Success and Failure Blog

Because I grew up in a tradition that never used the word “renewal” and didn’t understand what it’s all about I tend to be uncomfortable using it myself. Even today, people use it in ways the Lord never intended. And yet the Apostle Paul discussed it in Romans 12:2 and Ephesians 4:23, and he even gave it a definition in the Ephesians passage. Even though he used two different Greek words (the New Testament was written in what is called koine’ [coin-ay] Greek) the principle is the same in both passages – a change of mind and heart.

This change is necessary because of what Peter told us: “Now, for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.” (II Peter 1:5-9, New American Standard Bible, 1995 update) The problem with someone who needs renewal is that none of those things are theirs, and they certainly aren’t increasing. In effect, Peter is telling us that such people are stuck where they are until the blindness, shortsightedness and forgetfulness are removed. And the Holy Spirit is the only One who can remove them.

However, James spelled out the difficulty of the process. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (James 4:8-10, also NASB, 1995 update)

Notice that James didn’t put the suffering into a time frame. There’s no reason that renewal has to be stretched out over a long period of time. In the 19th and even the early 20th centuries people were renewed in evangelistic meetings, repenting and turning back to the Lord (see Jude 22&23). Yes, they repented as a result of the lives they’d lived, but the event happened in a very short time, just as it did for me and has for many others. Unfortunately, James also said that the final moments of renewal are agonizing. When I was in those moments my spirit was gripped with agony, as the Holy Spirit wrestled with me, convicted me, opened my eyes, broke through the sin dam in my heart.

Reading that, some people might ask themselves, why should I go through all that? What can renewal really do for me? Well, no matter whether you’re a prodigal or still going to church and pretending to be a good Christian on Sundays while several secret sins have a tight grip on you, then just being clean again will be worth it all. No longer having the weight of sins that built up after salvation hanging around your neck is a great relief. Then there’s the fact that at renewal no barrier stands between you and Almighty God; being able to speak to Him directly and openly without pretense is a great thing. When renewal comes you will be near to God because you will be clean. The Spirit of God will fill you to the brim with His joy. Furthermore, as you grow and change in Christ, more benefits to renewal will emerge as you gain the power to overcome the sins that have held you back from being all that God wants you to be (see I John 3:3). And besides, the agony doesn’t last long, anyway. So why not get it over with?

Nehemiah found mercy as he came before God in Nehemiah 1:5-7

Daniel found mercy praying to the Lord and confessing in Daniel 9:4-7

The apostle Paul found mercy in 1Timothy 1:12-17

Joseph’s brothers asking for his forgiveness in Genesis 50:17-18

Unbelievers denies the reality of sin itself and are often filled with pride, self centeredness and they refuse to admit sin and repent rejects to take a responsibility for their actions, refuses to repent. They rationalize and look for excuses to justify their sins. They make every attempt to justify their wrong doing and claim that there was nothing wrong in their doing.

Satan wants us to be filled with pride, self righteous, self-centeredness, lies, to be boasters of sin and Shame and to be his captives and servant of unrighteousness.

Benefits of confessing sins with eachother: Confessing sins with each other brings us close to God gives relief, eases the heavy loads of guilt and shame in our conscience. It gives an opportunity to examine ourselves, conscience, and our behaviour . It lessen the burden of sin, brings inner peace and emotional healing, builds trust in relationships which helps our ability to live a healthy life, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Scripture Reference:
Heb. 6:1: Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God.

Mt. 6:14, 15: For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Psa. 32:5Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”–and you forgave the guilt of my sin .

2 Sam. 12:14 – even though the sin is forgiven, there is punishment due for the forgiven sin. David is forgiven but his child was still taken

John 20:23: “Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.”

Neh. 9:2-3 – the aelites stood before the assembly and confessed sins publicly and interceded for each other.

If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” Ps. 66:18.

Matthew 18:15: If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.

James 5:16: Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. James 5:16

Lev. 5:5 – he shall confess that in which he has sinned

Acts 26:20: I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.

Ezek. 18:31: Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit.

Gal. 6:1: Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.

Dan. 4:27: Renounce your sins by doing what is right and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed.

1 Timothy 5:22: Do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.

Luke 17:3-4: Jesus tells us that when a brother sins against us, we should rebuke him, and if he repents we are to forgive him.

Prov. 28:13: People who cover over their sins will not prosper. But if they confess and forsake them, they will receive mercy.”

Ephesians 4:25: Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, help us to confess our faults with each other by Producing the fruits of repentance so that the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us .

When We are obedient to God, he shower his blessings upon us and when we are disobedient against God and His commandments it hinders the purposes of God and we provoke Gods wrath on us.

Scripture warnings: Therefore do not be partakers with them. (Ephesians 5:7)

But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. (1 Corinthians 5:9-13)

Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)

When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoever reads, let him understand then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house .Whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his cloak. (Matthew 24:15-18)

So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the LORD is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking. (Genesis 19:14)

Leave Babylon, flee from the Babylonians! Announce this with shouts of joy and proclaim it. (Isaiah 48:20).

