Focus On America

It's a new chorus from Hillsong, a group out in Australia that we're just so in touch with, I believe, in terms of our worship ministry, and I just value the great music that's being written these days. I'd like to take your outline out of the notes this morning, and I want you to know that that was not the outline that was going to be in your notes as of Thursday. And I've had a week, as many of you have, that has really caused me to step back and take a serious pause about what's happening in our nation. Let's look at the scripture on top of the outline together, and let's read it, shall we? If you don't have a Bible, this is why I put this in here. Some folks come with Bibles. It's always good to have your Bible, but if you don't bring it, I have the scripture here for you to read. It says, Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Loved ones, I could preach on that, probably for an hour, without any notes today. It's been such a part of my life's philosophy for the last 25 years. I believe that the Apostle Paul was inspired when he wrote those words. But it has special meaning today, because like most of you, I would expect this has been an incredible week. A week that we will look back on in American history as being very pivotal. And although a lot of folks expected a close election, and there was a lot of warning signs that this one was going to be a nail-biter, I don't believe anyone would have predicted that five days after the election, we still would not know who was going to assume the reins of power in the United States presidency. At first, I watched as you did with great interest, and then somewhat intrigued by the seeming ineptitude of the networks to call states, and then retract them, and back and forth. But all of that just seemed to be just sort of part of a rather interesting process, until we got, a little later on, until we got into Wednesday, and then Thursday, and now five days later. And now I realize it's not just a cute little blip in the political process, friends. We still don't know who's going to be in charge, and according to some of the folks today that I heard in the media, and I never, or I should say, since I did today, I rarely ever pay any attention to media on Sunday morning. I did, briefly, before I came over earlier this morning, listen. There really is no precise way out of this. There is, to quote one commentator today, no endgame. No one really knows how this is going to go. And the courts are now involved, and we don't know what the next weeks hold for us. But one thing has become increasingly clear is that whatever the outcome, our nation is at a precipitous time. There's a widening and deepening gap of values that are reflected in this election, and I'm not sure that there's an easy way out of it. By the way, I want to set some people at ease. I am not going to talk about a particular candidate today. I'm not going there. I'm talking about our nation. But listen to what USA Today said just about, and they had a, by the way, if you can pick up a copy of Thursday's paper, very interesting summary of the of the results, and here's what they said in one paragraph. More and more analysts say that rural, less affluent voters feel government is stepping on their religious beliefs and out of step with their views on crime, abortion, and guns. By contrast, more affluent urban voters are increasingly defined by tolerance, progressive cultural views, and a fear that Christian conservatives want to impose their views on everyone. And you see, that's just one little snippet of a paragraph about what I believe is a widening gap in America. And I'm going to talk a lot today about gaps, because I believe that there is a growing separation in America. A division is brewing in our land. And you see, this was not the ideal of our Founding Fathers. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, and you may want to write this down when someone says to you something like, well, you know, America is, whoever serves the Christian nation. Look at this quote from John Quincy Adams. The highest glory of the American Revolution was this. It connected in one indissoluble, that means cannot be broken apart, bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. That was the highest glory of the American Revolution. And I'm here to say to you today that I believe that that glory is quickly fading and may be lost in this nation. What concerns me is, and many others I might add, that no matter who assumes authority, if it was settled when we go home today at one o'clock in the afternoon, turn on our televisions and there's a special bulletin and so-and-so has been named president, Ralph Nader, that person will assume power under a cloud of distrust and suspicion that may cause a deepening of this moral divide and a political gulf in our nation's soul. And so I felt compelled, and believe me it's no small decision on a Thursday to change the course of a message. Many people have already invested a lot of time in preparing for the weekend services, but I awakened at 4.30 on Thursday morning and knew that God was saying to me it's time to change directions, and it's time to look at this as a body of believers. Now I know that some of you today are here seeking to understand Christianity, and this may not be where you are in terms of your sort of philosophy of life, but I want you to know that what I'm presenting is what I believe a biblical philosophy of life is about. We need to be bringing our faith into the marketplace, not out of it. And all of us need to understand one thing, it would be the design of the secularists of our world to push us back into our churches and say, get in there and shut up and do what you want to do, but let us run the country and the world. Well friends, that's not God's plan. We are supposed to be part of the world, in it, the Bible says, not of it. And so we take our faith and we bring it to the point where it applies to our daily living. And this gap, this gap that is growing is a gap of God's ideal, the ideal of unity and purity and spirituality and abundance and blessing, but the reality is a growing division against unity, a