Filled With a Burden

It has been a while since I have posted anything. June has been a really busy month and this past week my church has been in revival. We have had some good services  and messages from both our revival helper and our new pastor. We have also had some lost seeking the Lord. After church just about each night my family would discuss the service, how they felt, what the sermon was about, etc. Throughout the week I, personally had felt something was off at church. The preachers seemed to be enjoying themselves, but I just felt like something was in the way. I discussed it with my mother and she felt the same way. We were both discouraged by the lack of obligation that some of the church members had to the church, letting it overtake our attention during some of the services. 

On Saturday night our new pastor, Jonathon Elliott preached from the 51st Psalms. It was a Psalm of David asking the Lord to forgive him of depth of sin he had got himself in. He lusted after Bathsheba and she ended up pregnant. He then sought after her husband to have him return from battle so the people would believe the baby was her husband’s rather than David’s. That plan failed, as Bathsheba’s husband felt that it was his duty to fight in the battle and did not return to her. David then created a plan that would have her husband killed in battle so he could marry Bathsheba. David had to keep going deeper and deeper into sin to cover the first one. Each sin led him farther and farther away from God. He lost the joy of his salvation. In the 51st Psalm David was calling out and repenting of his sins to the Lord. He felt much guilt over all the sin he had done. He had to come to a place of confession. Our pastor then mentioned something regarding confession that has stuck with me. Confession is when our heart and soul is in alignment with God about the matter we are guilty about. When David reached this point his sins and confessed to God, his joy was then restored. 

This sermon really hit home because I have experienced this kind of prayer with the Lord. As I grow older, I learn my weaknesses regarding sin and Satan loves to bring those to my attention and tempt me. I have sometimes thought that I had gotten so deep that the Lord would never forgive me, however, I was so very wrong. The Lord is always wanting to forgive sins. He wants us to be in good standing with Him so He can use us. Psalms 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” He will forgive us of any sin as long as we come to him with humble, sorrowful hearts, and a contrite spirit. We have to be in almost the same place as when we were seeking for the salvation of our souls. I have such a strong desire to be a humble servant for God in any way He would use me. It is the least I could offer Him after giving His son to die on the cross for my sins.

With this being said, I have had a tremendous burden for the past few weeks for my church and other sister churches as well. Like I said earlier, my church just called a new pastor. He is being ordained in a few weeks and is trying to move here to Indiana from Missouri, so he is unable to be with us on a full time basis right now, but I absolutely cannot wait for when he can be. I so desire for Friendship to grow in both numbers and closeness. Throughout the past few years we have slowly given up various activities due to the business and lack of interest of members. Since then our fellowship has very much decreased. I so badly desire for the church to grow together and be willing to put aside the things of this world (work, sports, etc.) and take up each of our crosses and bear them together. I desire for us to start putting the Lord first in our lives so the lost may see how wonderful it is to be a child of the King. I desire for us to spend time together not only studying God’s word, but just to enjoy each other’s company and friendship. We are a church, a family, and the lost needs to see that if we want to see them saved. The community and our sister churches need to see that, or our church will not grow. I long for us to be the church that we were 5-10 years ago. It is much harder for people to all take time out of their busy schedules today, but we owe it to God. I was thinking the other day that I would not call into work unless I was deathly ill. I am always worried about making a bad impression on my manager or doing something wrong that could get me fired. But then I thought, however, when I am lazy or tired, I may decide to skip church. Why do we put so much obligation into our worldly jobs rather than our spiritual ones? Being a member of the church is a job. It is our obligation. We should worry about making a good impression on our Manager upstairs. He can punish us worse than the manager at our worldly jobs can, right? I pray that we will all get our priorities straight, me included. 

This is where I go back to the sermon I talked about from the 51st Psalm. We all have sins to confess and be forgiven of just like David did. None of us are perfect, but we have been so graciously blessed by our Heavenly Father and we need to try our best to be more like Christ. We need to die daily of ourselves and do His will. We have His blood written on our hearts. We are so undeserving of His love and mercy, but He gives it anyway. I am so thankful that our Lord is so merciful and good. 

I hope once we get settled and have our new pastor here that we can truly start taking steps forward. I would love to see my church and churches all over the world break out into a true spiritual revival. If we don’t make a change soon, it may never happen.