Will Davis Jr.'s Blog, page 66

Just Look at the Scoreboard

You know the scene: It’s late in the fourth quarter and your favorite football team is up 40 on their much weaker opponent. The game is all but over, but some time remains on the clock and there is still some game left to be played. But, it’s over. You’re team is going to win big.

Then some receiver for the other team makes a great catch for a first down. It really is a great play. Good for him. But instead of walking humbly back to his huddle, he jumps up and starts talking trash. He gets up in the face of the defensive back on your (the winning) team and starts going on and on about how good he is and how bad the other guy is.

Then your team’s defensive back grabs the outspoken receiver by the shoulder pads, turns him around rather roughly and points up. As he does so he says to the receiver, “Hey loser, just look at the scoreboard!”

And in the spirit of that image, I’d like to offer the following:

Hey satan, look at the scoreboard. You need to go read the Book of Revelation. You lose! You’re going to spend eternity in a lake of fire designed just for you.

We hate you. We hate you as much as you hate us. We rebuff your trash talk and call out your stupid tricks for what they are. We out you as the deceiver of the nations and the source of all the hate, pride, fear, prejudice, evil and suffering in the world.

But let us remind you of how this thing ends, or better–ended. We’ve got two images for you satan–a blood-stained cross and an empty tomb. This game is over satan. You can terrorize and tempt and deny God’s existence and harass us all you want to, but none of it is going to change the fact that your evil, lying, rebelling ass is going to be kicked for all eternity. You lose; we win. Rather, we’ve already won because of Jesus’ blood.

Let me say those last two words a little louder as we know how much you love to hear them: JESUS’ BLOOD.

So we will not be intimidated. We’re not going to roll over and play dead. We’re not going to back down. You can’t have our marriages. You can’t have our children. You can’t have our cities or our nation. No. We will fast, pray, repent and exalt the name of Jesus. And we will die if we have to for his cause.

You’ve got nothing satan. You lose. Sucks to suck, doesn’t it?

I’m sure we’ll be hearing from you soon, as this kind of truth really tends to put you in a foul mood. So until you dare to show your face in my blood-covered house, here’s a little excerpt from one of your favorite books:

And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Revelation 20:10

Amen. Lord Jesus, hasten the day.

 

Are Your Prayers Big Enough for God?

Here’s a dangerous question: What are you praying for today that will require a miraculous answer from God? What are you asking for that only God can do? If you seem to be stuck in a prayer rut, if your asks are limited to the token God bless Joe and God be with Sherri kinds of requests, then it’s time for you to start taking some risks in prayer. It’s time for you to start asking big.

Let me offer you an example: An elderly man moves silently about his priestly work in the inner chambers of the Temple. His name is Zechariah, and he has been chosen by lot to perform the priestly duty of interceding for the nation and offering incense and prayers to God. It is a high honor. Many priests would live their entire lives and never be chosen for such a task. Zechariah would only get to perform this priestly function once in his life. While he is inside offering prayers for the nation, a crowd has gathered outside the inner courts and is praying for him. They were interceding for the intercessor. Now there’s a concept.

As Zechariah moved about inside the Temple, the inner court was suddenly flooded with white light and Zechariah realized that he was in the presence of an angel. Needless to say, he was terrified. It seems that the angelic messenger brought unlikely news: But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John,” (Luke 1:13).

Now that may not seem like such a big deal, certainly not one meriting angelic announcement. Couples find out every day that they’re expecting without any fanfare whatsoever. But this was obviously no ordinary pregnancy. Scripture tells us that Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were well beyond their child bearing years. Besides that, Elizabeth’s womb was barren. She had never been able to bear children. For a woman in First Century Palestine, few fates could be worse. Much shame and scorn fell upon a woman who could not preserve her husband’s name through childbirth. Elizabeth and Zechariah were facing the end of their lives without having the ability to do anything about their childlessness.

But did you catch what the angel said? Just before he announced that they were to be proud parents, he said, “Your prayer has been heard.” What prayer? Had Zechariah and Elizabeth been praying for a child? Had they been patiently asking God to end Elizabeth’s barrenness and to give them a baby? Apparently so, because the angel declared that their son would be born as a direct result of their requests to God.

