Are You desiring to shake up and purify Your church? ...repentance, humbling, emptying ourselves

August 12, 2006

I have been wondering if maybe the fact that there is no money for "renovations" to create classrooms for "childrens chuch" is from the Lord: maybe He doesn't want us tied into that age-segregated system of the world, which the church has bought into.

Oh Lord, what are You doing here? Are You desiring to shake up and purify Your church? (Oh Lord, let it all be You - not me. Please, if this is from me - at all - stamp out and destroy all that is me. Yes, Lord, destroy/remove completely "me" if I am causing a wrong direction. Take me out, please, whatever that means! Thank You! (Hard to say that...)

Oh dear God, bring Your people - all Your people, including Your First Nations people - (Lord, I believe this is Your voice speaking to me) - to deep and total repentance and turning totally to You and begging for the filling of Your Spirit, that our land may be healed!!! (2 Chronicles 7:14). Help us to humble ourselves, to cast away "our" great (worldly, man-made, selfish, "successful") ideas, and make ourselves barren and empty and naked before You, for only then can You clothe us in Your righteousness and fill us and overflow us by the filling and working and guiding of Your Holy Spirit. Only then can we be filled with, and flow out into the world, the love and compassion and mercy and care and goodness and peace and patience and gentleness and joy of the Lord! Oh Lord, oh that we would be obedient and open and faithful to You and Your Spirit, accepting You, opening every crack and crevice of our being to Your light and life, allowing You to scrape out every wisp of darkness and shadow of evil. Drive out the enemy, Lord, from our midst; keep us alert, Lord; help us resist him in every area, in every way, and then he will flee!

Oh Lord, help us to arm ourselves with the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, the belt of truth, and our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, that we may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Help us, oh help us, dear God! to resist the rulers, the powers, the world forces of darkness, the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places! Help us to pray and petition You at all time in the Spirit, alert and persevering for all the saints, and make us bold - make me bold, Lord - to make known, to be an ambassador of, to proclaim, to speak boldly, the mystery of the gospel - no matter how people may react or what they may try to do to "shut me down"! Thank You, Lord! (Ephesians 6).