growing sense of moral decline against purity, a spiritual apathy rather than a spiritual hunger. And even now, interestingly enough, the great abundance of the last year seems to be in jeopardy as the stock markets begins to slip and there's questions going on all around the world's marketplaces about what's going to happen in our nation. It's a strange time, is it not? Have these last days not been particularly eerie? We just kind of wonder what's going to be happening here in America. And those of you who are younger, and I'm happy to see the younger faces looking up at me, you don't remember the Watts riots in 1968 when you couldn't believe your eyes when people were shooting one another in America's streets. You may not remember some of the moments and those of you who preceded us in World War II, for example, you may not remember the declaration of war when our whole nation was caught up in something that threatened our future. Someone asked me, are we in a crisis today? I'm not sure that we're in a crisis yet, but I will tell you this, if we sit back and just play sort of dumb right now, we will be. There was a time, a little different focus, back in 1970 when the nation was in a moment of intense interest, not unlike now, when we had done something that had only been done a few other times before by this nation, that was to send men into space. And something went wrong on the Apollo 13 mission, and the nation stopped what it was doing and watched with heart in hand to see if we would recover three brave astronauts as they came down through the Earth's atmosphere and entered into the gap of communication. I want you to watch this and see if it brings back any memories for those of you who remember the time. Let me put it this way, the trajectory may be off, their thrusters may be frozen, their guidance system may be malfunctioning, their heat shield could be cracked, and their parachutes might be three blocks of ice. Clearly we have some obstacles to overcome. Okay, well now I'm asking you, when will we know? Blackout lasts for three minutes, if they're not back and forth, we'll know. Flight, they're still showering a bit up there. Do you want to tell them? Is there anything we could do about it? Not now, Flight. And they don't need to know, do they? Copy that. Is the Typhoon still present in the splashdown? Yeah. We've got the parachute situation, the heat shield, the angle of trajectory in the Typhoon, there's just so many variables, I'm a little lost. I know what the problems are, Henry. This could be the worst disaster NASA has ever experienced. With all due respect, sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour. Gentlemen, it's been a privilege flying with you. Flight, we have loss of radio contact. Roger that. Expect to regain signal in three minutes. We depend on the heat shield. Back to the Iwo Jima and our live cameras there. The Navy recovery and rescue helicopters already airborne, circling, waiting for first radar contact. One minute and 30 seconds to end of blackout. Okay, Flight, that's three minutes. We are standing by for acquisition. Odyssey, Houston, do you read me? Odyssey, this is Houston, do you read? The expected time of reacquisition, the time when the astronauts were expected to come out of blackout, has come and gone. But all any of us can do now is just listen and hope. We're about to learn whether or not that heat shield, which was damaged, as you remember, by the explosion three days ago, has withstood the inferno of re-entry. Odyssey, this is Houston, do you read me? Odyssey, Houston, do you read me? Three minutes and 30 seconds to end of blackout. Odyssey, Houston, do you read? Odyssey, this is Houston, do you read me? That's four minutes, standing by. Odyssey, Houston, do you read? Hello, Houston, this is Odyssey. It's good to see you again. Welcome home. Odyssey, Houston, welcome home. It's good to see you. Thank you. How many of you remember that, just vaguely? I'll never forget Tom Hanks coming on and saying, well, good to see you. But there was that gap of time when we really didn't know. It was only about four minutes, but you could tell, and it was just very well recreated, as you watched and wondered, what was going to happen? What was the outcome going to be? And you could see different people handling it different ways. Some people fidgety and some nervous, some shaking their head. As Walter Cronkite, right? I say Cronkite sometimes. Walter says, all we can do is watch and pray. He said hope. I believe it's pray. I want us to look at this, because I believe that in just the next days, some very important things are going to take place. This is going to go very quickly, so don't be intimidated by the outline. I'd just like you to fill in these blanks with me very quickly. Here we go. How can we focus on America in these days? How can we close this gap between the ideal and where we find ourselves in these moments? Number one, first of all, recognize that God cares. To those of you who may feel that it doesn't matter to God, and there are some of you who have told me, God will put his person in an office, it doesn't matter, whatever. I have to tell you, I think that may be a bit naive. It's not quite that simple. God has a permissive will, and God has a perfect will. And if you think there's not a difference, read 1 Samuel 11-13, and you'll read about a king that God allowed, who he did not want in office, and that king's name was King Saul. That's right. And King Saul did not turn out to do very well by the people of Israel. But that's the people who wanted him. God allowed it. His permissive will was in place. Not everyone who's in office is there by the perfect will of God. And it's up to the church to make a difference. That's why Paul writes, I urge then, and I want you to circle what I underlined, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings, and all those in authority. Why? Because God wants us to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. In other words, there's order that they bring. For this is good and pleasing to God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved. Second, it allows the gospel to go forward. So