Christianity is the component of repentance. This biblical concept must be resurrected with the sake of authentic faith relationships with the Lord who gave His life to atone for our rebellious nature and activity.

“Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation . . . —2 Corinthians 7:10

Conviction of sin is best described in the words:
My sins, my sins, my Savior,
How sad on Thee they fall.

Conviction of sin is one of the most uncommon things that ever happens to a person. It is the beginning of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict people of sin (see John 16:8). And when the Holy Spirit stirs a person’s conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not that person’s relationship with others that bothers him but his relationship with God— “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight . . .” (Psalm 51:4). The wonders of conviction of sin, forgiveness, and holiness are so interwoven that it is only the forgiven person who is truly holy. He proves he is forgiven by being the opposite of what he was previously, by the grace of God. Repentance always brings a person to the point of saying, “I have sinned.” The surest sign that God is at work in his life is when he says that and means it. Anything less is simply sorrow for having made foolish mistakes— a reflex action caused by self-disgust.

The entrance into the kingdom of God is through the sharp, sudden pains of repentance colliding with man’s respectable “goodness.” Then the Holy Spirit, who produces these struggles, begins the formation of the Son of God in the person’s life (see Galatians 4:19). This new life will reveal itself in conscious repentance followed by unconscious holiness, never the other way around. The foundation of Christianity is repentance. Strictly speaking, a person cannot repent when he chooses— repentance is a gift of God. The old Puritans used to pray for “the gift of tears.” If you ever cease to understand the value of repentance, you allow yourself to remain in sin. Examine yourself to see if you have forgotten how to be truly repentant.”

As I was thinking about the Lottie Moon Offering for International Missions, I went to the resources at www.IMB.org. There I saw a story that reminded me of the Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando.

There, I saw the International Mission Board’s display booth. The display’s central graphic component was a large wall of the world with tan stickers bearing the names of people groups with less than 2 percent evangelicals.

Behind the tan stickers were faces representing each of the people groups on the wall. Those who visited the booth were challenged to pick a sticker and to pray for the unreached people group.

Many of the people groups represented by this display did not have access to Bibles.

 They had no churches.

There were no missionaries working among them.

When we served in Oklahoma, my wife Sharon worked part-time for the state Evangelism team. One of her co-workers was Suzanne Lillard, the associate director of Baptist Collegiate Ministries. Suzanne is the person you want praying for you when you are taking a journey through a valley in life or when you want someone to covenant with you to claim a soul for Christ.

From the context of her education background, when Suzanne saw the display, she said that the map and the stickers help students understand the lostness of the world. Students want to put their hands on something tangible and real to help them relate to the prayer need. 

“This generation needs to feel like, ‘I’m doing something that’s going to impact the world,’” Suzanne said. “The more individually connected a student can get, the better it is for them.” Suzanne is a state missionary challenging young adults to reach the world.

I’ve learned enough about life to know that older, mature adults are no different than the students. We just have older skin. We too want to impact the world and create a legacy for the cause of Christ that makes Him famous throughout the world. Sometimes we need a map with stickers to help us grasp just how lost this world is. Such a model places in our hands and our hearts the name of a specific group that needs Christ.

IMB spokesman, Ed Cox says that people attending the Orlando convention claimed every sticker representing one of the 6,426 unreached people groups. Someone is praying for those lost souls.

However, to reach the group, someone must develop a strategy and begin working with the people group. That means that Cooperative Program support from Southern Baptist churches and Lottie Moon giving are essential.

Missouri Baptists, we can do this. We can pray but we must also learn to give by faith and teach generations how to cooperate with God in our offerings that support our missionaries. The normal method of “tipping” God with mission giving through our local churches is significantly less than God’s best for Missouri Baptists. What happened to our asking God for the amount the Lord wants us to give beyond our tithe directly to International Missions through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering?

We can do this! The walk of faith is much more simple than what some imply. Pray for a people group without Christ or without access to the Gospel. Then ask the Lord to prompt you with an amount to give this year to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. Be careful what you pray because the Lord loves you enough to stretch your faith. Obey Him and watch God do something special through your faith.