Knowing that about Zechariah and Elizabeth makes me like and respect them even more. Can you imagine anything bolder, anything more daring than asking God to give an elderly couple a son? These two “believers” had the spiritual gumption to not only believe that God could open a closed womb, but that he would do it. These weren’t God be with Tom and God bless Joe pray-ers. They knew what they wanted; and even though it was humanly impossible, they had the audacity to ask God for it.

You have to admire their faith. No doubt they had heard the accounts of God granting Abraham and Sarah a son in their later years. They knew that God had done such a thing before, and they were just courageous enough to ask him to do it again. They were asking God to do something that they could not, something only he could, and something that would no doubt be registered in the “miracle” department when he came through.

Think about your prayers. What are you asking of God that only he can do? Are you seeking that which could only be registered in the “miracle” department when it happens? In short, are you asking big? If you were really sure that God hears and answers your prayers, would it change the way you pray? And, do you believe that we should ask big things of God? Is he pleased or put off when we seek the miraculous from him?

The Bible teaches that such praying is neither arrogant nor irresponsible. In fact, both Testaments of the Bible endorse the principle of praying big. It’s the kind of praying that the Old Testament leaders and heroes engaged in. It’s the kind of praying that Jesus both modeled and encouraged. And, it’s the kind of praying that we need to practice.

Do you make big asks of God? Don’t be timid in your prayers. Prayer should be as big as God’s promises and as full as God’s resources. Your requests should require the full power and provision of God.

From The Power of Praying Boldly

How Firm Is Your Life’s Foundation?

Here’s the link to my weekend message at ACF. It’s the last in our Jesus: The Rock series. It’s gonna make you think.

Click the image to watch or listen.

Friday Fire Starters–God’s Love that Knows No Bounds

Friday Fire Starters are simple ways to kick-start your time with God. Here’s today’s offering:

Read Eph 3:14-21 aloud:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,  from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,  that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.  Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,  to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Reflect on the words that Paul uses to try to capture the massive nature of God’s love
Praise and thank God that you are able to experience his love
Praise and thank God for the fact that no matter where we go, his love his already there waiting for us
Pray that you might, through God’s revelation and by intimacy with God’s Spirit, fully know God’s love which surpasses knowledge
Pray for 2-3 other people who need to know God’s love today

Quote of the Day

I think–big picture–if the Lord is going move in our city it’s going to be through a pure church, not an impure church.– Thom Fulmer

Maybe It’s Time for a New Way of Doing Things

I can’t sleep tonight. My brain is on overload. Actually, it’s been that way for several days now. I really can’t eat either. It’s not that I’m not hungry, it’s just that eating seems so trivial compared to what I’m feeling. My spirit is restless and troubled.

It started last Thursday. Or maybe it all ended last Thursday. It depends on how you look at it. I was praying with our elders as I do every Thursday. We were lamenting in prayer over yet another troubling report from our church body–another divorce, another affair, another drug addiction, another porn habit, another series of bad choices all in the name of getting more money or more things, another man who thinks that frequent trips to Vegas with the guys somehow won’t affect his marriage. And then there’s the really troubling ones, the ones in our youth–the pregnant teen, the abortion, the poor self-esteem, the anorexia, the sexting, the kids whose parents are more interested in being friends than being parents, and the kids whose parents seem to want them to be as busy and frenzied and as over-committed as they are.

It was one of those–one involving our kids–that helped us see the painful truth: What we’re doing isn’t working. It was the tiny piece of proverbial straw that broke the backs of our elders: We have to look at our leadership, our approach to discipleship, differently. It was one too many reports of yet another family or life exploding and leaving no survivors: Rome is burning.

It’s not that God isn’t doing good things, he is. And it’s not that lives aren’t being changed, they are. But it feels very much like we are trying to walk up a down escalator–every step of progress we make seems to evaporate under us. Or in a much more graphic image, it feels like we’re trying to climb uphill in the midst of a raging avalanche.

And so I and the godly men I serve with are all wondering what needs to change. Because every week we hold services and preach the Bible and worship with enthusiasm and give money away and meet in small groups and attend Bible studies, and yet we have to now admit that even with our progress and even with the best efforts of so many committed Christians, we are losing ground. We have to admit that for every believer who is sold out to Jesus there are many more who have somehow gotten the message to Jesus is more of a consultant than a King, and that following him is more of a matter of convenience than a matter of complete surrender.