God does care. He cares that there is, next part of your outline, a gap between the ideal and the real, and we need to be actively doing something about it. The way we do something about it, number two, is to open our eyes to the realm of the invisible. Ask God to help us to see what's going on in the unseen realms. That there is something happening that's not what you can put your hand on. It's not tangible like this podium, or like the chair you're sitting on, or like the watch on your wrist. But there is a realm. The Bible is very clear. Now, for those of you who are newer to the things of God, you may not understand this, but you don't have to understand it perfectly to embrace it. There is more out there than what you just see. There's a reality beyond just what you can put your hands around. Some people fight against the thing. Well, that's really weird ball to talk about things that are spiritually... Well, there are people who get weird about it, but that doesn't discount the reality of it. The Bible is very clear that there's a dimension. It's a dimension in your office and in your home. It's here today. An unseen dimension that's very real. And if we had eyes to see into it, if we had a way to get into it, we could see what's going on. Now, it's not all that weird, really. When you think about it, let's just think about it in terms of technology. How many of you know there's things going through this room right now that you can't see but that you can get in contact with? Let me just show you. I found the cheapest possible device I could. Brought it in today. It's this little radio. It's really hard to get anything in here, but if... Oh, you can hear something there, right? I just picked it up. I hope you don't mind me using this. But you see, the point is, you can't see the radio waves, but they're in here. You just need the right device to pick them up. Likewise, you can't see the spiritual realm, but it's here. And it's not only here in a sort of back-behind-the-scenes way. I'm of the conviction that the unseen realm controls what happens in the seen realm. That's why Paul says, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. We don't wrestle against Al Gore or George W. Bush or political pundits or anyone else, dear ones. We wrestle against principalities and powers. We've got to see that that's a wrestling match that right now is at the doorstep of the church. We're either going to rise up and engage it or we're going to sit back and let it happen. And I don't believe that a five-day gap that we're in now and no end game in sight, I don't believe that's just sort of a blip in the way things are happening in our nation. And I know that some of you may disagree with that, and that's your business. I just know that the church needs to be on alert. I just know the church needs to rise up and take its place of prayer. How do we affect what's going on in the invisible realm? Well, we close the gap, number three, with prayer. We've got to close the gap somehow with prayer. Because if we don't, it's just going to widen and deepen. Ephesians 6.18 says, Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. You see, Spirit-led, Spirit-empowered, honest, heartfelt prayer is effective. It changes what goes on in the unseen. Now, listen here. A lot of folks, and I know this is a danger, when they get into a realm something like this, they say, well, you know, I've got to be a lot more mature than I am to really be effective. And there is certainly nothing in me that would say, well, don't try to be more mature. You should. But neither will I say that if you don't fully understand this, you can't be effective, because you can. All God wants us to do is just to get in place and just to pray the best we know how. And to put on that armor of God. Ephesians 6, you can read verses 10-18 yourself today. And just let God make some sense of that to you. It's not complicated. It just takes some willpower. It takes a little discipline. It takes a willingness to get out of the comfort zone that you've been used to and get yourself in a place of prayer where you can make a difference. Now, this gap, by the way, there's a lot of different applications. The Bible talks about gaps in a lot of different ways. Another way it talks about it, and this is number four in your outline, is the understanding of the warfare nature of this prayer in the unseen realm. It was Jesus who said that the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. And if everyone is just passive, look, if we just sit back, I promise you that the enemy will come in and steal what God wants. If we just sort of take a posture of, well, you know, Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. Then the thief will come in and he'll plunder. God's best for our lives. The Old Testament, the idea of a gap, was born out of the image or the metaphor of the walled cities of the old ancient days and the times when, you know, before civilization had progressed, people defended themselves by going into cities and building these massive walls. If you've ever been to the Middle East, you've seen them. Jerusalem has a wall all around it from ancient days and you can see them in lots of different cities. And that wall was a way to keep enemies out and to keep people safe who were inside. And what would happen was as marauding bands and armies would come along, if they thought they could take the city by force, they'd go up. And if they had a huge force, they would just say, hey, look, you know, there's 20,000 of us and 2,000 of you. Give us all your goods or we're going to just, we're going to come in and destroy you. And it was just a matter of intimidation and then it was over. In some cases, people would look out and say, we think we can take you. We're going to hold out. And so a siege was entered into. And a siege was when they cut the flow of food. They cut the flow of water. They tried to weaken the people on the inside. And eventually, they would walk around the walls at night and find the weakest part of the wall. And when the time was right, they thought the enemy was weak on the inside. They'd go in and start pounding on that wall and try to