He warned the assembly, “Move back from the tents of these wicked men! Do not touch anything belonging to them, or you will be swept away because of all their sins.” Numbers 16:26

Depart! Depart! Go out from there, touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her, be clean, you who bear the vessels of the LORD” (Isaiah 52:11).

But now, flee from Babylon! Leave the land of the Babylonians. Like male goats at the head of the flock, lead my people home again. (Jeremiah 50:8)

“Flee from the midst of Babylon, And every one save his life! Do not be cut off in her iniquity, for this is the time of the Lord’s vengeance; He shall recompense her” (Jeremiah 51:6).

You who have escaped the sword, Depart! Do not stay! Jeremiah 51:50

We would have healed Babylon, but she was not healed. Forsake her, and let us go each to his own country, for her judgment has reached up to heaven and has been lifted up even to the skies. (Jeremiah 51:9).

My people go out of the midst of her! And let everyone deliver himself from the fierce anger of the Lord” (Jeremiah 51:45).

But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s choice food or with the wine which he drank; so he sought permission of the officials that he might not defile himself.”(Daniel 1:8)

Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues Revelation 18:4

Rev 2:7: He, who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

We see in Acts 17:30,God commands all men everywhere to repent .Even Christ came to call sinners to repentance not the righteous. God call us to repent when we have forgotten and offended him and living in sin or in unrighteous ways.

There lots of people who do not want to repent truly and if they do, they do merely do lip service of repentance .They fail to acknowledge their sins. After their lip service they go right back and sin again. That is not true repentance.

There are also different kind of people who have enough pride who are not willing to look bad, will gladly say sorry” through lip service to save their image. They think if you just say sorry is repentance. This is not true repentance either.

There are few others who think that by saying formula of sinners prayer will save them without being genuinely REPENTED of their sins. Some false preachers say that you can gladly receive Christ without following Him or without obeying his commandments they strengthen the hands of evildoers, comforting them in their sin rather than calling them to repentance humble themselves to Turn from sin.

True repentance is that we must first acknowledge our sins or wrong doing in our heart and have sincere remorse or regret about one’s wrong doing. Then the Holy Spirit draws us to Jesus Christ by convicting us of sin which produces a life of holiness and righteousness that comes by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus and the Apostles preached that man must repent and have a complete change of mind and heart in order to enter the Kingdom of God.

There are lots of scriptures which tell us that God wants us to repent.

2 Peter 3:9: God wants everyone to repent

Acts 17:30: God commands all people everywhere to repent

Acts 26:20: Paul preached repentance

Ezekiel 14:6: Repent and turn from all of your abominations

Ezekiel 18:30: Repent and turn from your transgressions

Ezekiel 33:11: God begs us to turn from our wicked ways

Isaiah 59:20: The Redeemer will come to those who repent

Job 34:33: Why do you refuse to repent?

Jeremiah 15:19; If you repent, I will restore you

Luke 13:3: Jesus said that you will perish unless you repent

Luke 15:10: There is rejoicing over one sinner who repents

Matthew 4:17: Jesus told people to repent

Matthew 3:2: John the Baptist preached repentance

Mark 1:15: Jesus said repent and live

Mark 6:12: The disciples preached that men should repent

Rev. 3:3: Obey and repent

Rev. 3:19: So be earnest and repent

Hosea 12:6: Turn to God

How to Save Our Country – Taking America Back

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, you know this country has problems.  Violence, unemployment, poverty, and many other things are causing many to wonder what’s wrong, and how our country can be saved.

Before I answer that, let me ask a question.  Could imperfect man ever build a perfect system?  No, not totally perfect.

The Bible tells us that “If my people, which are called by My name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven, and I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land.” (2 Chron. 7:14)  Now, this promise was for Israel specifically – America is not called by God’s name.

We are, however, very blessed, and we have had great Revivals in the past. The question is, how do we have them again? We can find things in that verse, and apply them to us, because God is rich in His mercy. We are not a chosen nation. Still, those in our country who have put their trust in Jesus Christ as personal Savior can rest on one important thing. God is unchanging. And, He has blessed us despite our sins before this.

That unchanging nature, and his gifts before this, show why we know He can come to help now; it’s not the verse that tells us that.  The verse simply guides us toward how we must be to cause Him to hear.

My people

In this case, we apply it to mean Christians.  We must take back America the only way possible; on our knees.  Only God can fix what’s wrong.  Only His people, who have the indwelling Holy Spirit, can have their prayers heard to do that. Christians are called by his name, so we can pray for this land.

Humble ourselves and pray

We must never go to God insisting on our rights. We are to go boldly before the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16), but we must also be humble, asking in faith but trusting in God’s perfect will to be done. Remember that God will always resist the proud, and give grace to the humble. We must accept we don’t have all the answers. Imperfect man can never build the perfect system.

