BOLD Ministry

It’s 6:06 am and I am at my desk. There are complexities and problems that I am facing today and this year that I haven’t faced before. I received an email from one of my board members that gripped me. The topic was about a Clemson coach who encouraged his players to attend one church service as a team during the two-a-day practices each preseason. The American Civil Liberties Union took umbrage with his use of authority. The American Civil Liberties Union has become an institution and a cultural force than is shaping our way of life whether we like it or not. It uses the systems established to preserve liberty as weapons to cripple an unabashed expression of faith. The ACLU is a force that taking freedom daily from me, from us, and it seems that it’s relentless push continues to erode the ground bought with the blood of prior generations.

This is the same force that intoxicates me with my own abilities, while requiring of me longer hours to pursue the American dream.

This is an unseen intelligence that has an agenda. It understands the ‘physiology of systems.’ It understands the politics of countries far better than your internist knows your GI tract. It concedes the election of a ‘conservative president’ in order to gain alternating terms in which such administrations ‘install’ judges into a system for the next 30-40 years who legislate laws out of their own conscience or lack. This unseen intelligence knows that laws are only as effective as the judicial system that enforces them. Our courts system has become our spiritual Achilles heal.

This force has us battling over party politics, and yet blinds us to see that it was a Democrat who stood down the Soviets in 1962, and a Republican who tore down the Iron Curtain in the 1980’s. This unseen intelligence understands how to change laws and times. We have politicians running for our highest office, when we should have statesmen and stateswomen seeking those offices.

Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places].

2 Cor 10:4 (For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

We recently celebrated Martin Luther King Day, in recognition of the life and ministry (work) of Dr. King. What Dr. King accomplished was monumental, but unless the change gets into the heart, the heart will always go back to its old nature. There have been 92 Revolutions from 1900-1950, and 107 since 1950. Whenever men decide that the system doesn’t work, they revolt. We somehow refuse to see that laws are never truly able to free us!

The system that we are fighting is bigger than us. It wasn’t the Civil Rights laws that effected the greatest change in the last half century. We have been fighting for individual freedom for 150 years… and everyday the battle must be fought… and won inside of us and then outside of us.

The court systems are now immune from the laws and constitution. Non elected judges are the new dictators of the twenty-first century. The US judges have destroyed more lives than in all the wars in history – represented by 40 million children aborted. That is twice the population of Canada. It is not just the unborn, but also the children that attend our public schools.

Our schools are now battlefields. Well before the terrorists destroyed the buildings in lower Manhattan, we were screening students for weapons in our grammar and high schools. You see when we determined to extricate prayer out of school, we didn’t take religion out of our system, we simply replaced the God with another god. Certainly our educators know about the law of physics that states that nature abhors a vacuum. It is interesting that in the process of creating a state free of God we have lost our freedom. Now our schools are scrambling to get students to graduate, we are spending as much or more on security than books, and more students are on antidepressants than in history.

When we create spiritual vacuums by removing God out of a system, we are spiritually asphyxiating those in the system. A vacuum is primarily an asphyxiant and humans exposed to vacuum will lose consciousness after a few seconds and die within minutes.

Our schools, our courts, our families and even our churches, (where we have sanitized our theologies with the removal of the Holy Spirit) are all gasping for air.

There is hope. There is an antidote. It always works. It worked in 1979, when on the dare of a little girl half my size, I made a profession of faith in Jesus. The day that occurred was the day that the Jericho walls came down and I was for the first time able to breathe the air of freedom.

All freedom is the result of a relationship, not information or knowledge or even a government. Eve and Adam got it wrong, it wasn’t information or knowledge that they were lacking it was a saving relationship with the Spirit of God. Adam and Eve had a relationship with God, but not a saving relationship.

The only way that we can see the course of this country shifted in a direction of hope, is by the way that we invest our time, our talent, and or treasury. John Nasbitt writes that “…we discovered a handful of clear symptoms that indicate an unsettling diagnosis of our way of life… the symptoms of a Technologically Intoxicated Zone are: 1.) We favor the quick fix, from religion to nutrition; 2.) We fear and worship technology; 3.) We blur the distinction between real and fake; 4.) We accept violence as normal; 5.) We love technology as a toy; 6.) We live our lives distanced and distracted.” High Tech High Touch, p.12.
Maybe instead of New Years Resolutions, we can make New Year Repentances, to repent, ask, seek, knock, abide, and advance the purpose and the plan of God. Goliath stood for months threatening and taunting the army of Israel until God sent a David who was convinced that the slingshot in his hand was more powerful than the sword in his.

What is our slingshot? What is your slingshot? I believe any spiritual slingshot requires: Prayer, the prophetic and people. The scripture says: Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” 2Ch 7:14..

What does than mean: to humble oneself, means to take second place and put God in first, pray means start listening to God instead of talking ‘at him,’ start looking for him in every area of our lives, stop doing the Frank Sinatra, and you will see God begin to heal relationships. I think that there is this 80/20 rule, that when God begins to move, we are like the young boy who gave his lunch to Jesus, and fed the 5,000.

Prayer is our slingshot, our sword and our source. Start praying with some people during the week. Start by using the ‘prayer liturgy’ of Eli who told Samuel: “And Eli said to Samuel, "Go lie down, and it shall be if He calls you, that you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for Your servant is listening.' " So Samuel went and lay down in his place.” 1 Sam 3:9.

“The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” 1 Sam 3:10.

Randy Clark offers these guidelines to personal renewal. I will call them not guidelines, but slingshots from Heaven.
1. Cultivate an attitude of humility
2. Pursue unity within the body of Christ
3. Develop a secret prayer life
4. Become grounded in the word
5. Pay attention to the promptings of your heart
6. Fast and pray
7. Visit those places and people where and in who God is pouring out His Spirit in an unusual manner
8. Have the patience necessary to wait for the fulfillment of prophetic words with which your spirit bears witness
9. Accept the Sovereignty of God