break it down and go in and plunder the people in the city. Sometimes the people held out. Sometimes they mounted a force and went out and destroyed the people outside and so. But what this is talking about is those gaps in the wall that protect us from the evil one. Here Ezekiel 13, 5 says, the Lord lamenting, He says, you've not gone up to the gaps in the wall to repair it for the house of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the Lord. In other words, you've not taken a place of prayer to close the gaps so the evil one can't come in. We've become vulnerable, church. We've become sleepy. We've allowed the devil to come in and just start pulling people out. How many of you know someone who used to walk with God and now has just sort of drifted away? How many of you have allowed things in your home and in your life that weren't there five years ago because you've allowed a gap to develop in the wall? And the Lord says, I looked for a man, next verse, among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. May the Lord help us today to realize that we can be the people who stand in the gap, who literally hold in our prayers the balance of power. And that's the last point. You've noticed these scales. See, there's sort of a power balance going on here, one against the other. But the last slide, if we pray, if we stand in the gap together, number five, we can tilt that balance of power so that we can drive out what the evil one would want to do in our nation and we can take our place as God's people and begin to see a reversing of some of the decline that I've noted already in this message. The Lord says in Isaiah 59, 16, He saw there was no man and wondered why. There was no intercessor, no one to stand in the gap. The Lord is looking for people who will rise up in these days and say, Wait, I am not going to lay around and just let this happen. I want God's best. I believe that He has destiny for us as a nation. What does this mean to us? I don't think necessarily that whoever gets put into office, whenever that is, the place that the next day America is going to be on the tubes, I don't necessarily believe that. But I will tell you this, it may mean that we take a turn in the road that sends us on a course that three, five, ten years from now, we look back and say that's when we began the decline that led us to our fall. I will tell you right now that in the Middle East, observers of the Middle East situation say it is the most incendiary that it's been in the last ten years and likely to erupt in military violence. I've had people ask me, do you think this is the beginning of the end times? And I have to say to you, at the very least, with the uncertainty in America, with the violence in the Middle East, with the volatility that's going on around us in the markets, I'd have to say this, it is certainly a birth pain and we need to be just a little more concerned than average about what's going on. Or otherwise, dear ones, we have no recourse before God but to let happen what happens, to let our nation turn full face into secularism. I'm not sure that the Lord hasn't allowed this gap, listen now, I'm going to close with this, I'm not sure if He hasn't given us these four or five days or it might be four or five weeks just to see if the church will remain sort of on the sidelines or if the church will wake up and get into prayer. I don't know. But I do know this, I couldn't rest this week. Many of your pastors and leaders couldn't really come to peace about this until we issued some kind of a summons to the whole church to say it's time to pray. I wanted to talk about something that was a little more personal. I had a message about margin in your life but it seemed that God had a different message. Here's what I'd like you to do. The safe thing for me to do right now would be to just go ahead and close and maybe lead you in a prayer and have us join hands. But I'm going to ask you to do something a little more involving. And some of you aren't going to like this and I just take a little extra joy in that. Because one of my missions is to push your boundaries just a little bit. Now I don't want to push you out of the church and please don't take these next five minutes as your green light to run for the doors because it's not going to help anything. If you're a guest today and what we're going to do, very simply, is we're just going to pray. Now normally we pray from the platform but today I'm going to ask us to stand where we are in just a small group of four or five people and I'm going to ask you to pray. And we have five things up here that I'm just going to submit to you as general prayer ideas. To pray for national humility, national unity. You see, without humility and unity, friends, this nation can't go on, really. Not for long. Justice and righteousness, peace and healing and finally, I think it's a big one, a heart of repentance and returning to God. Now if you're unaccustomed to praying with other people, you can just, when you stand in your circle, say, well, I'm new or I'm not used to praying out loud. And other folks will understand. You can just listen. But I don't want you just to bail out. I don't want you to sit there and read your bulletin and say, I'm not doing that. I want you to just stand and risk a little participation. Now if you should stand and everyone in your circle says, I don't know what I'm doing, well, you might want to break it up and make a new circle. Someone needs to know what they're doing. And I mean this all the way in the back as well. We have ushers at the doors who are not going to let you pass. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. If you don't want to participate, it's your choice. But I want to encourage you to do so. You don't have to pray, but at least enter in. Just the unity of your heart will make a difference. Let's pray together. Just going to come as he has to the piano. Let's come before the Lord. Let's just take five minutes and let's call out to God. Let's stand together. Invite someone in front, behind you, beside you. You'll have to move around a little bit. Just make some adjustments and form a couple of circles. Alright?