When we humble ourselves, we must do like in Daniel chapter 9.  We must accept that we have sinned as a nation – but not just in the last few years.  We sinned as a nation for 200+ years.  See, here is the difference between the liberals and Godly people. Liberals want to keep bringing up the past.  God wants to forgive us, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  But, in order for God to forgive us, we must *want* Him to forgive us.  That means accepting that we sinned greatly against Him in our treatment of others, our culture was one that often only spoke of Godliness on the outside, though inside our hearts were wicked.  We were selfish in some of the things we sought.  Yes, of course, we sent missionaries to the ends of the earth.  But, we twisted doctrine selfishly to support our own views.  The “curse of Ham,” for instance, was a lie straight from the pits of Hell.  Canaan was the one cursed, he was a part of Ham’s line, and his line got wiped out when the Israelites took the land.  Canaanites had drifted into horrible idolatry, even practicing child sacrifices!  They were judged by God, and that was the end of that curse.

Imagine if Bible believing Christians, 150 years ago, had insisted on Godly behavior toward other races.  We sinned against God, but He wants to wash our sins away.  He wants us to humble ourselves and pray, asking forgiveness for the sinful, selfish attitudes.  He doesn’t want it to be held against us. He wants to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)  In that and other areas, we need to humble ourselves, and admit we are *not* the perfect nation, and never have been.  We’re a *great* nation, but greatness is not perfection.

Seek His face

Next, God says to seek His face.  That means seek who He is – *not* who we think He is – with His Word.  Instead of all the modern Bibles, we can go back to the original King James Version and ignore all the liberal scholars who try to change it so often while removing thousands and thousands of words.  But, we must remember something else.

Seeking His face means that we seek Him for who He is.  He is all-present, but there is a difference between His being everywhere and His being everything.  His being everywhere is just the attribute of omnipresence.  His being everything is a false doctrine that we must get rid of.  We need His Spirit to cleanse us and get false doctrine out, but He can do it.  Only if we seek His face, though.  He is not a pantheistic deity.  He is the Triune God, Who shows Himself in three persons – Father, Son, and Spirit.  He can be talked to directly through prayer.  He lives in each believer through the Spirit.  We should *never* mistake other religions for Christianity.  Christianity really isn’t a religion like others, because all religions are about man trying to reach up and please god.  However, true Christianity is about God reaching down to us, sinful people for whom He died for our sins and rose bodily from the dea! Hallelujah!

Turn from our wicked ways

We must put God at the center of our hearts, as individuals, and as a nation.  We must repent, and let Him change us on the inside, and then seek for Him to do the same to others, and for others, in this land.

What do we repent of?  We need to ask the Lord to touch our hearts, and show us *every* problem area, and we must commit to changing that to conform to His will, which is perfect.  We must also seek Him for every area of our nation’s sins, and cry out for His forgiveness there.

Now, He won’t tell us to give up everything; each person is called to do something different, and someone whose ministry is on the Internet will surely be called to stay in it – but they should still dedicate that computer or whatever to the Lord.  Others, who use the Internet for sinful purposes, will feel called to give it up.  But, remember, God will give them something far more satisfying in the long run.

See, this is all about accepting that He is sovereign, and knows what’s beat for each of us.  He wants us to follow Him, but He doesn’t want us to be mindless robots.  He wants us to have free choice.

But, He’s also telling us that by refusing to turn from our wicked ways, we sacrifice blessings and rewards.

Part of those wicked ways is in our attitude.  It’s not just an attitude that we put other things ahead of God, it’s that we selfishly put ourselves before anything.  We must remember the old Sunday School acrostic – true joy is in this order – Jesus, Others, You. We must act that out in our lives, and show others who Jesus is in our actions.

And, if we do all this, praying without ceasing – alays being in an attitude of prayer – we can call upon the Lord, in faith, and expect Him to:

1. Hear from heaven.  He gives grace to the humble.  He’ll hear that prayer, because the person is praying from an attitude of true need.

2. Forgive their sin.  If we confess our sin, He is just and faithful to forgive us of our sin, and cleanse uf from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)  When he forgives, He remembers it *no more*

3. Heal their land: And, this one is really special.

See, the Holy Spirit was not free to roam in Old Testament times because the curse of sin hadn’t been broken.  But, when Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom, and the Glory of God was free to spread around the world. (Matt. 27:51)  What this means is, He is freer today than He was.

We need to pray not just for our land to be healed, but for a great repentance revival to break out.  We must pray for hearts to be changed.  We can pray for so much more now, and He will give us, as in the past.

See, the Great Awakenings that came in the past, all the great repentance revivals, came about *despite* our nation’s sins.  God is unchanging.  We should never go to God and insist on something.  But, we can certainly humbly note that as we speak to God about our sins, and the sins of the nation as a whole.

And, above all, pray without ceasing for that repentance revival.  Pray without ceasing for the unsaved to get saved, and pray with specifics about each situation you can think of.  But, let it begin with us.