Lord's Day Post

                A young man is raised in a Christian environment....he accepts the Lord in his teens....chooses to become a minister and a pastor....marries a wonderful young Christian woman....has a few kids.....gets a church....and is a picture-perfect Hallmark ideal father who seems to spend time with his kids every day of the week. He wants revival....which means a dozen or two dozen people pick his church to raise their own kids in.  American pulpits are full of these wonderful young men. This is not what we need.
               We need that young man who as if has tugged on the robe of Jesus all through whatever college he went to....begging to be put to use to pull souls out of hell. Yes he has a church....and they are about to ask him to leave because he keeps harping on the holiness of God....and not the happiness of the youth and their families. He almost drowns himself in tears each night seeking answers. He's reading great preachers of the past every night....asking God to give him but a small portion of the unction and effectiveness that they had. Maybe he's married and maybe he is single....that's God's business....He will send the help when the time is perfect....or He has sent the help....and he could not even be where he is at in his pleading with God without that help of a faithful and praying wife.
              God will give us these men in due course....for that is how God always does it. Our job is to look here for them....and look there for them....our bags packed....just waiting to move on if necessary and go and help them. Or....we have a pastor....and he may appear on the surface as that ideal Hallmark young man....but we see an anxiety in him.....tearing him apart. Everyone else is telling him to trust God to take that anxiety away....that it is a lack of faith.....but we know that the anxiety is the Holy Spirit....taking his sleep away....befuddling his prayers....clouding his Bible reading....but with each stroke of the rod....pulling him inches and feet closer with a staff. 
               Revival isn't a dozen or two dozen or two hundred or two thousand or two million new people in pews. Revival is a dead heart that begins to beat....and another beating heart to rejoice with....and another beating heart to make a three-fold chord....and another beating heart to send them out two-by-two....and another beating heart for one to add prayer cover for the whole every week day....and another beating heart to sit and stand and sing praises on the Lord's Day with yet that newly arrived beating heart that God has sent in answer to prayer....to enter that pulpit....and proclaim the holiness of God for all that God has sent to hear. May tomorrow see this anew in many pulpits across America....if it be in His perfect will....and this be His perfect time!