And because of that, because the Christian faith is being redefined and recast by the very ones who claim to embrace it, our culture is dying. The Church is the thermostat of culture. As the Church goes so goes the society around it. And if, in the words of Jesus, we lose our saltiness, if we cease being a thermostat that is set on righteousness and godliness, then we condemn ourselves and all those around us to a life where the lowest common denominator becomes the standard. Where the brute and the violent and the sexually perverse and the selfish and the greedy and the unkind and the unfaithful and the unbelieving become what is expected and accepted. Where we, left to follow our own devices, slowly commit cultural suicide.

In other words, when the lifestyles of those who claim to follow Jesus have no discernible difference from those who don’t, the game is already up. And when the light goes out in the people of God, then the pervasive darkness that lurks in the shadows is free to take over. And the people whom God loves and Jesus died to save, because they have no revelation of the Holy God to whom that are accountable, perish.

And that, my friends, is simply unacceptable. Not my our watch. Not on my watch.

So we’re rethinking our strategy. We’re thinking about how we can turn the heat up a bit. We’re wondering how we can shed more light on the foolishness of sin and the refreshing grace that comes with repentance. We’re praying and fasting and seeking God for the spiritual breakthrough that our church, our city and our nation so desperately need.

We’re asking God to do whatever necessary to get our attention, to bring us to our knees and to renew our love and passion for him. We’ve crossed the so be it line. So be it.

Will you join us and the other believers around the country who feel as we do? Will you throw caution and conventional wisdom and convenience to the wind and seek God for the healing of the Church that will lead to the healing of our land? Will you pray for an awakening in our churches and for a radical change of our religious status quo, no matter what the cost? We have no other options.

If this were a simple fix we surely would have discovered it by now. Maybe it’s time for a new way of doing things.

 

Really, Really Good Stuff

I spent the weekend at a men’s retreat with a bunch of guys from our church. I had the pleasure of sitting under the teaching of Ryan Rush and Gaylon Clark, both fellow Austin pastors. They really fed me. I took so many notes that I almost couldn’t keep up.

In the following weeks I’m going to be sharing via twitter some of what they had to say, along with some other quotes from some good stuff I’m reading right now. If you don’t follow me on Twitter you might want to go ahead and start  (@willdavisjr) as the stuff I’ll be sharing is really, really good.

In the meantime here’s a nugget from something I read recently. See you tomorrow.

I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of being mistaken in believing it to be true. BLAISE PASCAL

Friday Fire Starters: Seeing the Lord above the Headlines

Fire Starters are simple way to kick-start your time alone with God. Here’s this week’s entry:

It’s been a wild week. Too much chaos and pain. Too many tears. Read Isaiah 6:1–In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

See the contrast? At the same time the King died, Isaiah saw God. King Uzziah was a great leader who brought much peace and prosperity to Judah. He was also Isaiah’s cousin. When he died, it was a traumatic jolt for the nation. They suddenly felt weak and exposed.

Much like many of us have felt this week.

But then something happened. Isaiah looked past his circumstances and saw the eternity of God–his power, his nature, his reign and his glory.

Perspective.

Here’s your assignment. Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left write down everything that has happened this week–both nationally and personally–that has left you feeling shaken, sad or troubled. Then, opposite it in the other column, write an attribute of God–his holiness, his omniscience, his endless love. Then meditate and pray over those attributes. Allow your fears to be engulfed by the unchanging reality of God.

See God–seated on a throne, high and exalted, with the train of his robe filling the temple.

If You’re Heart is Hurting Today, You Must Read This

Rarely do I post other’s blogs in their entirety. This one, given its timing and content, requires me to do so. Click the link below. It’s well worth it. Will Davis Jr.

Boston, West, Texas, America, don’t give up hope–

I remember it so clearly — a memory you can only remember so clearly when it is from sadness. You can’t let it go.

I was sitting in the mud by the rear passenger side tire of my old Acura cradling my one-year-old in the steady, driving rain. I was sobbing, doing my best not to fall apart in front of my little girl.But the tears ran. My throat hurt as I tried to suppress the guttural cries I wanted to cry there in the mud. Read More Here

Think on These Things

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. Philippians 4:8

Sara Davis | Amazing Grace from Susie Davis on Vimeo.